The army is accused by the UN of waging a two-year war of terror against the minority-Muslim Rohingya Credit: REUTERS
A United Nations report has revealed that a British company sold more than £70,000 worth of navigation technology to the Burmese army, which is accused of carrying out genocide and war crimes against the Rohingya.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL Opinion
Bob Rae
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published August 2, 2019
Canadians were shocked two years ago to learn of the rape, violence, and genocide in Myanmar. And while we’ve done a great deal, the work has just begun – and we cannot lose that fire
Bangladesh, September, 2017: Rohingya refugees carry supplies along a muddy path after fleeing neighbouring Myanmar. Today, two years of humanitarian crisis have driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, into teeming refugee camps.
Bob Rae is special envoy to Myanmar, senior counsel at OKT LLP, and teaches public policy and law at the University of Toronto. He was previously the premier of Ontario and a federal member of Parliament.
Audio Rohingya language (Abridged version, in case of discrepancy, the English version shall prevail)
GENEVA (5 August 2019) – The U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar urged the international community on Monday to sever ties with Myanmar’s military and the vast web of companies it controls and relies on. The Mission said the revenues the military earns from domestic and foreign business deals substantially enhances its ability to carry out gross violations of human rights with impunity.
The report, for the first time, establishes in detail the degree to which Myanmar’s military has used its own businesses, foreign companies and arms deals to support brutal operations against ethnic groups that constitute serious crimes under international law, bypassing civilian oversight and evading accountability.
Dr. Shamsul Bari, a former Director of UNHCR, talks to The Daily Star about the Rohingya refugee crisis, its local, regional and global implications and the possible solutions to the crisis.
Rohingya refugees walk towards the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh after crossing the Bangladesh- Myanmar border. AFP File Photo
Based on your experience in dealing with refugees the world over, how would you categorise the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh?
During my long career with UNHCR, I had the opportunity to deal with refugee problems all over the world. In fact, the influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh in 1978 was one of the first refugee groups I dealt with at the UNHCR, which I joined the same year. However, compared to that group of around 250,000 refugees, most of whom went back, and a similar number of Rohingya refugees who came in the early 1990s, who too largely went back, and a lesser number who came in 2012 and drew international attention for their desperate efforts to travel to Malaysia and other Asean countries in rickety boats, the influx of August 2017 was of a very different nature and on a much larger scale. Dr. Shamsul Bari
JAKARTA (Reuters) - United Nations investigators urged world leaders on Monday to impose targeted financial sanctions on companies linked to the military in Myanmar, and said foreign firms doing business with them could be complicit in international crimes.
Marzuki Darusman, chairperson of the Independent International
Fact-finding Mission (IFFM) on Myanmar, gestures during a news
conference at the United Nation office in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 5,
2019. REUTERS/Sekar Nasly
A panel of human rights experts identified scores of companies tied to the army, which controls vast swathes of Myanmar’s economy through holding firms and their subsidiaries, and is accused by the U.N. of executing a campaign with “genocidal intent” against the Rohingya minority.
bdnews24.com
Senior Correspondent bdnews24.com 04 Aug 2019
India wants Bangladesh to start the Rohingya repatriation again in August, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has said.
Talking to reporters on Sunday, Momen said he met his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar at the Asean meeting in Bangkok last week and discussed the issue.
“He told me to start sending them whatever the number is. Start the process this month, preferably in mid-August,” Momen said, adding that "India is also ready to support in this regard".
The 2019 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya refugee response is only 34 per cent funded, as of 31 July 2019, with USD 313 million received against the overall needs of USD 920 million. Currently the most well-funded Sectors are Education (35%), Food Security (33%) and WASH (31%) based on the respective appeals. Food Security Sector has received so far USD 84 million. In 2019, no funding was yet reported towards Emergency Telecommunications Sector, and Health Sector is only 13% funded.
Three suspected robbers and one drug peddler were killed in reported gunfights with police at Noorullah hill and Dogharchara point on Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf Marine Drive in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar early Saturday.
Three among the dead were — Rohingyas Mohammad Jonyed, Ayoub Ali and Mohadi, members of of Rohingya gang led by Abdul Hakim. The other one was Imran Mollah, son of late Jahirul Islam of Kalkini in Madaripour.
Habiburahman ... “I am three years old and effectively erased from existence” he writes in his book. Photograph: Sophie Ansel
As a young man Habiburahman fled oppression in his native Myanmar and lives, stateless, in Australia. Now he has written a book about his struggle – and his suffering people.
“A tyrant leant over my cradle and traced a destiny for me that
will be hard to avoid: I will either be a fugitive or I won’t exist at
all.” – From First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks, by Habiburahman.
There has been much written about the Rohingya people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The Muslim ethnic group has been persecuted for generations, most recently from 2017, when 800,000 picked up whatever they could carry to flee to Bangladesh. But little has been written from the point of view of a Rohingya growing up in Myanmar – the daily humiliations, the struggle for survival, the fear, the stories whispered through generations to ensure they are not lost. Habiburahman, known as Habib, was born in a village in the west of the country around 1979 – he is not quite sure of the year. He has written his life story, and through that, the story of his people.