World paying a heavy price for ignoring Rohingyas’ plight

ARAB NEWS

DR. AZEEM IBRAHIM
February 11, 2021

Myanmar Army armored vehicles drive along a street after the military seized power in a coup, Mandalay, Myanmar, February 3, 2021. (Reuters)

For more than three decades, the hopes for democracy in Myanmar have been inextricably tied to just one person: Aung San Suu Kyi. This was entirely appropriate for most of that time. She was, after all, the chosen democratic icon of the people of Myanmar.

But only half a year after she was finally allowed to lead the civilian government of Myanmar by the military in 2016, she became complicit in the latter’s “clearing operations” against the Rohingya people in the west of the country, which ultimately amounted to genocide. She not only defended their actions as necessary, but she wholly adopted the genocidal rhetoric of even denying the existence of the Rohingya as a separate ethnic group, indigenous to Myanmar.

Myanmar: Trafficking issues, plight of Rohingyas in Thailand

ORF  OBSERVER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Monitors
Jan 21 2021

South Asia Weekly | Volume XIV; Issue 3
News and analyses from South Asia this week.

Enot Poloskun — iStock/Getty

Sreeparna Banerjee

In an appalling event, last week, 19 Rohingyas and a Thai woman accused of housing them were arrested for illegal entry into Thailand. Another group of 100 Rohingyas were uncovered from Yangon in Myanmar. Both these groups were bound to travel to Malaysia in search of a better life. In addition, there are reports that around 33 Thai officials along with civilians will be charged with disciplinary action for facilitating human-trafficking along the Thai-Myanmar border.

This discovery comes at a time when people of Thailand are accusing migrant workers from Myanmar as being responsible for the rising number of the Covid-19 cases in the country. After two months of hate-speech and confusion, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was tactful in stating that the recent infections were due to foreign workers smuggled across Thai border and had nothing to do with Myanmar migrants per say. On a positive note, this entire event also uncovered the difficult conditions that the migrant workers, especially those from Myanmar, are facing in Thailand.

Plight of Rohingyas Under COVID-19 Spotlights ASEAN’s Failure

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Nor Arlene Tan

June 16, 2020

Amid the pandemic and global economic chaos, the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis in Southeast Asia has quietly been swept under a rug.

This year has been dystopian for many people in the world, with the coronavirus pandemic virtually grinding the global economy to a halt. While the looming recession has given rise to social disruptions such as massive unemployment and the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States have had worldwide impact, the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis in Southeast Asia has quietly been swept under a rug by much of the global media.

The United Nations estimates that there are a million Rohingya refugees worldwide; most of them fled Myanmar in the last decade as persecution against the vulnerable minority intensified. Last year, Myanmar Foreign Minister and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, once a democracy darling and now disgraced, refuted a recent UN investigation into the alleged genocide by the military junta.

Rohingya’s plight worsens as pandemic spreads

THE I DIPLOMAT
The Debate | Opinion
By Param-Preet Singh and Nadia Hardman

May 28, 2020

Burmese authorities are using COVID-19 response measures as a pretext to harass and extort Rohingyas. 

The Diplomat has removed paywall restrictions on our coverage of the COVID–19 crisis.

This is what life is like for the 130,000 internally displaced Rohingyas trapped in detention camps in central Rakhine state in Myanmar: in the camps, they have no future, with little access to land or livelihoods. They depend on foreign aid supplies and die of treatable diseases because of limited access to healthcare. Shelters, built in 2012 to last two years, have deteriorated. Most children can only attend basic classes at temporary learning spaces.

Plight of Rohingyas and the way forward

THE NATION
Azhar Azam

July 15, 2019

 

In an interview with the Associated Press (AP), a Rohingya Muslim woman described the searing episode of her rape and the killing of her husband by the armed forces of Myanmar (formerly Burma), known as Tatmadaw, on the night of June 2017. She said that the Burmese soldiers entered in her home, bound her husband with ropes, slit his threat, ripped the scarf from her head, tied it around her mouth, and raped her. This is just one of the horrific atrocities Rohingya Muslims went through. Otherwise, myriads of Rohingya men, women, and children experienced persecution in the hands of the army men. Among the actions of persecution mass killings, sexual violence, and widespread arson remained the most common.

Rohingyas’ plight highlighted at moot on minorities

DAWN    
Shazia Hasan  
July 11, 2019

 

Anwar Shah Arkani Speaks at the conference on Wednesday

KARACHI: “I am a Rohingya and survivor of the ongoing genocide against us. My mother was a survivor of the 1942 massacre, my father was killed in the 1977/78 crisis where many Rohingyas were locked up in a godown with thousands of others waiting to be freed when the lock would open but it never did. The Burmese [Myanmar] regime is rooted so deeply in hatred against Muslims that they will do anything to get rid of us,” said Anwar Shah Arkani, chairman, Rohingya Association of Canada.

Saudi Arabia voices concern over little progress on plight of Rohingya

Saudi Gazette
July 2, 2019
Saudi Gazette report 

Dr. Khalid Mohammed Manzlawi, deputy permanent representative of Saudi Arabia to UN, at the United Nations in New York, Monday. — SPA

 

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has expressed concern over the little progress made in dealing with the crisis of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar along with continuous violations of their human rights and displacement from their homeland for an unknown fate in refugee camps.

Dr. Khalid Mohammed Manzlawi, deputy permanent representative of Saudi Arabia to UN, made the remarks while addressing a session at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

ASEAN must not turn a blind eye to plight of Rohingya, groups say

 A   
cna 
19 Jun 2019 

A Rohingya Muslim woman stands as she waits to cross the border to go to Bangladesh, in a temporary camp outside Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, Nov 12, 2017. (Photo: REUTERS/Wa Lone)

BANGKOK: Human rights groups on Wednesday (Jun 19) called on Southeast Asian leaders to rethink their approach to the Rohingya refugee crisis ahead of a regional summit in Bangkok this week.

Bangladesh: Chinese Envoy Rapped for Linking Rohingya Crisis to Economic Trade.

RADIO FREE ASIA  
2019-05-10

Chinese envoy to Bangladesh Zhang Zuo (center) answers questions during a news conference in Dhaka, May 8, 2019.

BenarNews

A Bangladeshi official and political observers on Friday criticized a statement by the Chinese ambassador, who suggested this week that the Rohingya refugee crisis could be solved through economic development in neighboring Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Trying to prove that you exist: Plight of Rohingya Muslims

DAILY SABAH
AYŞE BETÜL BAL
06.05.2019 

Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh, Oct. 9, 2017. 

Declared the world's most persecuted people, Rohingya people have been facing atrocities for years. Members of the Rohingya diaspora told Daily Sabah their stories of oppression
Imagine one day you wake up in a country that you have known as your native land, you have been calling home, to which your great-grandparents called home and a person says, "No, you are not accepted here anymore, go." This is what the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Rakhine State of Burma, which later became Myanmar, one of the most ethnically divided countries in the world, has been subjected to for decades. "Arakan is our native land. But Burmese people say that these people were brought by the British government."

Rohingya plight

International The News
April 8, 2019

The fate of the Burmese Rohingya is being settled in front of our very eyes. As with many other populations that have faced ethnic genocide, such as the Rwandans and the Kosovar, the world does not care about the Rohingya. Not only is a return home filled with the same dangers that had forced the entire Rohingya population to get up and leave, they are not welcome in their new homes either. In Myanmar this week, another twenty Rohingya were killed after an attack by a military helicopter.

Senators ask US to sanction Myanmar army chief.

MailOnline 
By AFP |20 March 2019

Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, seen here inspecting a bridge in August 2018, is facing calls from US senators to face punishment over the campaign against the Rohingya minority

Senators called Wednesday for the United States to slap sanctions on Myanmar's army chief, saying more needed to be done to bring accountability over the campaign against the Rohingya.

In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the four senators said Myanmar has shown "no credible signs of progress" despite widespread international condemnation of the killings and sexual violence against members of the mostly Muslim minority.

Plight of Rohingya Muslims tied to Britain, Japan and World War II.

nzherald.co.nz

16 Mar, 2019

Nearly one million Rohingya refugees are in Bangladesh. Photo / The Washington Post by Ismail Ferdous

Washington Post
By: Jayita Sarkar analysis

Last month the United Nations and its partners appealed for US$920 million ($1.34 billion) to assist nearly one million Rohingya refugees now encamped in Bangladesh. These refugees are fleeing the violence in the northern part of the Rakhine state in Burma. That violence has been perpetrated by the Burmese military under the pretext that the Rohingya are not citizens of Burma, also known as Myanmar, but "resident foreigners" from Bangladesh who neither speak the Burmese language nor are part of Burma's myriad ethnic groups.

Minister: Rohingya rights must remain on agenda.

THE Star ONLINE
Thursday, 21 Feb 2019

Dhaka: The plight of the Rohingya refugees to return home must not fall off the international agenda and they must be given justice, she said, according to a press release issued yesterday by the British High Commission in Dhaka.

She said the international community must make sure that Rohingyas’ right to return remains high on the agenda.

Mordaunt, also the UK’s minister for women and equalities, arrived in Dhaka on Sunday on a three-day official visit. On Monday, she met Rohingya refugees at a food distribution centre in Kutupalong camp of Cox’s Bazar.

198- Plight of Rohingyas Historicity

Plight of Rohingyas Historicity