Displaced by conflict in Myanmar, thousands of Rohingya gather along Bangladesh border seeking refuge

Yeni Safak
21/04/2024 Sunday

Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state becoming victim of ongoing conflict between junta forces, insurgent groups, say community leaders

Thousands of Rohingya displaced due to conflict in Myanmar gathered along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border near the transboundary Naf River to seek refuge, a Rohingya leader in Bangladesh told Anadolu.

What’s Happening In Myanmar’s Civil War?

The New York Times
By Hannah Beech and Weiyi Cai
April 19, 2024

• Why did the military stage a coup?
• Who is fighting back?
• How successful have the rebels been?
• How are civilians affected?
• Who lives in the country?
• Is it Myanmar or Burma?
• Will Myanmar hold together?

Myanmar’s military staged a coup in 2021, strangling democratic reforms and jailing much of the country’s civilian leadership. Three years on, the Southeast Asian nation is teetering on the brink of failed statehood. Insurgent groups, including pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias, are battling the junta’s soldiers. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions more are displaced.

Rohingya Muslims forcibly conscripted in Myanmar, deployed as human shields

ABNA
Tuesday,16 April 2024

The military in Myanmar military has forcibly recruited over a thousand Rohingya Muslim men and boys while the religious minority members are denied citizenship, a report said.

AhlulBayt News Agency: The military in Myanmar military has forcibly recruited over a thousand Rohingya Muslim men and boys while the religious minority members are denied citizenship, a report said.

‘Human shields on the battlefield’: Myanmar forces Rohingya into military

Al Jazeera
16 Apr 2024

Forced conscription into the military is the latest tactic Myanmar’s military-led government is using to target the persecuted Rohingya population.

Link : Here

Myanmar: If the hospitals are closed, where do people go?

MSF
15 Apr 2024

Myanmar is facing an acute humanitarian crisis since fighting escalated at the end of October 2023. The intensification of conflict has led to a lack of humanitarian access, a decimation of the healthcare system, and—due to a law passed in February—increasing fear of military conscription or forced recruitment into other armed groups.

Arakan Army’s gains enough to enable self-rule in Myanmar’s Rakhine state

RFA
A commentary by Zachary Abuza
2024.04.06 

Their strength will impact future negotiations over establishing a federal democracy and questions of citizenship. 

The Arakan Army, or AA, is continuing their sweep across Rakhine, furthering the military gains of the ethnic Three Brotherhood Alliance, of which it is a member, in Shan state. While the capture of nine towns, with a tenth in southern Chin state, is another humiliating defeat for the Burmese military, it also sets the scene for a very messy political discussion moving forward.

U.N. Security Council: Refer Mass Internment Of Muslims And Other Atrocities In Myanmar To ICC

SCOOP World
Sunday, 7 April 2024,
Press Release: Fortify Rights 

Mass arbitrary detention, life-threatening restrictions in Rakhine State

(BANGKOK, April 4, 2024)– The Myanmar military junta’s ongoing confinement of more than a half million Rohingya Muslims to internment camps and villages in Rakhine State constitutes a situation of mass arbitrary detention and an act of genocide under international law, said Fortify Rights today. According to a new investigation by Fortify Rights, the junta not only continues to confine Rohingya en masse, but it has also tightened restrictions on lifesaving humanitarian aid to Rohingya and Kaman Muslims in internment camps and villages throughout the state.

BROUK: Genocide against Rohingya intensifying

mizzima
April 5, 2024

File Photo: Rohingya refugees are seen on the coast of Jurong Mulia, in Sabang, Aceh province, on December 2, 2023. (Photo by Khairu / AFP)

 

The Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) warned that the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya is intensifying and it is urging the United Nations (UN) Security Council to immediately take steps to enforce the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures order on Myanmar to protect the ‘extremely vulnerable ’Rohingya.

As Crisis in Myanmar Worsens, Security Council Must Take Resolute Action to End Violence by Country’s Military, Address Humanitarian Situation, Speakers Urge

United Nation
9595th Meeting (AM)
SC/15652
4 April 2024

Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

Senior UN Official Announces Plan to Appoint Special Envoy ‘in the Coming Days’ 

 Bringing the multifaceted crisis in Myanmar to the fore, speakers urged the Security Council today to take decisive measures to end violence by that country’s military and address the deteriorating humanitarian situation, also calling for the swift appointment of a United Nations Special Envoy to enhance the Organization’s engagement on the matter.

We must not allow Myanmar to become a forgotten crisis: UK statement at the UN Security Council

GOV.UK
From: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and Dame Barbara Woodward DCMG OBE Published4 April 2024

Statement by Ambassador Barbara Woodward at the UN Security Council meeting on Myanmar. 

Thank you President, and thank you ASG Khiari and Director Doughten for your insightful briefings.

Colleagues, as we’ve heard, it is now over three years since the Myanmar military overturned the democratically elected government, setting the country on a path of violence and humanitarian suffering.

No justice, and nowhere to go for the victims of Myanmar’s forgotten genocide

Michael West Media
Indipendent Journalists
by Farah Abdurahman | Apr 1, 2024 

Rohyngya refugee camp. Image: Wikipedia

 The holocaust in Gaza has eclipsed the long-standing genocide of the Rohingya people of Myanmar, 569 of whom died at sea last year alone. Farah Abdurahman reports on the humanitarian disaster and the response of the Australian government.

More than seven years on from the genocide committed against the Rohingya by Myanmar’s military, the group is no closer to peace or freedom.

Publication of IIMM Analytical Reports

Reports on Myanmar military’s anti-Rohingya hate speech campaign and Myanmar authorities’ failure to investigate and punish sexual violence committed against Rohingya

Statement by Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar

Geneva, 27 March 2024 – Today the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar is publicly releasing two analytical reports. One report details the Myanmar military’s covert Facebook network that systematically distributed hate speech against the Rohingya at the time of the 2017 clearance operations. The second report examines the response of Myanmar state authorities to allegations of sexual and gender-based crimes committed by security forces against the Rohingya. This report concludes that the authorities failed in their duty under international law to investigate and punish these acts.

Boats carrying scores of Rohingya refugees capsize off Indonesia: fishermen

ARAB NEWS
AFP
March 20, 2024

Ethnic Rohingya people rescued from their capsized boat rest at a local government building in Samatiga, Aceh province, Indonesia, on Mar. 20, 2024.( AP)

An Indonesian resident transports Rohingya Muslim refugees on a motorbike rickshaw to the Samatiga District Office after Indonesian fishermen rescued dozens of Rohingya after high tides capsized their boat in waters off the West Aceh, in Aceh province, Indonesia, on Mar. 20, 2024. (Reuters)

• A fisherman saw the Rohingyas at 8:00 am (0100 GMT) with their boat sinking
• The Rohingya boat had capsized off Kuala Bubon beach in West Aceh

UN chief decries violence in Myanmar as 25 Rohingya killed in airstrikes

TRTWORLD
19 March 2024 

Myanmar's military is increasingly using airstrikes to counter the widespread armed struggle against its rule since its seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. 

Reuters Archive

Soldiers stand next to military vehicles as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar. / Photo: Reuters Archive

Military airstrikes in western Myanmar killed at least 25 members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, including children, local media reported, prompting the UN chief to express concerns over the escalating violence.

Rohingya trapped in the middle of Myanmar’s escalating conflict

The New Humanitarian
Analysis, San Thai Shin
19 March 2024 

‘They have oppressed us throughout history, and it has been a decade that they've detained us, like in this internment camp.’ 

Soldiers take part in a military parade in Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, on 27 March 2019. A junta seized power on 1 February 2021, but opposition armed groups have enjoyed a string of recent battleground gains. 

 

Editor’s note: San Thai Shin is the Burmese name for a Rohingya person living in Bangladesh's refugee camps. He is a researcher and a columnist, and prefers to write under his Burmese name in order to speak and report freely. 

Hellfire and Damnation in Myanmar: Ex-World Bank Country Head Recounts Rohingya Catastrophe Response

The Irrawaddy
David Scott Mathieson
March 16, 2024

Damned If You Do. Foreign Aid and My Struggle to Do Right in Myanmar by Ellen Goldstein

 

The crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State gripped the decade of the “democratic opening”, as state oppression of the Rohingya Muslim minority surged in 2012, culminating in the 2016 and 2017 mass expulsion that drove over 700,000 people into Bangladesh. The crisis severely affected many other parts of Myanmar in ways not fully appreciated at the time, much of it exacerbated by the cruel disregard of the military who perpetrated the ethnic cleansing, and by the obtuse arrogance of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD). The international community didn’t exactly shower itself in glory either, but as usual, found a way to exonerate its own complicity, corruption, cowardice and incompetence.

Rohingya pawns in Myanmar’s cynical conscription drive

ASIA TIME
Syeda Noshin Sharmily
March 15, 2024

Junta offering rice, salaries and ID cards to internally displaced Rohingya to join the military in failing regime’s latest sign of desperation 

Rohingya refugees walk after crossing the Naf river from Myanmar into Bangladesh in Whaikhyang. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Fred Dufour

Faced with a decline in authority and mounting territorial losses, Myanmar’s beleaguered junta has resorted to a controversial new war-fighting strategy: conscripting Rohingya Muslims under the auspices of a new People’s Military Service Law.

‘They have lists of everyone’s names’: Myanmar conscription law unleashes wave of fear

GENOCIDE WATCH
By Rebecca Ratcliffe and Aung Naing Soe
Date : 11th March'2025 

Potential conscripts fear they could be forced to carry out atrocities or be used as human shields by the military 

Military officers on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, 27 March 2023. Many in Myanmar have expressed alarm at the conscription law. Photograph: Aung Shine Oo/AP

 

Passport offices and embassies in Myanmar have been flooded with applications, with a queue of more than a thousand people on a single day trying to secure a visa for neighbouring Thailand. Helplines offering advice on ways to leave the country – how to manage checkpoints, what documents are needed – have been inundated.

What is the future for the Rohingya in Arakan State?

DVB
By CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Guest contributor
Pacifist Farooq
March 11, 2024

Since the resumption of fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA) on Nov. 13 after a year-long unofficial ceasefire, the Rohingya community has become more vulnerable than ever, compounding the already alarming humanitarian catastrophe in the region.

The Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar: 45 Years On

The Irrawaddy
by Tony Waters and R.J. Aung
March 6, 2024

Rohingya refugees wait to receive supplies of rice, water and cooking oil at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. /AFP

A month after the prime minister of Bangladesh raised concerns about the possibility of Rohingya repatriation, UNHCR representatives in Myanmar met with the junta’s education minister on February 7 to discuss repatriation. Meanwhile, Bangladeshi officials are reluctant to act in any way that might be perceived as taking sides between the junta and the ethnic Arakan Army; Bangladesh has perhaps started to understand there is a new sheriff in Rakhine, just across the Naf River.