Rohingya quest for safety and survival — Abu Ahmed Farid

malaymail
Thursday, 30 Apr 2020

APRIL 30 — The Rohingya is an indigenous Muslim community in Arakan (renamed by the military as Rakhine state in 1974). Despite of being peace-loving and law-abiding people, they are not tolerated in Buddhist Burma/Myanmar.

They are oppressed and persecuted beyond one’s imagination based on their ethnicity, religion and appearance. This was done in order to rid Arakan of the Muslim population.

“The United Nations has described them as the world’s most persecuted minority in most danger of extinction.”

And UN Human Right Chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein said “The situation seems like a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Home Ministry: Don’t make demands, Rohingya groups here illegal and can face action

malaymail  

Thursday, 30 Apr 2020
BY IDA LIM

Rohingya refugees are seen at a Rohingya settlement in Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur April 24, 2020. — Picture Hari Anggara

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 — Any organisations representing the Rohingya community in Malaysia are invalid by law and will face government action as the Registrar of Societies had never registered any such organisations, the Home Ministry insisted today.

It also reiterated that Malaysia does not recognise the community as refugees but merely “illegal immigrants”, even if they hold the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identification cards, and therefore have no rights to make demands to Putrajaya.

Home minister: Malaysia sent Rohingya boat away with food as borders closed due to Covid-19

malaymail 

Thursday, 30 Apr 2020 BY IDA LIM

A boat carrying suspected ethnic Rohingya migrants is seen detained in Malaysian territorial waters, in Langkawi April 5, 2020. — Reuters pic

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 — Malaysian authorities turned away a boat with ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar only after providing them with food to continue their journey elsewhere, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin said today.

Hamzah was referring to a recent news report of the Royal Malaysian Navy intercepting a boat carrying about 200 Rohingya that was spotted 70 nautical miles away from Langkawi, with the crew of a navy ship providing food to them on humanitarian grounds before ensuring the boat left the country’s waters.

ကန္ အစုိးရရဲ႕ ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္တဲ့ နိုင္ငံစာရင္းမွာ ျမန္မာ ပါေနဆဲ

VOA  

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)

30 ဧၿပီ၊ 2020  

၂၀၂၀ နိုင္ငံတကာ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္မႈ ေကာ္မရွင္ (USCIRF) အစီရင္ခံစာ

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံကို ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္စိုးရိမ္ရတဲ့ နိုင္ငံအျဖစ္ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ႏွစ္စဥ္ထုတ္ ၿပန္ တဲ့ ဘာသာေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အစီရင္ခံစာမွာ ဆက္လက္ ထည့္သြင္းထားဖို႔ နိုင္ငံတကာ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္မႈ ေကာ္မရွင္ (USCIRF) က တိုက္တြန္း အႀကံျပဳ လိုက္ ပါတယ္။

အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရက ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားတဲ့ အဲဒီ ေကာ္မရွင္က ဧၿပီလ ၂၈ ရက္စြဲနဲ႔ ၂၀၂၀ ျပည့္ႏွစ္ အတြက္ ထုတ္ ၿပန္တဲ့ အစီရင္ခံစာထဲမွာ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ အပါအဝင္ နိုင္ငံ ၁၄ နိုင္ငံကို ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ စိုးရိမ္ရတဲ့ စာ ရင္းထဲမွာ ထည့္သြင္းဖို႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရကို တိုက္တြန္း အႀကံျပဳထားတာပါ။

တပ္မေတာ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေဟာင္းတခ်ိဳ႕နဲ႔ ရဲအရာရွိေတြအပါ အဝင္ ၁၄ ဦးကို ၿဗိတိန္က ဒဏ္ခတ္ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈ သက္တမ္းတိုး

B B C

ဘီဘီစီ ၿမန္မာပိုင္း
29 ဧၿပီ 2020

ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးစု သုတ္သင္ရွင္းလင္းမႈနဲ႔ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္နဲ႔ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေတြမွာ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈေတြမွာ ပါဝင္ပတ္သက္ခဲ့တယ္ဆိုၿပီး တပ္မေတာ္က ဒုတိယဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီး အဆင့္ ရွိသူနဲ႔ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြ၊ ဗိုလ္မႉးခ်ဳပ္ေတြ၊ ရဲအရာရွိေတြ အပါအဝင္ စုစုေပါင္း ၁၄ ဦးကို စီးပြားေရးအရ အေရးယူ ဒဏ္ခတ္ပိတ္ဆို႔မႈကို သက္တမ္းထပ္ တိုးလိုက္တယ္လို႔ ၿဗိတိန္အစိုးရ ဘ႑ာေရးဝန္ႀကီးဌာနကေန ဧၿပီလ ၂၇ ရက္ေန႔က ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္ပါတယ္။

COMMENT | Rohingya issue – my heart was never bleeding

malaysia kini

OPINION

S Thayaparan

Do not sabotage the government’s effort in curbing Covid-19 in the name of ‘human rights’. Does our country have the resources and capacity to accommodate these refugees?”

- MCA vice-president Tan Teik Cheng

COMMENT | The “plight” of the Rohingya has somehow united the far-right and progressive elements in social media, and the vitriol against the community – online at least – has brought out allegations of scapegoating and pleas for “empathy” for this community.

 

The PN’s government move to deny a boatload of “Rohingya” refugees from entering Malaysia is a good start as far as I am concerned, but using the excuse of the coronavirus pandemic as some sort of prophylactic against charges of “inhumane treatment” is complete horse manure, if you ask me.

3 Rohingyas who insulted Malays on Facebook live in Wisconsin

NewSTRAITSTIMES
Hafidzul Hilmi Mohd Noor
April 29, 2020

(File pic) Federal Criminal Investigation Department Director Datuk Huzir Mohamed said investigation showed the owner of the Facebook is a Rohingya with a history of staying in Malaysia. -NSTP/ZUNNUR AL SHAFIQ

KUALA LUMPUR: Three men believed to be from the Rohingya ethnic community who made a Facebook live session that insulted the Malay community, are actually residing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States.

Federal Criminal Investigation Department Director Datuk Huzir Mohamed said investigation showed the owner of the Facebook account under the username 'Villan Vicky' is a Rohingya with a history of staying in Malaysia.

Solidarity with Rohingya — Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK

malaymail
Tuesday, 28 Apr 2020

APRIL 28 — The Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (Brouk) is deeply concerned about growing online hate speech directed towards Rohingya refugees living in Malaysia. We appeal to the Malaysian government to condemn hateful comments against the Rohingya, to hold those responsible to account and to stand in solidarity and compassion with refugees.

Brouk furthermore wishes to express its deep gratitude towards the Malaysian authorities and Malaysian people for hosting tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees for decades, and for their strong political support for the Rohingya in the face of the ongoing genocide in Myanmar.

Free Rohingya Coalition decries pushing refugees back out to sea

The Daily Star

Star Online Report
April 29, 2020

A boat carrying suspected ethnic Rohingya migrants is seen detained in Malaysian territorial waters, in Langkawi, Malaysia on April 5, 2020. File Photo: Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency/Handout via Reuters

Pushing hundreds of starving and persecuted Rohingya refugees back out to the sea in the full knowledge that they have no safe place of refuge elsewhere are fundamental violations of their human rights, said Free Rohingya Coalition, a global network of Rohingya survivors and activists, today.

It said it is deeply troubled by the news reports that a number of Asian countries, specifically Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladesh, are pushing starving Rohingya refugees on boats back out to dangerous waters after refusing disembarkation on their shores.

Rohingyas in Malaysia Face a Pandemic and a Possible Populist Backlash

THE I DIPLOMAT 
By Erin Cook
April 28, 2020

Rohingya refugees in Malaysia face a double-pronged disaster: a pandemic and a populist turn against the vulnerable community.

This article is free: The Diplomat has removed paywall restrictions on our coverage of the COVID–19 crisis.

 In Malaysia, the Rohingya refugee community is dealing with a double-pronged disaster. As is true for everyone, the pandemic has fundamentally upset daily life and fears of both infection and the loss of income permeate. And now the community must also contend with a sudden turn in support from wider society.

Initially, this turn was linked to would-be boat arrivals of refugees entering Malaysian waters in recent months, but it has escalated dramatically online after potentially faked comments from a self-styled community leader created a deep division.

The Rohingya could be facing another catastrophe

TRT WORLD 

CJ Werleman
2020.04.29

 

Rohingya Muslims have been discarded by the international community and are at high risk for contracting Covid-19 in crowded living spaces.

The fate of more than one million Rohingya genocide survivors has never looked so grim in the three years since they fled their villages for the safety of the Bangladeshi border.

When summarising the plight of the Rohingya, "survivor" becomes the operative word, given their ongoing physical and psychological injuries, with most having witnessed their homes destroyed, mass killings, and their wives, mothers, and daughters raped, many whom were later burnt alive or hacked to death.

Bukit Aman CID chief: Police investigating provocative Facebook live videos by Rohingya men

malaymail  

Wednesday, 29 Apr 2020
BY RADZI RAZAK

Bukit Aman Criminal Investigations Department director Comm Datuk Huzir Mohamed in a statement today said police have received 19 police reports related to the two Facebook Live video that was posted using an account named Villan Vicky. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — Police have initiated an investigation into two Facebook live videos which showed several Rohingya men uttering offensive words towards the Malays in the country, and another footage of the group engaged in firearms training purportedly to be used against those who threaten their safety.

Bukit Aman Criminal Investigations Department director Comm Datuk Huzir Mohamed in a statement today said police have received 19 police reports related to the two Facebook Live video that was posted using an account named Villan Vicky.

Dr Wan Azizah: US$50m Qatari donation for Rohingya went through NGOs, not Pakatan government

malaymail 

Wednesday, 29 Apr 2020 BY EMMANUEL SANTA MARIA CHIN

Formey deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said the Qatari donation was made out by the Qatar Charity (QC) to the NGOs involved and not through the government. — Picture by Firdaus Latif

KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — Former deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail today responded to the Umno president who questioned how US$50 million (RM218million) in donations for the Rohingya community here was used.

In response to a Facebook post by Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi yesterday, Dr Wan Azizah pointed out that the Qatari donation was made out by the Qatar Charity (QC) to the NGOs involved and not through the government.

Dr M: Stop trading with Myanmar over Rohingya abuse

malaymail

Wednesday, 29 Apr 2020
BY YISWAREE PALANSAMY

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today called for a rejection of trade with Myanmar over its cruelty towards its Rohingya community. — Picture by Hari Anggara

KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — Malaysia has already accepted too many Rohingya refugees and other nations must do their part to address the crisis, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

On his blog, Dr Mahathir also called for a rejection of trade with Myanmar over its cruelty towards its Rohingya community.

Don’t fear speaking up for Rohingya, says Anwar

FMT
FMT Reporters
April 27, 2020

PETALING JAYA: Rohingya refugees who arrive in Malaysia could be accommodated at special and controlled areas, while Malaysia draws up plans to send them to another country, PKR president Anwar Ibrahim suggested today.

Speaking in a video broadcast over Facebook, Anwar urged political leaders and elders to speak up about the Rohingya problem and not fear a backlash.

Senior minister urges public to remain calm and let cops investigate allegations against Rohingya community

malaymail 

Monday, 27 Apr 2020

BY BEN TAN

General view of a Rohingya settlement in Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur April 24, 2020. — Picture Hari Anggara

 KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — Senior Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob today called on Malaysians to let cool heads prevail and not to resort to unnecessary provocations in light of an apparent social media campaign against the Rohingya community.

He assured the public that the police are investigating the issue that has of late created a feeling of hatred against the Rohingya community during the movement control order (MCO).
“There are some who think that part of the videos and audios may be fake, but no one can validate their authenticity except the police.

Solving Solving Rohingya crisis takes a global effort, burden shouldn’t fall on Malaysia’s shoulders alone, says HadiRohingya crisis takes a global effort, burden shouldn’t fall on Malaysia’s shoulders alone, says Hadi

malaymail  

BY DANIAL DZULKIFLY

Monday, 27 Apr 2020 

General view of a Rohingya settlement in Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur April 24, 2020. — Picture Hari Anggara

KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — The humanitarian crisis that has plagued the Rohingya people needs to be dealt with via an international effort rather than Malaysia solely bearing the burden, said PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang.

In an exhaustive Facebook posting today, Hadi explained that while Malaysia has done its fair share by aiding refugees, it cannot continue an open-door policy as it could be seen as facilitating the “oppressive” acts of the Myanmar government towards the Rohingya people.

Bangladesh urged to open ports to allow in Rohingya refugee boats

The Guardian
Rebecca Ratcliffe
South-east Asia correspondent
Mon 27 Apr 2020

More than 500 stranded on trawlers in what UN calls ‘human tragedy of terrible proportions’

A boat carrying suspected Rohingya refugees off the island of Langkawi, Malaysia. Earlier this month, Bangladesh rescued a boat that had been left adrift for two months after attempting to reach Malaysia. Photograph: Maritime Enforcement Agency Handout/EPA

The Bangladeshi government has been urged to open its ports and allow two boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees to come ashore so they can be given urgent medical care, food and water.

UN requests Bangladesh to let in 2 boats carrying 500 Rohingyas

Dhaka Tribune
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
April 25th, 2020

File photo: Rohingya refugees who were rescued by Bangladesh Coast Guard in Teknaf upazila of Cox's Bazar on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 Dhaka Tribune

No more Rohingyas will be allowed in, the foreign minister said on Wednesday

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has requested the Bangladesh government to allow two boats carrying around 500 Rohingyas in the Bay of Bengal to anchor in port.

These two boats have been trying to reach the shores of Bangladesh from the international waters since Monday. Bangladesh Navy and Bangladesh Coast Guard are not allowing them into the country.

Rohingya Society of Malaysia apologises for certain individuals’ demands

theSundaily
26 APR 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: The Rohingya Society of Malaysia (RSM) today apologised to the Malaysian government and its people on behalf of the refugee community for certain demands allegedly issued by its members recently.

“We apologise to the Malaysian government and its people,” said RSM deputy president Abdul Ghani Abdul Rahman, adding that the Rohingya community in the country fully acknowledged their status as refugees.