Rohingya Optimistic over International Prosecutor’s Trip to Bangladesh Refugee Camps

Benar News

Kamran Reza Chowdhury and Sunil Barua

Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
2022-02-28

Rohingya walk along a dirt path inside the Ukhia camp in Cox’s Bazar, Feb. 15, 2022.
Sunil Barua/BenarNews

Rohingya leaders in Bangladesh expressed optimism on Monday about getting justice for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor wrapped up his first visit to refugee camps.

Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said The Hague-based ICC had authorized an investigation in November 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed efforts to visit Bangladesh to gather evidence at Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district along the border with Myanmar.

Serbia Sold Arms to Myanmar Junta After Coup

The Irrawaddy

25 February 2022

NORA A 152mm howitzers manufactured by Jugoimport-SDPR, which were viewed by coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during his visit to Serbia in 2015

Serbia has continued to supply arms to the Myanmar military since the coup, despite the fact that those weapons are being used to attack and kill civilians, including children.

Tom Andrews, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, identified Serbia, along with China and Russia, as UN member states that are continuing to sell arms to the junta in a report issued on Tuesday.

On the same day, the independent rights group Myanmar Witness also issued its own report revealing that air-launched rockets were exported by Serbia to Myanmar after the February 1, 2021 coup.

Another 1008 Rohingyas on their way to Chittagong for Bhasanchar

Prothum Alo------  
Own reporter
RepresentativeCox's Bazar and Teknaf
Published: 18 February 2022,

A convoy of Rohingyas on their way to Chittagong from Ukhia in Cox's Bazar to Bhasanchar. Today is Wednesday noonPhoto: Prothom Alo

Another 1,006 Rohingyas have left for Chittagong from Ukhia in Cox's Bazar to Bhasanchar in Noakhali. The law enforcers are taking the Rohingya bus convoy to Chittagong for the first time through tight security at around 1:15 pm on Wednesday. They are scheduled to reach Chittagong at night. Besides, more than five hundred Rohingyas will be sent to Chittagong in the second phase in the afternoon. They will be transferred to Bhasanchar from Chittagong on Thursday.

Earlier, 21,505 Rohingyas from various camps in Ukhia and Teknaf were shifted to Bhasanchar. A total of 22,511 Rohingyas were sent to Bhasanchar. Rohingya relocation activities in Bhasanchar are being conducted by the Office of the Commissioner for Refugee Relief and Repatriation (RRRC), various law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including the Armed Police Battalion (APBN).

Myanmar junta, ousted government fight for recognition at top U.N. court

REUTERS
By Anthony Deutsch
and Poppy Mcpherson
February 18, 2022

Soldiers cross a street as people gather to protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, February 15, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer

A general view of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, December 9, 2019. REUTERS/Eva Plevier/File Photo 

Summary

• Part of ICJ case on alleged genocide against Myanmar's Rohingya
• Two members of Myanmar junta legal team on U.S. sanctions list
• Ousted government says it, not junta, should represent Myanmar
• Court declines comment on how legal agents are accredited
• Hearings set to begin Monday, a year since military coup

AMSTERDAM/BANGKOK, Feb 17 (Reuters) - (This Feb. 17 story corrects to "government" from "National Unity Government (NUG)" in paragraph 4; restores reference to NUG in paragraph 8)

Myanmar shadow government says junta should not take stand in genocide trial

RFA
Radio Free Asia
2022.02.03

The NUG says it wants to defend the country against charges because it represents the people.

The International Court of Justice hears proceedings in a trial on charges of genocide against Myanmar in The Hague, Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2019. Reuters

A decision by Myanmar’s shadow government to withdraw preliminary objections to charges of genocide against ethnic Rohingyas at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was made to ensure the case is not fought by a party that does not represent the will of the people, its foreign minister said Thursday.

The National Unity Government (NUG) said in a Feb. 1 statement that it would withdraw all preliminary objections in the ICJ case over Myanmar’s military operations against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017, a scorched-earth campaign that forced 730,000 Rohingya to flee Rakhine state, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh.

The NUG asked that it and not the ruling military junta that took over Myanmar in the Feb. 1, 2021, coup represent the country before the court.

'We recognise the human rights and citizen rights of the Rohingyas'

Prothum Alo ------ 
Altaf Parvez,Ashfaq Rony,Shafiqul Alam
Published: 02 Jan 2022, 13:11

Interview
Interview: Arakan army chief Twan Mrat Naing

General Twan Mrat NaingReuters file photo

The Arakan or the Rakhine state of Myanmar is a close neighbour of Bangladesh and has been so in the past. With the influx of the Rohingyas, this state has placed Bangladesh in a worrisome predicament. The Arakan Army is a significant political and military factor there. General Twan Mrat Naing is the commander in chief of the Arakan Army. On 19 December, he spoke over Zoom from the Chin state to three journalists and researchers of Bangladesh on the situation in Arakan and Myanmar.

အင်ဒိုနီးရှား ပင်လယ်ပြင်က ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၁၂၀ ကမ်းကပ်ခွင့်ရ

VOA
ဗီြအိုေအၿမန္မာပိုင္း
၀င္းခန္႔ေမာင္
31 ဒီဇင္ဘာ၊ 2021

 အစောပိုင်းမှာတော့ ဒုက္ခသည်စက်လှေကို လက်ခံမှာ မဟုတ်ကြောင်း ပြောခဲ့ပေမဲ့ ဝေဖန်မှုတွေ ထွက်ပေါ်ခဲ့ရာက အခုနောက်ဆုံး အင်ဒိုနီးရှားအစိုးရက ကမ်းကပ်ခွင့် ပြုခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Link : Here

ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ရာေက်ာ္ကို အင္ဒို ကမ္းတက္ခြင့္ ျပဳဖို႔ ဆုံးျဖတ္

BBC
ဘီဘီစီၿမန္မာပိုင္း
29 ဒီဇင္ဘာ 2021

အင္ဒိုနီးရွားကို ဆိုက္လာခဲ့တဲ့ ေလွေပၚက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို ခိုလႈံခြင့္ ေပးဖို႔ ဆုံးျဖတ္လိုက္တယ္ ဆိုၿပီး အင္ဒိုနီးရွား အစိုးရက ထုတ္ျပန္ပါတယ္။

ဆုမၾတား အေနာက္ကၽြန္း၊ အားေခ်း Aceh အထူးေဒသ၊ ဘာရြန္း ခရိုင္ထဲက ကမ္းရိုးတန္း တစ္ေနရာမွာ ရိုဟင္ ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ အေယာက္ ၁၂၀ ဝန္းက်င္ကို တင္ေဆာင္လာတဲ့ ေလွ ေရာက္လာခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ကနဦးတုန္းကေတာ့ အစားအစာ၊ ေရနဲ႔ ေဆးဝါးေတြ ေပးၿပီး နိုင္ငံတကာ ေရပိုင္နက္ထဲထိ အဲဒီ ဒုကၡသည္ေလွ ကို ျပန္လႊတ္မယ္လို႔ ေဒသအာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ေျပာခဲ့တဲ့ အတြက္ နိုင္ငံတကာ စိုးရိမ္မႈေတြ ေပၚထြက္လာေစ ပါတယ္။

ေလွစီးေျပး ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို အင္ဒိုနီးရွား လက္ခံဖို႔ဆုံးျဖတ္

VOA
ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)
30 ဒီဇင္ဘာ၊ 2021 

ေလွစီးေျပး ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ကို အင္ဒိုနီးရွား လက္ခံဖို႔ဆုံးျဖတ္

႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမူဆလင္ (၁၂၀)ကို တင္ေဆာင္ၿပီး အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ ေျမာက္ဖက္စြန္း အာေခ်းေဒသ ကမ္းလြန္မွာ ေရာက္ရွိေနတဲ့ ေလွတစင္းကို ဆိုက္ကပ္ခြင့္ျပဳဖို႔ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔မွာ ဆုံးျဖတ္လိုက္ ပါတယ္။

အခုလို ဆုံးျဖတ္ရတာဟာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးနဲ႔ ကေလးငယ္ေတြ အမ်ားစုပါဝင္တဲ့ ဒီဒုကၡသည္ေတြရဲ႕ အေျခအေန လြန္စြာ ဆိုးရြားေနတဲ့အတြက္ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ဒုကၡသည္ေရးရာ အရာရွိ Armed Wijaya က ေျပာပါ တယ္။

“လူသားခ်င္း စာနာမႈ အေျခအေနေတြအရ ၊ အခုလို ပင္လယ္ထဲ ေမ်ာေနတဲ့ ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို လက္ခံဖို႔ အင္ဒိုနီးရွားအစိုးရက ဆုံးျဖတ္ခဲ့ရတာ ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔” .. သူက ေျပာသြားတာပါ။

Boat carrying Rohingya refugees stranded off Indonesia's Aceh

CNA

28 Dec 2021 

Rohingya refugees on a boat. (File photo: AFP/Handout) 

 

JAKARTA: A boat carrying scores of Rohingya refugees including women and children broke down and was stranded in waters off the coast of Aceh province on Indonesia's Sumatra island, local authorities and humanitarian groups said on Monday (Dec 27).

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have for years sailed to countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia between November and April when the seas are calm.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Monday the boat carrying the Rohingya was spotted on Sunday in waters off Bireuen, Aceh and it was working with local authorities to rescue the group.

ေသာင္တင္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာစက္ေလွ ျပင္ဆင္ဖို႔ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ကူညီေပမဲ့ ခိုလႈံခြင့္မျပဳ

BBC
ဘီဘီစီၿမန္မာပိုင္း
2021-12-28

အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ကမ္းေျခမွာ ေသာင္တင္ေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ လိုက္ပါလာတဲ့ ေလွကို ျပင္ဆင္ဖို႔ အင္ဒိုနီး ရွား အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ကူညီမွာ ျဖစ္ေပမဲ့ သူတို႔ကိုနိုင္ငံထဲ ခိုလႈံခြင့္ျပဳမွာ မဟုတ္ဘဲ ေလွျပန္ထြက္ခြာရမယ္လို႔ အဂၤါေန႔မွာ ေျပာပါတယ္။

ကေလးေတြနဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြပါ အပါအဝင္ လူ ၁၂၀ ေလာက္ပါလာတဲ့ေလွ ေမ်ာပါေနတာကို ငါးဖမ္းသမား  ေတြ က ေတြ႕ခဲ့တာပါ။

UN Calls for Investigation After Dozens Massacred in Myanmar

TRT World
27 Dec 2021

The United Nations is calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into the massacre of at least 35 people, including women and children, in Myanmar's eastern Kayah state. The incident, that's reported to have taken place on December 24, came to the world's attention after photos taken by the Karen Human Rights Group showed bodies on the backs of trucks, burnt beyond recognition. While Myanmar's military stands accused of another mass killing, the country's state media is reporting that the army had shot and killed terrorists. International condemnations are in order, but are these enough to change the reality on the ground? 

 

Guests: 

 

Maung Zarni

 Adviser to Genocide Watch 

 

Nay San Lwin 

Co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition 

 

Htwe Htwe Thein 

Associate Professor at Curtin University 

 

 

Link: Here

Rohingya lawsuit against Facebook a 'wake-up call' for social media

Eco-Bussiness
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Dec. 14, 2021

Will the landmark suit, which argues that the spread of hate speech on the platform facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, be a turning point for Big Tech?

Rohingya refugees sit on a makeshift boat as they are interrogated by the Border Guard Bangladesh after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, at Shah Porir Dwip near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh November 9, 2017. Image: REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar/File Photo

A landmark lawsuit by Rohingya refugees against Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, is a “wake-up call” for social media firms and a test case for courts to limit their immunity, human rights and legal experts said.

The $150 billion class-action complaint, filed in California on Monday by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, argues that Facebook’s failure to police content and its platform’s design contributed to violence against the Rohingya community.

British lawyers also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook’s London office.

Rohingya refugees seek Facebook action over hate speech

RTE

By Colm Ó Mongáin

Deputy Foreign Editor
Thursday, 9 Dec 2021

 

The complaint has been made by young people who live in Cox's Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh

 

A group of young Rohingya refugees have submitted a complaint about Facebook Ireland to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The 16 men and women are also seeking reparations from the social media platform, which is now known as Meta, for carrying material inciting hatred against Rohingya people.

The inflammatory material was posted during a period of violent attacks by the country's army and armed militias from 2017.

Can Facebook be blamed for pogroms against Rohingyas in Myanmar?

THE ECONOMIC
Dec 11th 2021 edition

 

Lawsuits in America and Britain seek billions of dollars in damages

THAT FACEBOOK was used to spread rhetoric that incited carnage in Myanmar is hardly up for debate. According to the lead author of a UN report published in 2018 the firm’s platform played a “determining role” in the violence inflicted on Rohingya Muslims by marauding Buddhists. Facebook acknowledges that it did not do enough to prevent its services from being abused. But whether it is liable for what happened is a trickier question.

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It may soon be answered. A legal campaign is under way on both sides of the Atlantic. It claims that Facebook, now renamed Meta, should be held liable for allowing users to spread such content during the Rohingya genocide. A letter delivered to Facebook’s London offices on December 6th gave the firm notice of intent to sue it in the High Court. That suit will be on behalf of Rohingyas living everywhere in the world outside America, including Bangladesh, where 1m or so dwell as refugees.

Rohingya rights bodies denounce insurgent group ARSA

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
07.12.2021

Joint statement calls for improving system of providing protection at refugee camps in Bangladesh

Dozens of Rohingya rights organizations on Tuesday denounced the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group recently involved in killing Rohingya at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

“The Rohingya community does not accept ARSA as a group that represents the ideals and interests of them in or outside of Burma (Myanmar). Thus, the group must not claim it represents the interests of the Rohingya nation,” said a joint statement signed by 22 Rohingya rights organizations, including the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO), the European Rohingya Council (ERC) and the Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC).

Rohingyas denounce ARSA

NEWAGE
Staff Correspondent
Published:Dec 08,2021 

 

Twenty two Rohingya organisations in a statement on Tuesday denounced the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army for the latter’s recent activities and criminal associations along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

In the statement, they branded the ARSA, also known as Harakah Al Yakeen, as a criminal group.

They also appealed to the Bangladesh government and to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to work together to respond promptly when refugees report imminent threats, to provide immediate and effective protection to those in danger, and to ensure effective protection for those who report incidents.

Rohingya genocide: Facebook faces massive $200 bn legal action in UK, US

Ahamedabad Mirror
06-12-2021

Rohingya genocide: Facebook faces massive $200 bn legal action in UK, US 

 

Lawyers in the UK and the US on Monday initiated coordinated legal campaigns against Facebook, now known as Meta, on behalf of Rohingya Muslims for its alleged role in facilitating the genocide perpetrated by the Myanmar regime and extremist civilians against the Rohingya people.  

 

According to the lawyers, Facebook contributed to the 2017 genocide of Rohingya Muslims by allowing hate speech against the persecuted minority to be propagated in Myanmar. The United Nations had described the violence as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

3 feared dead as Myanmar army truck runs down protesters

AP News
By GRANT PECK
6th December 2021

FILE - Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi waits to address judges of the International Court of Justice on the second day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands on Dec. 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

BANGKOK (AP) — An army vehicle plowed into a peaceful march by anti-government protesters in military-ruled Myanmar’s biggest city, reportedly killing at least three people, witnesses and a protest organizer said.

Sunday’s march was one of at least three held in Yangon, and similar rallies were reported in other parts of the country a day ahead of an expected verdict in the first of about a dozen criminal cases against former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was toppled in a military takeover on Feb. 1.

UN and US condemn Myanmar military after protest reportedly turns deadly in Yangon

CNN

By Pierre Meilhan and Cape Diamond,
December 6, 2021

Protesters walk down the street to protest against the military coup and demand the release of deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

(CNN)At least five people were killed in Myanmar when a vehicle plowed into anti-junta protesters this weekend, according to local media. The attack took place in a Yangon township, news outlet Myanmar Now reported Sunday, citing protesters and eyewitnesses. 

One reporter who witnessed the incident told CNN that it was a military vehicle that rammed demonstrators.