Cyclone Mocha leaves ‘trail of devastation’ in Myanmar

UN News
Global perspective Human stories
Humanitarian Aid
15 May 2023

© UNICEF/Sultan Mahmud Mukut
Cyclone Mocha hits a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar. 

Cyclone Mocha was one of the strongest cyclones to ever hit Myanmar, the UN aid coordination office (OCHA) in the country reported on Monday, leaving a “trail of devastation” as it moved overland from the Bay of Bengal, particularly in the city of Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State.

OCHA said that communities there had spent the day cleaning up, and counting the cost of the storm, categorized as Extremely Severe, when it smashed into Myanmar’s western states and regions on Sunday, with guests as strong as 250km per hour – continuing to lash some areas the day after, with heavy rain.

Myanmar junta sets its sights on Rohingya ahead of UN court deadline

Frontier
Myanmar
April 7, 2023

A Rohingya family arrives for a meeting with Myanmar officials in Teknaf in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar District on March 15 as part of supposed repatriation efforts. (AFP)

Ahead of this month’s deadline to submit arguments and evidence to the International Court of Justice, the military regime has been using questionable methods to collect testimony from Rohingya, at times even allegedly pressuring them to change their story.

 

Ko Win Maung’s* village in Rathedaung Township, once home to a large Rohingya population, was one of the first to be attacked in 2017 during the military’s crackdown in northern Rakhine State. It was shortly after lunchtime on August 25 when soldiers arrived in Zaydipyin and began torching houses, forcing Win Maung and more than 650 other Rohingya to flee.

The hidden plight of Myanmar’s double minorities

Frontier 

Myanmar
CHRISTOPHER WIN
April 4, 2023
OPINION

Participants in a forum for youth of the Maramagri ethnic group in 2017. (Supplied)

 

Even after democratic reforms were launched in 2011, whenever I travelled from Rakhine State to Yangon, immigration officers would take me off the bus and force me to recite Buddhist prayers from memory. My national ID card identified me as a member of the predominantly Buddhist Maramagri ethnic minority group, but my South Asian features meant I had to prove my religion every time. Aside from the humiliating discrimination I suffered, the subtext was clear – if I had been Muslim, I wouldn’t be allowed to travel at all.

How India Betrayed the Rakhine People – And Why It Matters Today

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Kyaw Hsan Hlaing
February 10, 2023

25 years ago this week, India’s army crushed an incipient Rakhine separatist force in the Andaman Islands. In western Myanmar, memories of the incident linger.

Twenty-five years ago this week, India’s government betrayed the people of Rakhine State in western Myanmar, when its armed forces smashed a nascent Rakhine revolutionary group in a remote part of the Andaman Islands. In the years since, the Indian government has never referred publicly to the incident, but it continues to resonate among the Rakhine people, who remember it as Gen. Khaing Raza’s Day, or Betrayal of India over Rakhine Revolution Day. In a 2009 book, the prominent Indian human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar described the incident as “infamous.”

Decolonizing History in ‘Myanmar’: Bringing Rohingya Back into Their own History

Written By-Michael W. Charney

Abstract

This article makes two main arguments. First, it argues that due to the imperial roots of Area Studies the views of many contemporary states and many scholars on the Rohingya, Rakhine, and Myanmar have been shaped by colonial perspectives. Second, it argues that the Rohingya were erased historically from Rakhine by the British colonial state and this erasure has been reinforced by the country focus of US Area Studies during the Cold War and after. It concludes that societies in the global south may also have to decolonize how they construct and organize knowledge, and what their governments do with it in terms of policy, so they can escape the continual problems caused originally by the colonial administrative convenience.

Introduction

This article begins with two suggestions. First, if everyone who reads this article agrees with its conclusions or does not disagree with them, it will have failed. This article mainly wishes to raise questions in the reader’s mind about things that will be difficult for anyone who has grown up and been educated in the contemporary world to accept right away or ever, at least completely. The systems of knowledge in which histories are produced are systems we all live in and so they are reinforced every day by concepts and images everywhere we go.

51 Years Of Myanmar-Bangladesh Ties – OpEd

eurasiareview 

Jubeda Chowdhury
January 13, 2023

Locations of Bangladesh (green) and Myanmar (Burma). Credit: Wikipedia Commons

January 13, 2023, marks 51 years of bilateral ties between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Myanmar recognized Bangladesh as a sovereign state on January 13, 1972. There were many ups and downs between the two neighbors over these 51 years. Why was this? Because the relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar were strained time to time. But this strained tie must be smoothed for ensuring greater regional interest. But Myanmar-Bangladesh needs to strengthen ties for ensuring the greater interest of the two regions such as South Asia and Southeast Asia.

A breath of hope for Rohingya women in Myanmar’s Rakhine state

UNITED NATION MYANMAR

UN Women 

Posted 2 Jan 2023

© UN Women/Melanie Jarvis

 

 

 Soon after receiving a training in business, Daw Mya Mya Aye, 60, was presented with 17 piglets to kick-start her business in March 2022 © UN Women/Melanie Jarvis

How providing cash, piglets and business training is helping Rohingya survivors of gender-based violence, and those at risk, in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Rakhine State, Myanmar – Daw Mya Mya Aye, 60, could not hide her joy as she joined fellow villagers in sharing how the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) breathed hope into their vulnerable families.

Speaking at the launch of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November in Matkalar village in Rakhine state, Daw Mya Mya Aye and her fellow beneficiaries explained how through the assistance from CERF they are now slowly rebuilding their lives after the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalation of the armed conflict following the military takeover in February 2021.

Rebel yell: Arakan Army leader speaks to Asia Times

ASIA TIMES
By BERTIL LINTNER

JANUARY 18, 2022

Rebel commander says military junta could explode ‘like a supernova’ and claims AA’s parallel administration is restoring stability to RakhineTwan Mrat Naing, commander-in-chief of the Arakan Army, attends a meeting of leaders of Myanmar's ethnic armed groups at the United Wa State Army headquarters in Myanmar's northern Shan state, May 6, 2015. Photo: Twitter

CHIANG MAI – At just 43, Major General Twan Mrat Naing may be the youngest and most successful rebel commanders in Myanmar. The force he leads, the Arakan Army (AA), has grown from a handful of recruits when it was first established in April 2009 into one of the war-torn nation’s most powerful and potent ethnic armies.

AA first waged war against the Myanmar military in 2012 in northern Kachin state arm-in-arm with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). It later fought alongside the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in northeastern Shan state before launching an insurgency in its home state of Rakhine, also known as Arakan, where thousands have flocked to join its ranks.

Argentine court to hear Myanmar Rohingya genocide case

FINANCIAL TIMES
John Reed, south-east Asia correspondent
28TH NOVEMBER 2021

Matter brought under universal jurisdiction allowing grave crimes to be tried anywhere

Rohingya refugees protest before the UNHCR office in Jakarta this month against the Myanmar military’s crackdown © BAGUS INDAHONO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Argentina’s judiciary has agreed to open a genocide case brought by Rohingya victims of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military, in a move hailed by victims and their advocates as a historic step toward bringing the country’s ruling generals to justice.

 The case was brought in Buenos Aires by a UK-based Rohingya group and six female survivors of the military’s 2017 crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where security forces killed thousands, committed rapes and drove about 750,000 members of the long-persecuted minority into Bangladesh.

Challenging Rakhine, military narratives

NEWAGE

Habib Siddiqui
Jun 26,2021

Warpait village, Rakhine, October 14, 2016… The Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingyas left hundreds of villages a smouldering pile of debris. — The Conversation/Ye Aung

OPPRESSION, marginalisation, violence and propaganda — none of it is new. What is new however is the mere scale, frequency and omnipresence of disinformation, especially when it is propagated by a powerful group that runs at the state level with the goal to eliminate a small minority that is different from the dominant group’s identity by race, ethnicity, language, religion, customs and culture. Nowhere in our time is this issue perhaps more acute than in Myanmar where the Rohingyas are victims of a carefully crafted genocidal programme that has become a national project there, enjoying full support from top to bottom of every rung and corner of the Buddhist society — from a military man in uniform to a monk in a saffron robe, from a peasant in the paddy field to a politician wearing a longyi.

Bangladesh abstains from voting against Myanmar

Prothom Alo 

Prothom Alo English Desk

Published: 20 Jun 2021, 

The United Nations logo is seen on a window in an empty hallway at United Nations headquarters during the 75th annual UN General Assembly high-level debate in New York, US, on 21 September 2020Reuters

The UN General Assembly on Friday took a rare step of calling on member states to “prevent the flow of arms” into Myanmar, which is a part of a non-binding resolution condemning the military coup in the violence-wracked country.

The resolution -- which did not go so far as to call for a global arms embargo -- also demands that the military “immediately stop all violence against peaceful demonstrators,” reports Reuters.

It was approved by 119 countries, with 36 abstaining including China, Myanmar’s main ally. Only one country, Belarus, voted against it. Bangladesh also abstained from voting.

Myanmar: Challenging Rakhine And Military Narratives About Rohingyas – Analysis

eurasiareview

Dr. Habib Siddiqui
June 21, 2021

Displaced Rohingya people in Rakhine State, Burma. Photo Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Wikipedia Commons.

Oppression, marginalization, violence, propaganda – none of it is new. What is new, however, is the mere scale, frequency and omnipresence of disinformation, especially when it is propagated by a powerful group that runs at the state level with the goal to eliminate a small minority that is different than the dominant group’s identity by race, ethnicity, language, religion, customs and culture. Nowhere in our time is this issue perhaps more acute than in Myanmar where the Rohingyas are victims of a carefully crafted genocidal program that has become a national project there, enjoying full support from top to bottom of every rung and corner of the Buddhist society – from a military man in uniform to a monk in a saffron robe, from a peasant in the paddy field to a politician wearing a longyi.

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ အေနာက္ဘက္ကမ္းရိုးတန္းေဒသ ရခိုင္ျပည္ နယ္တည္ၿငိမ္ေရးႏွင့္ ျပန္လည္ထူေထာင္ေရး အႀကံျပဳ တင္ျပခ်က္ (Rakhine Paper On Rohingya Conspiracy 2012 and The Past )

Rakhine Paper on Rohingya C... by Moe Ma Ka

Bangladesh seeks UN intervention to end Rohingya crisis

THE NATION

Anadolu
June 18, 2021

Bangladesh urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to help resolve the Rohingya crisis, saying deteriorating political situation in Myanmar is hampering the peaceful repatriation of refugees.

Bangladesh is currently hosting about 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in camps in the southeast coast of Cox’s Bazar. Uncertainty looms over their repatriation to Rakhine state following a military coup in Myanmar on Feb. 1.

ED: How much longer will it take?

Dhaka Tribune
Tribune Editorial
June 18th, 2021

MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

We must address the root causes of the crisis, and the root lies in Myanmar

While nuance and diplomacy are no doubt crucial in international politics, should they supersede the needs of a people who have escaped indescribable pain and suffering, and wish nothing more than to go back home?

Unfortunately, when it comes to the Rohingya, the international community has been slow to move: The journey from silence to hesitant support to full-fledged condemnation has taken many powerful nations years to conclude, and this has allowed Myanmar to play dumb, break promises, delay, and worst of all, deny the Rohingya not only the right to return to their homeland of Rakhine, but even justice, refusing to acknowledge the atrocities and hold those responsible to account.

Geopolitics and the uncertain future of Rohingyas

prothomalo

Opinion
M Sakhawat Hossain
Published: 14 Jun 2021, 

Rohingya exodus from their homeland, making their way to Bangladesh Reuters

After the military coup in Myanmar, there had been talk of taking back the 1.1 million (11 lakh) or so Rohingyas who had been driven out of Rakhine (Arakan) and had taken shelter in Bangladesh. Such sentiment is no longer being heard. In fact, the military junta in Myanmar is speaking in quite the opposite tone. Their spokesperson recently said that the Rohingya issue is not on their priority list. This is because of pressure from the Rakhine nationalist leaders there.

Myanmar conflict may bring ethnic groups together

The Daily Star
Mokbul Morshed Ahmad
June 12, 2021

Photo: Reuters

With the February 2021 military coup, Myanmar once again hit global media headlines. While the military junta continues to clamp down on pro-democracy protestors and the country is wracked with conflict and unrest, how will the changing political situation affect the Rohingya community in Bangladesh and in Rakhine State in Myanmar?

More than one-third of Myanmar's population is composed of ethnic minorities, who inhabit a vast frontier where the country's natural resources are concentrated. They have staged periodic insurgencies against the military, which has ruled the country for most of the past six decades. The National League for Democracy (NLD) is the only nationally popular political force in Myanmar, but it has a recent history of turning a blind eye to the persecution of ethnic minorities, especially in Rakhine. Although the party won a landslide re-election in November 2020, more than one million members of ethnic minorities were disenfranchised during the vote. The British, who colonised what was then known as Burma, called the country "a zone of racial instability".

Genocide against Rohingyas not abating

The Daily Star

Diplomatic Correspondent
May 25, 2021

Says BROUK; junta leader cast doubt on return of refugees

The genocide against the Rohingyas shows no sign of abating in Myanmar, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said in a new briefing yesterday.

It said the Myanmar military continues to subject the Rohingyas to a vicious pattern of abuse and extortion in the Rakhine State, where Rohingyas are kept in what amounts to an open-air prison, creating intolerable living conditions.

Since the start of this year, at least 15 Rohingya, including nine infants and young children, have died as a direct result of onerous and illegal travel restrictions preventing access to medical care, said BROUK President Tun Khin in a statement.

The Rohingya Refugee Crisis Explained

The Knights News

BY ALIYAH ALI 

APRIL 14, 2021

The Rohingyas are a group of people who originated from Myanmar and have since fled to their neighboring Bangladesh for refuge. The Rohingyas, have been subject to an ethnic genocide in the predominantly Buddhist nation of Myanmar. They hail from the Rakhine state and are mostly Muslim. For many years, Rohingyas were left out of major elections, censuses, and unable to vote for several years prior. According to CNN, 87,000 Rohingyas left for Bangladesh on October 6, 2016, the first wave of the migration. This was sparked when a group of Rohingya men killed nine policemen at the Rakhine border, and the Myanmar military retaliated on the community.

The Arakan Dream: The Search for Peace in Myanmar’s Rakhine State on the Verge of Civil War

TERRORISM MONITOR
Jack Broome
April 9, 2021

  Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 19 Issue: 7

On March 23, the Arakan Army (AA)—an ethnic armed organization (EAO) based largely in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—finally released a statement condemning the military’s seizure of power in the February 1 coup. AA spokesperson, Khine Thu Kha, said that the AA was “together…with the people” and would “continue to go forward for the oppressed Rakhine people” (Dhaka Star, March 23).

Up until this point, the AA had held back from issuing any kind of response to the coup, despite an increasing number of EAOs having already declared their support for the civil disobedience movement (CDM). Some groups, such as the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is one of the AA’s alliance partners, have even begun to carry out attacks against the military in retaliation (Kachin News, March 12). Similarly, when the State Administrative Council (SAC), Myanmar’s new military government, announced on March 10 that it had removed the AA from the list of terrorist organizations, the rebel group made no formal acknowledgement of the move (The Irrawaddy, March 11).