( 24.11.2017 ) Inside Story - Is it safe for Rohingya refugees to return to Rakhine State?

Al Jazeera 
24/11/2017

For nearly three months now, hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have been fleeing from Myanmar. They are escaping a military crackdown in Rakhine state that the UN has called 'ethnic cleansing'. More than 600,000 have been living in makeshift camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. Now, the governments of the two countries have signed a deal to send the refugees back to Myanmar. It is a decision Human Rights groups are calling 'unthinkable'. They say, the refugees should not be sent back if their safety cannot be guaranteed. There have been extensive reports of abuse, rape, torture and killings in Rakhine state. The military says it's combating Rohingya fighters but the operation has been condemned around the world. The government of Aung San Suu Kyi strongly denies the accusations of abuse. So, will Myanmar guarantee the safety of Rohingya refugees who return to Myanmar? 

Will Aung San Suu Kyi step up to halt Rohingya crisis? Aljazeera

Al Jazeera
15th September 2017
Inside Story

ေဒါက္တာဇာနည္ ေျပာတာေတြကုိ တစ္ခ်က္ခ်င္းစီ ေသခ်ာနားေထာင္ၾကည့္ပါ။
ပညာရွင္ဆုိတာ ပညာရွင္ပါပဲ။
UN urges Myanmar's military and its leader to stop the 'catastrophic' violence in Rakhine state.
Global pressure is mounting on Myanmar's army and the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the killing and displacement of the Rohingya.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the killings "catastrophic" and "completely unacceptable".

He says the Myanmar military should suspend its operation in the western Rakhine state and allow the Rohingya to return to their villages.

At least 400,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since the violence escalated late last month.
As more Rohingya flee to Bangladesh, what will it take to stop this violence?
Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:
Phil Robertson - deputy Asia director, Human Rights Watch
Maung Zarni - visiting fellow on Myanmar at the London School of Economics and founder of the Free Burma Coalition
Abdul Rasheed - founder and chairman of the Rohingya Foundation Community.

Ro Nay San Lwin

ေဒါက္တာဇာနည္ ေျပာတာေတြကုိ တစ္ခ်က္ခ်င္းစီ ေသခ်ာနားေထာင္ၾကည့္ပါ။ ပညာရွင္ဆုိတာ ပညာရွင္ပါပဲ။

Flotilla planned to help Rohingya in Myanmar

Al Jazeera
30th December 2016
Inside Story


Myanmar says it will not allow any unauthorised landing on its territory, sparking fears of possible confrontation.

 

Malaysia's government has been increasingly vocal about the harsh treatment of the Rohingya [EPA]

An aid flotilla carrying food and emergency supplies for Rohingya Muslims is to sail from Malaysia for Myanmar's Rakhine State in January.

Zulhanis Zainol, secretary-general of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisations, said on Friday that the coalition organising the flotilla had applied for permission to enter Myanmar through its embassy in Kuala Lumpur, but had yet to receive a reply.

"Even if we do not receive a response, we will continue to sail as we believe this is an important humanitarian mission," he said.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar tell of trauma

Malaysia has been an outspoken critic of the Myanmar government's handling of a violent crackdown in Rakhine, which has killed scores of people and displaced 30,0000 Rohingya, amid allegations of abuses by security forces.

" No non-Myanmar citizens can enter our body of water without our permission. If they do, we will respond - we will not attack them, but we will not receive them "

Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar's presidential office

Myanmar's presidential office denied it had received a request and said it would not accept the flotilla's arrival without prior permission.

"If they are looking for trouble, we will not accept that," Zaw Htay, spokesman for the presidential office, told Reuters news agency.

"No non-Myanmar citizens can enter our body of water without our permission. If they do, we will respond - we will not attack them, but we will not receive them."

The flotilla, departing from Malaysia on January 10, would be carrying 1,000 tonnes of rice, medical aid and other essentials for the Rohingya population.

Earlier this month, Malaysia urged the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to coordinate humanitarian aid and investigate alleged atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims.

Both Malaysia and Myanmar are members of the 10-nation grouping, which has a long-standing policy of not getting involved in each other's internal affairs.

An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Rohingya, displaced by previous violence, live in Malaysia.

Myanmar has previously said that access to Rakhine for humanitarian assistance would be open, but certain Rohingya communities have remained off-limits to aid agencies on security grounds.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/flotilla-aid-rohingya-myanmar-161230041535824.html

( 11.12.2016 )Rohingya refugees from Myanmar tell of trauma ( Aljazzira )

Al Jazeera 
2016 Dec 11
Inside Story

Some hid in rice fields, others ate only leaves while making the long journey by foot across the border into Bangladesh.

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh - Outside this town by the Bay of Bengal, we kept bumping into fresh arrivals when we visited the camps for Rohingya refugees fleeing a security crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

Many of them said they were from the village of Kearipara in Myanmar. From the sounds of it, that village has been utterly devastated.

All of them shared similar stories: watching family members get murdered, hiding without eating for days, and having their homes burned down.

Several told us about having to sell their valuables - rings, piercings, earrings, whatever they had on them - to facilitate a safe passage into Bangladesh.

The route, which was always difficult and deadly, has become even more problematic.

READ MORE: Outcast - Adrift with Myanmar's Rohingya

After thousands of Rohingya were found stranded and starving off the coast of southern Thailand in the middle of last year, widespread international coverage forced the hands of governments of the region to crack down on a network of human traffickers who were exploiting the desperate refugees for cash.

But those very traffickers were also paradoxically the Muslim Rohingya's only hope to make it out of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar and get on the circuitous trek that would take them through Bangladesh and Thailand into the relatively safe haven of Malaysia.

Now, just getting across the border to Bangladesh is a tough proposition for the Rohingya.

The refugees we met described hiding in rice fields for days. Some didn't eat. Others ate only leaves they found in the forests on the hills surrounding the border.


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They advanced a few minutes at a time, taking care to stop and check every few hundred metres to make sure the Myanmar army or border guards weren't lying in wait - making a long journey by foot even longer.

Arriving in Bangladesh didn't mean the ordeal was over. If they were caught by the authorities, some would be allowed through by the border guards, others would be turned back.

Every few hundred metres there were checkpoints manned by armed patrols. Next to each of them would be one or two Rohingya families who'd been caught.

Would the soldiers show clemency? Or would they be returned to the heart of the violence they were fleeing? They sat by the side of the road, unsure of their fate.

READ MORE - UN: Rohingya may be enduring 'crimes against humanity'

Tens of thousands have managed to get into Bangladesh. Many of them are in the unofficial Rohingya refugee camps near the tourist town of Cox's Bazaar.

Their hosts are refugees themselves with little to offer in terms of food or shelter.

But the community was pulling together to do what they could, faced with the suffering of their fellow Rohingya.

The new arrivals were grateful for whatever support they could find, but seething with resentment at the lack of action by the international community.
Ethnic cleansing proof

As far as they are concerned, the world has decided that the Rohingya are expendable.

From the Bangladesh side of the border, the evidence of what the UN has called a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar seems strong.

Aung San Suu Kyi, in response, has said that blame shouldn't be cast until all the facts are known.

That's fair enough.

But one of the known facts is that the Myanmar government won't let journalists or independent observers enter the areas where large-scale violence is believed to be taking place.

Why keep journalists out if Myanmar authorities have nothing to hide?
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