Myanmar’s anti-junta protesters go online to support Rohingya

DAWN
AFP

June 14, 2021

YANGON: Anti-junta protesters flooded Myanmar’s social media with pictures of themselves wearing black on Sunday in a show of solidarity with the Rohingya, a minority group that is among the most persecuted in the country.

Since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a February 1 coup, an anti-junta movement demanding a return to democracy has grown to include fighting for ethnic minority rights.

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.

Anti-junta protesters in Myanmar show support for Rohingya

TRT
14.06.2021

The mostly Muslim Rohingya - long viewed as interlopers from Bangladesh by many in Myanmar - have for decades been denied citizenship, rights, access to services and freedom of movement.

Myanmar has been rocked by mass protest since the military ousted civilian leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi in February 2021. (AFP)

Anti-junta protesters have flooded Myanmar's social media with pictures of themselves wearing black in a show of solidarity for the Rohingya, a minority group that is among the most persecuted in the country.

Activists and civilians took to social media on Sunday to post pictures of themselves wearing black and flashing a three-finger salute of resistance, in posts tagged "#Black4Rohingya".

Foreign minister's NY visit: Dhaka to press for early repatriation of Rohingyas

Dhaka Tribune
UNB
June 13th, 2021

File photo: Ships of Bangladesh Navy carry Rohingya people to Bhashan Char in Noakhali on Tuesday, December 29, 2020 Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune

No Rohingya has been repatriated over the last four years amid the 'absence of conducive environment' in Rakhine State

Bangladesh will reiterate its position seeking quick and sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas as Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen leaves Dhaka for New York early Sunday to attend two important events at the UNGA.

One of the events will be on Myanmar's current situation where Bangladesh will reiterate its call to the international community for quick and sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas, said Momen.

12 Rohingyas detained in Noakhali

The Daily Star
Our Correspondent, Noakhali
June 12, 2021

They fled Bhasan Char settlement

Police yesterday detained 12 Rohingyas in Noakhali's Companiganj upazila for fleeing a refugee camp at Bhasan Char in the district's Hatiya upazila.

According to the law enforcers, Abdul Halim, a local of Comapniganj upazila's Char Elahi Dakkhin Ghat, first traced the Rohingyas around 10:00am.

He then held the Rohingyas with the help of other locals.

On information, police went to the spot and took the Rohingyas into custody.

Immigration Comes Out With Warning To Rohingyas To Stay Off Malaysian Shores

TRP
HAKIM HASSAN
JUNE 11, 2021

  Some are saying that it’s inhumane to treat to the Rohingya in that manner.

The Malaysian Immigration Department today has come out with a warning to illegal immigrants, particularly the Rohingya to stay away from the country.

Complete with a poster very much like that of an action movie, featuring officers in uniform, the message was posted on social media platforms signaling the intent of denying Rohingyas entry and refuge in the country.

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".

Beyond the Coup in Myanmar: The Views of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

JUST SECURITY

Jessica Olney and Shabbir Ahmad
June 10, 2021

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a Just Security series on the Feb. 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar. The series brings together expert local and international voices on the coup and its broader context. The series is a collaboration between Just Security and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.

This installment reflects conversations with Rohingya residents of refugee camps in Bangladesh about the coup in Myanmar. Camp residents’ views were collected by Shabbir Ahmad and other members of a team of Rohingya researchers during a recent community feedback collection project. The opinions expressed here are the views of the authors and camp residents, not those of any institution with which the authors are affiliated.

Bangladesh island gets UNHCR nod for Rohingya

ARAB NEWS

SHEHAB SUMON

04 June 2021

Bangladeshi authorities have shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 people to the island to take pressure off Cox’s Bazar. (Reuters/File

• The UNHCR had voiced concerns as to whether it was safe as the island is vulnerable to severe weather and flooding

DHAKA: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recognized Bhasan Char as a potential location for the Rohingya seeking shelter in Bangladesh despite recent protests by some of the refugees living in the remote, cyclone-prone island.

Since December, Bangladeshi authorities have shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 people to the island to take pressure off Cox’s Bazar, a city in Bangladesh that already hosts more than 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims, members of an ethnic and religious minority group who fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.

ေလွစီးေျပး ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ၈၀ ေက်ာ္ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား မီဒန္ ၿမိဳ႕ကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕

VOA
ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)
11 ဇြန္၊ 2021 

မီဒန္ ၿမိဳ႕ကို ေရာက္ရွိတဲ့ ေလွစီးေျပး ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာတခ်ိဳ႕ (ဓါတ္ပံု: VOA/Anugrah Andriansyah)

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ ႏိုင္ငံ Cox's Bazar ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းကေန အင္ဒိုနီးရွားႏိုင္ငံ အာေခ်ျပည္နယ္ထဲကို ေသာၾကာ  ေန႔ က စက္ေလွနဲ႔ ေရာက္လာတဲ့ ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ၈၁ ေယာက္ကို အေနာက္စုမားၾတား ျပည္နယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ Medan ကို ေရာက္ရွိသြားၿပီျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
 

အင္ဒိုနီးရွား အစိုးရ ဒုကၡသည္အေရး ကိုင္တြယ္ေဆာင္ရြက္တဲ့ PPLN နဲ႔ အတူ မီဒန္ၿမိဳ႕ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ နဲ႔ အေရွ႕Aceh ရင္ခြင္ပိုက္အစိုးရ တို႔ၾကား ေဆြးေႏြးမႈအၿပီး သူတို႔ ကို ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ဖို႔ အၾကံျပဳခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေရႊ ႕ေျပာင္းအေျခခ်သူမ်ားဆိုင္ရာ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား IOM အဖြဲ႔ က ဇြန္လ ၁၀ ရက္ ၾကာသပေတးေန႔မွာ ေျပာပါတယ္။

Why the National Unity Government’s Statement on Myanmar’s Rohingya Is Important

THE I DIPLOMAT

Angshuman Choudhury

June 09, 2021

The shadow government’s formal pledges to offer a persecuted minority justice and rights could help shape Myanmar’s future.

On June 3, Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) – a shadow government formed by civilian lawmakers deposed by the military in its 1 February coup – released a historic position paper on the country’s Rohingya community. The three-page document formally lays down a set of pledges and positions that mark a clear break from the past in the relationship between the Myanmar state and the stateless Rohingya Muslim community.

Welcomed by many as a progressive declaration, it sets out with the premise that “everyone in the Union has full enjoyment of fundamental human rights” and that the NUG will “not tolerate any form of discrimination.” It asserts that “all ethnic groups who are native to the Union have full enjoyment of individual rights held by individual people and collective rights held by ethnic groups.”

Rohingya on Bangladesh island feel trapped, fear monsoons: HRW

ALJAZEERA

7 Jun 2021

Human Rights Watch interviews 167 refugees and says they were moved ‘without full, informed consent’ and prevented from returning to the mainland.

Rohingya refugees are seen at the housing complex of Bhasan Char island after they were relocated [File: Mohammad Al-Masum Molla/AFP]

Rohingya refugees moved to a Bangladesh island fear they will be exposed to terrible conditions during the upcoming monsoon season, and are struggling with “inadequate” health and education facilities, a Human Rights Watch report said.

About 18,800 refugees have been moved from the Cox’s Bazar region – where approximately 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions after fleeing Myanmar – to the low-lying silt island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal.

US Welcomes Pledge by Myanmar Shadow Government to Help Rohingya

VOA

VOA News

Updated June 07, 2021

FILE - Rohingya refugees, who crossed the border from Myanmar, walk toward refugee camps, in Palang Khali, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Oct. 19, 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed a pledge by a shadow government in Myanmar to address discrimination and human rights abuses against minority Rohingya Muslims.

Blinken said in a tweet Sunday that the pledge by the National Unity Government (NUG) is "an important signal to all those working for an inclusive, democratic future."

Rohingyas urge anti-coup gov't to repeal controversial citizenship law

DAILY SABAH
BY ANADOLU AGENCY
DHAKA ASIA PACIFIC
JUN 06, 2021 

Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (L) stands before U.N.'s International Court of Justice at the start of a three-day hearing on the Rohingya genocide case at the Peace Palace, The Hague, the Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2019. (AFP Photo)

Members of the Rohingya community issued a cautious response to a declaration of Policy Position on the Rohingya in Rakhine State by the National Unity Government (NUG), an anti-coup shadow government in Myanmar.

The exile government that was formed in April issued the policy Thursday. It proclaims to restore citizenship rights to Rohingya, starting long-stalled repatriation of the persecuted people and repealing a controversial 1982 Citizenship Law and the deceptive National Verification Cards system.

Global rights defenders hailed the declaration and recommended that it include Rohingya representatives in anti-coup and pro-democratic processes.

2 Rohingyas killed in landslides

The Daily Star
Our Correspondent, Cox’s Bazar
June 06, 2021

Two Rohingyas were killed in two incidents of landslides in refugee camps of Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas yesterday.

The deceased are Rafique Allah, 32, a resident of Moynarghona camp-12 of Ukhiya, and Noor Hasina, 20, who lived in camp-21 in Whykong union of Teknaf upazila.

A portion of hill collapsed on Noor Hasina around 10:00am in the morning following heavy downpour in the Chakmarkool Rohingya Camp.

Govt to shift 80,000 more Rohingyas to Bhasan Char soon, seeks global help

The Daily Star

BSS, Dhaka
June 06, 2021

An aerial view of the buildings intended for accommodating Rohingya refugees at Bhashan Char. File Photo: AFP/ Mukta Dinwiddie MacLaren Architects

As the government is set to shift 80,000 more Rohingyas to Bhashan Char soon, it has sought a more active role of the international community to ensure all fundamental rights, including livable accommodation for the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.

Prime Minister's Principal Secretary Dr Ahmad Kaikaus made the call to the global community at a meeting on the Rohingya issue at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) today, confirmed PM's Deputy Press Secretary KM Shakhawat Moon.

Boat carrying 81 Rohingya refugees found stranded on Indonesia island

Stuff

AP

Yayan Zamzami

Jun 06 2021

ZIK MAULANA/AP

The 81 Rohingya boat survivors ran aground on the deserted Indonesian island after being trapped at sea for 113 days.

Villagers in Indonesia's Aceh province on Friday discovered a stranded boat carrying 81 Rohingya Muslims, including children, who had left a refugee camp in Bangladesh, officials said.

2 Rohingyas killed in landslides at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps

Dhaka Tribune
Abdul Aziz, Cox’s Bazar
June 5th, 2021

Heavy rains since Friday night caused landslides at two refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar on Saturday Dhaka Tribune

The incidents took place at Mainarghona camp in Ukhiya’s Balukhali union and at Chakmarkul camp in Teknaf’s Hoaikong union on Saturday

Two Rohingya refugees have been killed in separate landslide incidents triggered by heavy rains at two refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar.

Myanmar Shadow Government Pledges Citizenship for Rohingya

THE I DIPLOMAT

Sebastian Strangio
June 04, 2021 

The National Unity Government has called for the besieged community to join in the “Spring Revolution” against the military junta

In a move designed to burnish its claims to international support and recognition, Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government (NUG) has promised to grant the country’s beleaguered Rohingya minority population citizenship.

In a policy statement released yesterday, the NUG, which was formed to oppose the military junta that seized power in February, said that the Rohingya are “entitled to citizenship by laws that will accord with fundamental human rights and democratic federal principles.”

It added, “We invite the Rohingyas to join hands with us and with others to participate in this Spring Revolution against the military dictatorship in all possible ways.”

The NUG statement promised to repeal Myanmar’s problematic 1982 Citizenship Law, which is underpinned by a complex taxonomy of 135 “national races,” from which the Rohingya are excluded, complicating their ability to gain citizenship. It said that whatever law replaces it “must base citizenship on birth in Myanmar or birth anywhere as a child of Myanmar citizens.”

Rohingya Citizenship: Myanmar’s NUG to draft new charter to ensure it

The Daily Star

Porimol Palma

June 05, 2021

In a significant development, Myanmar's National Unity Government has announced drafting a new constitution and committed to ensuring citizenship and fundamental rights of all ethnic groups, including the Rohingyas.

It also pledged to repatriate Rohingyas from Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries, revoke the controversial 1982 Citizenship Law and National Verification Card, and invite them to join the shadow government in overthrowing the military junta.

"We invite Rohingyas to join hands with us and with others to participate in this Spring Revolution against military dictatorship in all possible ways," said a statement by the National Unity Government (NUG) Thursday.

The NUG, Myanmar's shadow government in exile, was formed by the ousted parliamentarians of National League of Democracy (NLD) in early April, more than two months after the military took control of the Southeast Asian country, alleging gross anomalies in the November 2020 elections. The NLD had won the election and was in the process of forming a government.