Kachin resistance takes control of rare earth mining hub; Arakan Army accused of targeting Rohingya again

DVB
By English Editor
October 21, 2024

Fifty Chinese security officers guard the border gate in Pangwa, Kachin State, after thousands of residents fled to it for safety on Oct. 18. (Credit: Kachin News Group)

Kachin resistance takes control of rare earth mining hub

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and its allied People’s Defense Force (PDF) took control of Pangwa, which is located along the China-Burma border and 114 miles (183 km) northeast of the Kachin State capital Myitkyina, on Saturday. Pangwa is the capital of the Kachin Special Region 1, which is administered by the Kachin Border Guard Force (BGF).

Drop in foreign aid ails Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar

Dhaka Tribune
Nurul Islam Hasib
Publish : 20 Oct 2024, 

• Health facilities in Rohingya camps have decreased to 120 from 160
• Services in remaining facilities had to be cut significantly

Photo: Courtesy

Many health facilities in Rohingya camps have had to shut down as the foreign assistance for the forcibly displaced Myanmar citizens in Cox’s Bazar has dwindled.

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner (RRRC), on Sunday said health facilities in Rohingya camps had decreased to 120 from 160 and services in the remaining facilities had to be cut significantly due to fund shortages.

Bangladesh paying the price heavil

daily sun
Nur Uddin Alamgir, Chattogram
Publish: Sunday, 20 October, 2024

Despite having no involvement, Bangladesh has been bearing the brunt of the ongoing conflict between the Myanmar security forces and the rebel Arakan Army (AA) along its frontiers under Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban districts for the past year.

Rohingya smugglers nabbed after bodies found

Bangkok Post
WRITER: Post Reporters
PUBLISHED : 18 Oct 2024

Smugglers abandoned some Rohingya for not being able to pay for transportation 

Rescue workers take the bodies of deceased individuals and those injured from a forested area leading to Khao Sek Temple in Lang Suan district, Chumphon, on Thursday. (Photo: Saichon Rescue Team)

Two Thai nationals were apprehended on Friday in Phetchaburi in connection with the smuggling of 26 Rohingya.

Thailand: Rohingya Found Dead During Escape from Myanmar

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
October 18, 2024

Rohingya refugees heading toward a camp at Teknaf, Bangladesh, September 13, 2017. © 2017 Md. Mehedi Hasan/Pacific Press/Sipa USA via AP Photo

 

(Bangkok) – The Thai government should conduct effective investigations into how a group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were found dead and injured on Thai soil on October 17, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. The Thai authorities should urgently provide protection to survivors and prosecute those responsible for abuses.

Create ‘safe zone’ for the displaced people in Rakhine

The Daily Star
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
Tue Oct 15, 2024 

Yunus urges UN to find ways to support them

Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus in a meeting with Thomas Andrews, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, at the former’s Tejgaon office yesterday. Photo: PID

Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus has proposed creating a "safe zone guaranteed by the UN" for the displaced people in Myanmar's Rakhine State and finding ways to support them.

"This will be the best way to get aid to them," he said when Thomas Andrews, Special Rapporteur of the UN on the situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, called on the chief adviser at his Tejgaon office yesterday.

Chief adviser seeks ‘safe zone guaranteed by UN’ for displaced people in Rakhine

prothomalo
BSS Dhaka
Published: 15 Oct 2024, 

Special rapporteur of the UN on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Thomas Andrews calls on chief adviser professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus at his Tejgaon office in Dhaka on 14 October 2024BSS

Chief adviser professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus Monday called for creating a “safe zone guaranteed by the UN” for the displaced people in Rakhine and finding ways to support them.

He made the call when Thomas Andrews, the special rapporteur of the UN on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, called on the chief adviser at his Tejgaon office in the city.

Once Upon a Time in… Myanmar

The Irrawaddy
by David Scott Mathieson
October 14, 2024

The government's order of the appointment of a Rohingya man as the headman of a village tract in Akyab (Sittwe) district in 1949 and Myanmar National Registration Cards for his family members. / ekkhaale.org

Ek Khaale (Once Upon A Time)
by Greg Constantine
Visual Restoration Project/Multimedia Project, 2024 [www.ekkhaale.org] 

BGB sends back 37 Rohingyas to Myanmar

THE BUSINESS STANDARD
TBS Report
13 October, 2024

File photo: The Guardian

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) members sent back 37 Rohingyas, including children, when they tried to enter Bangladeshi territory from Myanmar by crossing the Naf River in Teknaf, Cox's Bazar last night (12 October).

The incident happened at around 9pm yesterday at the Keruntoli border point under Sadar union in Teknaf, said Lt Col Mohiuddin Ahmed, the commander of BGB's Teknaf-based 2nd Battalion.

Out of the Spotlight, Myanmar’s Rohingya Face Worst Violence in 7 Years

UNITED STATES INSTITUE OF PEACE
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
By: Laetitia van den Assum

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The situation of the Rohingya is deteriorating in the absence of credible dialogue.
• In Rakhine, forcible recruitment of Rohingya fighters has deepened societal rifts.
• An initiative is needed to address the Rohingya community as a whole, focusing on their immediate needs and future.

Since early 2024, fighting in northern Rakhine state has led to the worst attacks on the Rohingya population since 2017, when Myanmar’s military drove more than 750,000 across the border into Bangladesh. The new attacks are a stark reminder of the Rohingyas’ vulnerability. The world has known about their plight for decades, and in 2024, only 636,000 Rohingya — or 23 percent of the 2.8 million Rohingya around the world — still live in their homeland, Myanmar.

Out of the Spotlight, Myanmar’s Rohingya Face Worst Violence in 7 Years

USIP
By: Laetitia van den Assum
Wednesday, September 25, 2024

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The situation of the Rohingya is deteriorating in the absence of credible dialogue.
• In Rakhine, forcible recruitment of Rohingya fighters has deepened societal rifts.
• An initiative is needed to address the Rohingya community as a whole, focusing on their immediate needs and future.

A new genocide being committed in Rakhine

daily obsever
Md Mustakim Ahmed
Published : Monday, 9 September, 2024 

Before the memory of the '2017 Rohingya genocide' fades, the world is regrettably witnessing a new wave of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people, one that is perhaps more vicious and brutal.

The military of Myanmar unleashed a ruthless offensive against the Rohingya people in 2017, sparking the most brutal wave of anti-Rohingya persecution. Subsequently, the head of the UN agency for human rights described the military's actions as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," "acts of horrific barbarity," and an "acts of genocide." About a million Rohingya were compelled to escape to Bangladesh, a neighbor, as a result of the persecution.

In a study conducted in January 2018 with a total of 3,321 Rohingya refugee households in Cox's Bazar, a UN Fact-Finding Mission estimated that the military and the local Rakhine Buddhists had killed at least 25,000 Rohingya and committed gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against 18,000 Rohingya women and girls. According to their estimates, 36,000 Rohingya were burned alive and 116,000 others were beaten, an atrocities unseen since 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Rohingya Muslims risk losing homeland in Myanmar: Rights activist

TRT World
7 September 2024

Buddhist ethnic insurgent group Arakan Army’s efforts to control region led to continued displacement, mass killings, atrocities, human rights violations, co-founder of Free Rohingya Coalition laments.

AP,Lwin emphasised that Bangladesh, where Rohingya refugees have sought asylum due to attacks by the Myanmar Army, must persuade the international community to lead the repatriation process. / Photo: AP

Rohingya Muslims face the risk of losing their homeland if the international community fails to address the issue, according to one observer.

Uncertainty, despair grip Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

UCA News
Updated: August 30, 2024 

Most of the estimated 1 million Rohingya refugees are frustrated with no visible sign of repatriation and poor camp life 

This photo taken on May 24 shows Rohingya refugees walking down a path at a refugee camp in Ukhia in Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazar district. (Photo: AFP)

Sitting in his tiny one-room home in the congested Shalbagan refugee camp in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar on a hot and humid monsoon day, Abu Sufian laments the loss of a relatively happy life in Myanmar's Rakhine state seven years ago.

'My family died in front of my eyes’: Harrowing tales from a Myanmar massacre

BBC
20 August 2024
Yogita Limaye
South Asia & Afghanistan correspondent
Reporting from Bangladesh-Myanmar border

Nisar lost his family in the attack on the banks of this river

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing.

Fayaz and his wife believed they were moments from safety when the bombs began to fall: “We were getting on the boat one after another - that’s when they started bombing us.”

Wails and shouts filled the air around 17:00 local time on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as thousands of scared Rohingyas made their way to the banks of the Naf river in the town of Maungdaw.

“End the Impunity”: Rohingya Muslims Under Attack by Both Burmese Army and Rebel Group

DEMOCRACY NOW
StoryAugust 15, 2024 

Topics

Burma
Rohingya
Bangladesh

Guests

Nay San Lwin
co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition.

Up to 200 Rohingya Muslims were killed in drone strikes last week in Burma as they attempted to flee to Bangladesh. This comes amid intensifying conflict between the military junta and the Arakan Army, a rebel armed group. Human Rights Watch says the military and the Arakan Army have both committed extrajudicial killings, unlawful recruitment for combat, and widespread arson against Rohingya civilians. “They are the enemy of each other, but when it comes to the Rohingya issue, they have the same intention,” says Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition. Only about 600,000 Rohingya remain in Burma, down from about 1.4 million before a campaign of ethnic cleansing began in 2016, though Nay San Lwin says the Rohingya genocide goes back even further to 1978. 

Overlapping Atrocities

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
By Andrew Stroehlein
August 13, 2024 

The crisis in Rakhine State, in the west of Myanmar, rages on. Recent months have seen yet more atrocities against civilians.

Both the forces of the military junta and the opposition Arakan Army are to blame. They are both attacking civilians and using massive, widespread arson to drive people from their homes and villages, raising the specter of ethnic cleansing.

Children among up to 200 Rohingya killed in Myanmar drone attack

The Guardian
Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok
Mon 12 Aug 2024

Witnesses say people killed in artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians fleeing violence

People mourn near the bodies of Rohingya refugees who drowned in the Naf River last week. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Many dozens of Rohingya people, including children, were killed in an artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians as they tried to flee Myanmar last week.

Civilians were trying to escape violence in Maungdaw town, Rakhine state, by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh when they were targeted last Monday. Videos shared on social media, which appeared to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack, showed bodies and bags strewn across the ground.

More injured Rohingya arriving in Bangladesh as Myanmar war intensifies

Aljazeera
12 Aug 2024

Medical charity MSF warns of urgent need to protect civilians caught up in escalating conflict in western Rakhine State.

Fighting in Rakhine has intensified in recent months [File: AFP]

 

More Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh from Myanmar with war-related injuries amid escalating conflict between the military and the Arakan Army (AA) in western Rakhine State, according to international medical group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.

Ethnic armed group suspected of deadly attack in Myanmar on Rohingya trying to flee fighting

AP
By GRANT PECK
August 10, 2024

BANGKOK (AP) — At least 150 civilians from Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority may have been killed this week in an artillery and drone attack in the western state of Rakhine that survivors suspect was carried out by a major force in the resistance to military rule.