THE ONGOING POLITICS IN MYANMAR OPEN LETTER FROM CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS ON ASEAN'S APPROACH TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Prograssive Myanmar
AUTHOR: 505 CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS
OCTOBER 26TH, 2022

To

ASEAN leaders

HE Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, Prime Minister of Brunei
HE Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia
HE Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia
HE Thongloun Sisoulith, Prime Minister of Laos
HE Dato' Sri Ismail Sabri bin Yaakob, Prime Minister of Malaysia
HE Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., President of the Philippines
HE Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore
HE Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister of Thailand
HE Phạm Minh Chinh, Prime Minister of Vietnam

Date. . October 26, 2022

Content. . The ongoing politics in Myanmar An open letter from civil society organizations on ASEAN's approach to the human rights and humanitarian crisis.

Dear Sir or Madam/You

'Rohingya' featuring persecution on Myanmar ethnic group hits cinema halls

Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha  (DSS)

21 Oct 2022

DHAKA, Oct 21, 2022 (BSS) - 'Rohingya', a Bangla film on brutal persecution on ethnic Rohingya population of Myanmar who took refuge in Bangladesh, hit the country's major cinema halls.

Syed Wahiduzzaman Diamond, a national film award winning director, directed the film which was entirely shot in Teknaf Rohingya camp and surrounding areas in southeastern Cox's Bazar district.

Myanmar military authority informed Beijing they are willing to take back Rohingyas after verification- Bangladesh Foreign Minister

News On AIR
ByAIR News
October 21, 2022

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. A K Abdul Momen has said that Myanmar military authorities informed Beijing that they are willing to take back the displaced Rohingyas after verification, reports the official news agency BSS. Briefing the media about the outcome of the meeting with the Chinese Ambassador Li Jiming in Dhaka on Thursday, Dr. Momen said that Myanmar’s military government has conveyed that they would honour all the previous deals signed between Dhaka and Naypyidaw to commence Rohingya repatriation. However, Myanmar did not mention any specific date for the process to start. He said that China has assured Bangladesh that it will continue its efforts to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Bangladesh urges UN to highlight Myanmar’s crimes against Rohingyas

Dhaka Tribune 

Tribune Desk
October 21, 2022

Facebook/Kazi Nabil Ahmed

Bangladesh has requested the United Nations (UN) Department of Global Communications (DGC) to play a strong role in raising awareness about Myanmar's brutal crimes against Rohingya.

Kazi Nabil, a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, highlighted Bangladesh’s position at the United Nations Conference Room 4 on Friday.

Speaking on the Rohingya issue, he said: "I request the United Nations DGC to play a strong role in raising awareness about the brutal crimes committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

4 held over Rohingya man’s murder in Ukhiya camp

Dhaka Tribune 

Abdul Aziz, Cox's Bazar
October 21, 2022 

Rohingyas walk on a road at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 Allison Joyce/Dhaka Tribune

Armed Police Battalion (APBn) on Friday arrested four people in connection with the murder of a Rohingya man in Tajnimarkhola camp in Ukhiya upazila of Cox's Bazar.

The arrested are- Zahid Hossain of camp-13, Mohammad Yasin of camp-15, Noor Alam of camp-19, Mohammad Gani of camp-13, Assistant Superintendent of Police of APBn-8 Faruq Ahmed said.

Using Soccer to Spread the Word About the Plight of the Rohingya

FP
OCTOBER 21, 2022

A team of Rohingya refugees forms a soccer club in Australia and becomes a beacon of hope.

Robi Alam is a Rohingya refugee. His family fled violence and persecution in Myanmar. A decade later, Alam was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Life was hard in the camps, and Alam and his friends would wrap rubber bands around a wad of plastic bags and play soccer until the ball fell apart. When Alam was 10, his family emigrated to Australia, where many people have never even heard of the plight of the Rohingya. To help ease their transition, Alam and some of his fellow Rohingya started playing soccer again, informally at first in nearby parks. But their passion grew, and they formed an official club. They call themselves Rohingya United, and their goal is to raise awareness of the Rohingya issue. Now, there are Rohingya soccer teams scattered across Australia as well as in Canada, the United States, and other countries.

Rohingya man hacked to death in Ukhiya camp

Dhaka Tribune

Tribune Desk
October 18, 2022

Two Rohingya leaders were killed in a similar fashion earlier on Saturday

Rohingyas walk on a road at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 Allison Joyce/Dhaka Tribune

Rohingyas walk on a road at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 Allison Joyce/Dhaka Tribune

Masked men armed with sharp weapons hacked a Rohingya man to death in Tajnimarkhola camp in Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday.

The deceased is Syed Hossain, 32, a resident of Tajnimarkhola camp No 19.

Armed Police Battalion spokesperson Assistant Superintendent of Police Faruq Ahmed confirmed the matter.

4 held on charges of killing 2 Rohingya leaders in Bangladesh

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman 

DHAKA, Bangladesh
18.10.2022

There are no terrorists among refugees, only criminals involved in extortion, drug trafficking, and human trafficking, says police official

Police arrested four people on Tuesday on charges of their involvement in the killing of two Rohingya leaders in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

The Armed Police Battalion (APBN) said in a statement that the four people arrested are also Rohingya refugees, but from different camps in the southern district of Cox’s Bazaar.

Two Rohingya community leaders killed at Cox’s Bazar refugee camp

bd24news.com
Cox's Bazar Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 15 Oct 2022, 

A group of 15 to 20 attackers hacked the victims at Balukhali camp in Ukhiya, police said

Two Rohingya community leaders have been hacked to death at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

A group of 15 to 20 assailants carried out the attack at the Balukhali camp in Ukhiya on Saturday evening, police said, citing witnesses.

The victims are Mohammad Anwar, 35, head of F2 block at Thaingkhali, and the assistant head of the same block Mohammad Yunus alias Moulvi Yunus, 32.

Two Rohingya community leaders killed in Bangladesh

DAWN
AFP
Published October 17, 2022

COX’S BAZAR: A mob hacked to death two Rohingya community leaders in Bangladesh on Saturday, as security worsens in camps housing almost a million refugees.

Bangladesh has been housing Rohingya refugees in a vast sprawl of camps since they fled a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that is now the subject of a genocide investigation at the UN’s top court.

The squalid settlements have seen escalating violence in recent months, with gangs trying to assert control over drug trafficking and intimidate the refugees’ civilian leadership through killings and abductions.

Two Rohingya leaders killed in Bangladesh refugee camp

THE NEW ARAB
The New Arab Staff
17 October, 2022

Two leaders of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh were reportedly hacked to death on Saturday, according to local police.

Violence has escalated in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh over the past few months [Getty]

Two Rohingya leaders were hacked to death on Saturday in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, according to officials.

Faruk Ahmed, a police spokesperson, said the two leaders were killed by a mob of a dozen men at Camp 13, adding that it was one of the worst such attacks in recent months.

ရိုဟင်ဂျာ တစ်ထောင်နီးပါး အဖမ်းခံထားရပြီး ၂၀၀ ကျော် ထောင်မိန့်ချခံထားရ

RFA

Radio Free Asia
2022.10.14

စစ်တွေမြို့ အနောက်မြောက်ဘက်မှာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ လှေတစ်စီးကို စစ်တပ်က ဖမ်းဆီးရမိကြောင်း ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၂၉ ရက်နေ့က တပ်မတော်သတင်းမှန်ပြန်ကြားရေးအဖွဲ့ ဝက်ဘ်ဆိုဒ်မှာ ဖော်ပြထားစဉ်။ Photo: RFA

စစ်တပ်က အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးတဲ့နောက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဒီဇင်ဘာကနေ ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ် အောက်တိုဘာ ၁၂ ရက်နေ့အထိ ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်နဲ့ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းတွေကို စွန့်ခွာပြီး ရွှေ့ပြောင်းနေထိုင်ဖို့ ကြိုးစားတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၉၉၂ ဦး ဖမ်းဆီးခံထားရပါတယ်။ အဲဒီအထဲက ၂၂၃ ဦးကို စစ်ကောင်စီတရားရုံးတွေက ထောင်နှစ်နှစ်ကနေ ငါး နှစ်အထိ ချမှတ်ထားပါတယ်။

RFA ရဲ့ စာရင်းတွေအရ အဲဒီ ၉၉၂ ဦးဟာ တချို့က မလေးရှားနိုင်ငံ၊ တချို့က ပြည်တွင်း နေရာတချို့မှာ ပြောင်း ရွှေ့နေထိုင်ဖို့ ကြိုးစားစဉ် ဧရာဝတီတိုင်း၊ ပဲခူးတိုင်းနဲ့ ပြည်တွင်း နေရာတချို့မှာ ဖမ်းဆီးခံလိုက်ရတာပါ။

အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် NLD အစိုးရ လက်ထက်တုန်းကတော့ အဖမ်းခံရတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို နေရပ်ပြန် ပို့ တာမျိုး လုပ်ဆောင်ခဲ့ပေမယ့် အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးတဲ့နောက်မှာ မြို့နယ်တရားရုံးတွေကနေ လဝကဥပဒေနဲ့ ထောင်ချတာမျိုးလုပ်လာတာလို့ စစ်တွေမြို့က ရိုဟင်ဂျာအရေး ကူညီဆောင်ရွက်ပေးနေသူ ဦးတင်လှိုင်က ပြော ပါတယ်။

Rohingya man narrates 16 days’ ordeal on route of trafficking

The Daily Star

Mohammad Jamil Khan
Thu Oct 13, 2022 

A transnational syndicate is using a new land route through Myanmar to traffic people, mostly Rohingyas from refugee camps in Bangladesh, to Thailand and Malaysia.

Previously, Rohingyas used to be trafficked to those countries by sea, but traffickers started using the new route as law enforcers increased vigilance in Cox's Bazar and in the Bay of Bengal.

The human trafficking syndicate comprises of Bangladeshis, Rohingyas, people of the Burmese Mog tribe, and Thai and Malaysian nationals and it has been using this land route for around eight months, said sources in law enforcement agencies, Rohingya leaders, and a trafficked youth.

Luring Rohingyas with promises of a better life in Malaysia or Thailand, members of the syndicate first take them from camps in Cox's Bazar, to a village in near Myanmar border, and then send them to the destinations via Rakhine State, they said.

Is the opportunity for Rohingya repatriation slipping away?

The Daily Star

Lt Gen Md Mahfuzur Rahman (LPR)
Sat Aug 13, 2022 

Photo: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/REUTERS

Five years since the 2017 exodus of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar as a result of its military's horrific persecution, there is no sign of repatriation on the horizon. And as long as the military junta continues to rule, there is hardly any scope for repatriation. This was reflected by Myanmar's Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in 2017, when he said in a media interview, "we did not send them to bring them back."

Even after the military coup in February 2021, when the junta was under tremendous pressure from inside and outside, General Min Aung Hlaing reiterated in May 2021, in an interview with an international media outlet, that there is "no option of bringing back the Rohingyas". Whatever discussions on repatriation we hear and see are part of diplomatic rhetoric; no serious analyst would take it at face value. However, it is always better to have engagement with the present Myanmar government on this issue rather than a complete disengagement.

At least three women die after Rohingya boat sinks off Bangladesh

Aljazeera

4 Oct 2022 

More than a dozen missing after a fishing trawler bound for Malaysia runs into bad weather in the Bay of Bengal.

Dire conditions in Bangladesh's refugee camps prompt hundreds of Rohingya each year to pay smugglers for passage out of the country [File: AFP]

At least three people have drowned and nearly 20 others are missing off the Bangladesh coast after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees sank in rough weather, authorities said.

Meta Should Pay Reparations to Rohingya Refugees, Rights Group Says

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio 

September 30, 2022

Amnesty International claims that Facebook was aware that its algorithms were amplifying harmful anti-Rohingya hate speech in Myanmar, but still did nothing to stop it.

Facebook’s parent company Meta should pay reparations to Rohingya communities who were driven out of western Myanmar in 2017, given the role that it played in enabling the campaign of ethnic cleansing, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a report published yesterday.

In a new report published yesterday, Amnesty claims that Facebook’s “dangerous algorithms and reckless pursuit of profit… substantially contributed to the atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people in 2017.”

Bangladesh spends $1.22 bn a year for 1.2 mn Rohingyas: PM

The Daily Star

UNB, New York

Thu Sep 22, 2022

Photo: PID

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today (September 22, 2022) called upon the international community to take five actions to resolve the prolonged Rohingya crisis, including political and financial support to them.

She made the call at a high-level side event on the Rohingya crisis held at Lotte Palace New York Hotel.

Focusing on the second action, Sheikh Hasina asked the world community to intervene in the proceedings before the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court and national courts, including supporting the Gambia in the ICJ, in order to enforce international law and to strengthen the fight against human rights violations in Myanmar.

Myanmar, Bangladesh must solve border tensions peacefully

ASIA TIME

By TILOTTAMA RANI CHARULATA

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

The Bangladeshi government’s diplomatic and military preparations need to be strengthened

Myanmar border guard police patrol the fence in the 'no man's land' zone between the Myanmar and Bangladesh border. Photo: AFP / Phyo Hein Kyaw

Many Rohingya people fled from Myanmar a few years ago in fear of their lives, but recently the Myanmar army has had to face strong resistance from other independence-seeking rebels. Along with the Arakan Army, the military is in serious conflict with the Cochin Army, and elements of the Shan, Karen, Mong, Shin and Kaya peoples.

As a result, the Tatmadaw (military) has adopted a slightly different strategy from its persecution of the Rohingya to avoid international surveillance of its suppression of the rebels. As a part of this, it has mounted a campaign on the border with Bangladesh.

PM seeks UN’s intensified role in Rohingya repatriation

THE BUSINESS POSTS
BSS . New York
22 Sep 2022

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi holds a meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the bilateral meeting room of Lotte New York Palace hotel on Tuesday– BSS Photo

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has iterated her call to the international community and the United Nations to play intensified role in solving the Rohingya crisis by repatriating the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals to their motherland.

The prime minister made this call while UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi paid a courtesy call on her at the bilateral meeting room of Lotte New York Palace hotel 0n Tuesday.

Bangladesh police: Suspected Rohingya rebels kill another refugee camp watchman

RFA
By Abdur Rahman and Ahammad Foyez for BenarNews
2022.09.21

Residents of Cox’s Bazar camps say ARSA rebels are behind a spate of such killings.

A Rohingya refugee walks at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, March 7, 2019.
Reuters

A Rohingya volunteer watchman was killed at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar allegedly by Rohingya insurgents, making him the fifth victim of such an attack by armed rebels, Bangladeshi police said Wednesday.

While police wouldn’t say whether the suspected assailants belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgent group, residents of the sprawling camps near the Myanmar border insist that it was behind these attacks on the volunteer Rohingya security guards.