Saudi Arabia, US, sign aid deal for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

ZAWYA
saudi arabia
By Staff Writer, Saudi Gazette
13 November, 2020

As part of the agreement, multi-use housing units worth $2mln will be made to rehabilitate the refugees

Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia signed virtually on Thursday an agreement with the United States to implement a multi-sector program to support Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox's Bazar district, Saudi Press Agency reported.

USAID, KSRelief to co-fund WFP project in Cox’s Bazar

Dhaka Tribune  

UNB
November 14th, 2020

File photo of a Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka Tribune

The fund will be used to rehabilitate cyclone shelters and reduce the risk of disasters in Cox’s Bazar

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Saudi Arabia's King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSRelief) will provide $1 million each to a program managed by the World Food Programme (WFP) to rehabilitate cyclone shelters and reduce the risk of disasters in Cox’s Bazar.

ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး ၾသစေၾတးလ် ဆက္လက္ေထာက္ခံ သြားမည္

VOA
ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)
15 ႏိုဝင္ဘာ၊ 2020

ၾသစေၾတးလ် ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီး Marise Payne. (ဇူလုိင္ ၂၈၊ ၂၀၂၀)

 

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းတဲ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာဆိုရင္ ႏုိင္ငံရဲ႕ ဒီမိုကေရစီ အသြင္ကူးေျပာင္းမႈမွာ အေရးႀကီးတဲ့ မွတ္တိုင္တခု ျဖစ္ပါတယ္လို႔ ၾသစေၾတးလ် ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီး Marise Payne က ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ပါ တယ္။

ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ၾကာသပေတးေန႔ကထုတ္တဲ့ ၾသစေၾတးလ် ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဝန္ႀကီးရဲ႕ ေၾကညာခ်က္မွာေတာ့ ဒီမိုုကေရစီ အျပည့္အဝ ရရွိေရးအတြက္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံကို ဆက္လက္ ေထာက္ခံသြားမယ့္အေၾကာင္း ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေအာင္ျမင္ျခင္းႏွင့္ NLD အနိုင္ရသည့္အ ေပၚ ျပည္ပနိုင္ငံအႀကီးအကဲမ်ားႏွင့္ သံတမန္မ်ားက ဝမ္းေျမာက္ ဂုဏ္ယူေၾကာင္း ေျပာ

မဇၩိမ
14 November 2020 

ဓာတ္ပုံ - သက္ကို/မဇၩိမ

အေထြေထြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ က်င္းပနိုင္ခဲ့ျခင္းႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (NLD) က အနိုင္ရသည့္အေပၚ ျပည္ပနိုင္ငံအႀကီးအကဲမ်ားႏွင့္ သံ႐ုံးမ်ားက ဝမ္းေျမာက္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ဂုဏ္ယူေၾကာင္း သဝဏ္လႊာမ်ား ေပးပို႔ခဲ့ၾကသည္။

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ၿဗိတိန္ သံအမတ္ႀကီး မစၥတာ ဒန္ခ်က္က “‌အေထြေထြ ေရြး‌ေကာက္ပြဲမွာ အနိုင္ရရွိခဲ့တဲ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္တို႔အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဂုဏ္ယူပါတယ္။ မဲေပးသူ အေရ အတြက္ မ်ားျပားျခင္းနဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအေပၚ စိတ္အားထက္သန္မႈေတြဟာ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ လမ္း ေၾကာင္း မွာ အေရးပါတဲ့မွတ္တိုင္အျဖစ္ အထင္အရွားက်န္ခဲ့မွာပါ” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

Macron’s misreading of an Islamic “crisis”

GLOBAL COMMENT

Shaher Tabbaa
Around the Globe Commentary Politics Religion
November 12, 2020

On 2 October, President Macron acknowledged in a speech that France had failed its immigrant communities – immigrants, with lingering animosities, from French colonies where France committed untold atrocities, and with poor living conditions – creating “our own separatism” with ghettos of “misery and hardship” where people were lumped together according to their origins and social background. ‘Districts were created where the promise of the Republic has no longer been kept, and where messages of radicalism found resonance with some inhabitants’.

He also added that Islam is a religion which is experiencing a crisis today, all over the world, citing multiple reasons.

He inadvertently neglected to mention that evil resides in the heart of deviants that would do wrong with little encouragement from a variety of influences: religious hyperbole, greed, racism, ethnicity, vengeance, or political dogma. That those deviants are in the minority, and represent only themselves.

Myanmar Went To the Polls for the Second Time Since the End of Military Rule but the Election Was Not Free or Fair

TIMES

By Wai Wai Nu

November 12, 2020 

Officials of the Union Election Commission count votes during the multi-party general elections at a polling station in Yangon, Myanmar, Nov. 8, 2020.
U Aung—Xinhua via Getty

 

The Rohingya Muslim minority, to which I belong, was again disenfranchised during Myanmar’s election on Nov. 8. My community, which has faced violence and discrimination, is being even further erased from our country. Many ethnic Rakhine, Shan, Kachin, and Karen were also not able to vote. An election that excludes entire communities because of their identity cannot be considered credible, free, nor fair.

Saudi Arabia, US sign Rohingya aid deal

ARAB NEWS

SPA

13 November 2020 

Rohingya Muslim refugees children queue for aid suplies at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar on Dec. 4, 2017. (AFP/File)

 

• The agreement aims to rehabilitate housing with a total value of $2 million
• The program will target 87,165 people for urgent assistance

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia signed virtually on Thursday an agreement with the US to implement a multi-sector refugee support program in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

The agreement aims to rehabilitate housing with a total value of $2 million, and will be managed by the World Food Program (WFP).

War, not politics: Troubled election deepens tension in Myanmar's Rakhine

REUTERS
By Shoon Naing

 

YANGON (Reuters) - Yarzar Tun’s whole family backed Myanmar’s Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in the landslide 2015 election that swept her to power. As fighting this year in western Rakhine state crept closer to his home, he decided he would not vote for her again. 

People wearing protective gear line up to vote at a polling station during the general election in Taungup, Rakhine State, Myanmar, November 8, 2020. ÊREUTERS/Stringer

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has claimed another commanding win in a parliamentary election on Sunday, the second since the end of half a century of military rule. But in Rakhine the NLD was rejected by voters such as Yarzar Tun and his family, who backed an ethnic nationalist party instead.

Editorial: Time for Aung San Suu Kyi to start acting like the Nobel winner she is

Los Angeles Times

Opinion 
The Times Editorial Board
Nov. 11, 2020

 

Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in 2017.

(Aung Shine Oo / Associated Press)

 

While much of the world has been fixated on the electoral drama in the U.S., another fraught election took place this past weekend in a country racked by violence and human rights abuses.

For only the second time since it transitioned from a military dictatorship into a fledgling democracy in 2015, voters in the South Asian country of Myanmar went to the polls to elect members of its parliament. The ruling National League of Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kyi, has reportedly won in a bigger landslide than it did five years ago. Just as in the U.S., masses of voters turned out, enduring long lines despite a surge of coronavirus cases.

Joint statement from INGO's: ASEAN must prevent another “Rohingya boat crisis”

NORWEGIAN REFUGEES COUNCIL
Published 11. Nov 2020

 

Southeast Asian leaders must do everything they can to protect refugees and prevent a repeat of this year’s “boat crisis” when some 200 refugees lost their lives at sea, 16 humanitarian agencies said today ahead of the 37th ASEAN Summit.

Signatores on the statement are ActionAid, CARE, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran World Federation, Médecins du Monde France, Médecins du Monde Japan, Médecins du Monde Switzerland, MOAS, NONGOR, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, People in Need Myanmar, Plan International, Save the Children, Solidarités International, World Vision International.

 

Joint Multi-Sector Needs Assessment (J-MSNA): Bangladesh Rohingya Refugees - July - August 2020

ISCG
12 Nov 2020

Link : Here

Human rights group to govt: Facilitate a visit to Bhasan Char

Dhaka Tribune 

Tribune Desk
November 12th, 2020

File photo: Forcibly displaced Rohingya refugees playing football at a refugee camp in Bhashan Char ISPR

 

The government is moving forward with plans to relocate up to 100,000 Rohingya from Cox’s Bazar district to Bhasan Char

Five human rights organization have requested the government of Bangladesh to facilitate and provide access to Bhasan Char, including unfettered access to meet with Rohingyas.

The five organizations are Amnesty International, Refugees International, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Fortify Rights, and ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR).

Japan’s Kirin Suspends Payments to Myanmar Military Firm

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio

November 12, 2020

The Japanese beverages firm Kirin has suspended dividend payments to a tentacular Myanmar business conglomerate linked to the country’s military, the company announced this week. In a statement on November 11, Kirin Holdings Company, announced that it had suspended all dividend payments from two Myanmar beer ventures to Kirin and the Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL).

Myanmar: Kirin suspends payments to military company

Amnesty International 

 11 November 2020
Myanmar
Business and Human Rights

© AFP/Getty Images
 

The Japanese brewing company Kirin today announced that it has suspended all dividend payments to Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL), Kirin’s business partner in two joint ventures in Myanmar. It follows research by Amnesty International which exposed how profits from Myanmar Brewery Limited and Mandalay Brewery Limited, jointly owned by Kirin and MEHL, were provided to MEHL, whose shareholders include military units responsible for crimes under international law.

Montse Ferrer, Researcher on Business and Human Rights at Amnesty International, said:

Myanmar Election Delivers Another Decisive Win for Aung San Suu Kyi

The New York Times 

By Hannah Beech and Saw Nang

Nov. 11, 2020

The civilian leader’s reputation overseas has been stained by her defense of a military accused of genocide. But in voting on Sunday, her party easily secured a parliamentary majority.

Supporters of the National League for Democracy in Yangon, Myanmar, on Monday with portraits of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom many in the country still regard as a bulwark against military rule.Credit...Ye Aung Thu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

The political party led by Myanmar’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is poised to stay in power after winning what is only the second truly contested election the country has held in decades, though one in which many voters from ethnic minority groups were prevented from casting their ballots.

Religious persecution increasing, Pew Research Center report finds

The Washington Times 

By Christopher Vondracek

The Washington Times
Wednesday, November 11, 2020 

A rosary, scapular and Bible rest on a coffee table in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) ** FILE ** more >

Governments have been cracking down on religious expression more than any other time in recent memory, says a new report on global religious persecution.

The Pew Research Center’s tracking of government restrictions on religion noted a 50% increase in 2018 since the survey’s inauguration in 2007, according to the report published Tuesday.

ျမန္မာေရြးေကာက္ပြဲရလဒ္ ျပင္သစ္ႀကိဳဆို

 VOA

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း) 

၂၀၂၀ ျမန္မာ့ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ
13 ႏိုဝင္ဘာ၊ 2020

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ မဲ႐ံုတခုတြင္ ဆႏၵမဲမ်ားေရတြက္ေနသည့္ ေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႔ဝင္မ်ား။ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၈၊ ၂၀၂၀။

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံမွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ နည္းလမ္းနဲ႔ တင္ေျမႇာက္ခံရတဲ့ အရပ္သား အစိုးရတစ္ခုရဲ့ လက္ေအာက္ မွာႏွစ္ ေပါင္း ၆၀ အတြင္း ပထမဆုံးအႀကိမ္ အေထြေထြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲတစ္ရပ္ က်င္းပနိုင္ခဲ့တာက တိုင္းျပည္အတြင္း ဒီမိုကေရစီ လူ႔ေဘာင္ တည္ေဆာက္ေရးမွာ အေရးပါတဲ့ ေျခလွမ္းတစ္ရပ္ျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ျပင္သစ္နိုင္ငံက ေျပာပါ တယ္။

DVB Debate:"ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ဒုကၡသည္ေတြျပန္လည္ ေခၚယူေရးမူဝါဒေအာင္ျမင္မလား?"(Part A,B,C )

DVB Debate
Date :Nov 8, 2020 

DVB Debate:"ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ဒုကၡသည္ေတြျပန္လည္ေခၚယူေရးမူဝါဒေအာင္ျမင္မလား?"(Part A)

 

 

 DVB Debate:"ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ဒုကၡသည္ေတြျပန္လည္ေခၚယူေရးမူဝါဒေအာင္ျမင္မလား?"(Part B)  

 

 DVB Debate:"ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ဒုကၡသည္ေတြျပန္လည္ေခၚယူေရးမူဝါဒေအာင္ျမင္မလား?"(Part C) Link :Here

Korea gives $1 million to prevent gender-based violence in Cox’s Bazar

The Daily Star

Star Online Report
November 10, 2020 

Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. Photo: Star/ Anisur Rahman

Korea has provided $1 million to Unicef Bangladesh this year for activities to help prevent gender-based violence particularly in Cox's Bazar.

This assistance will help protect women, adolescents, and girls in the Rohingya refugee camp and the host community from gender-based violence and its consequences, especially amid the increasing gender-based violence cases in the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic, Korean embassy in Dhaka said in a statement today.

Sheltering the Rohingya: The commendable instance of unparalled support by Bangladesh

The Daily Star

Opinion
Captain A F M Ahsan Uddin
November 10, 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

 

"Water, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink" said Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his famous poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.  

                                                                                           Captain A F M Ahsan Uddin

As a sailor, we always feel this and thus our relation with the sea becomes inseparable in our life. Sometimes we forget the presence of air around us, though we inhale it every second, likewise, at times we tend to realise our engrossed relation with the sea. However, the same feeling suddenly popped up when we saw a forlorn mechanised boat -- at deep sea for months -- carrying a huge number of people including women and children. They even didn't have water to drink, even though they were surrounded by the sea. 

There was news regarding a few hundred of Rohingya at deep sea in mechanised boats seeking refuge to Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand since April 2020. As Bangladesh Navy had been quite vigilant since long and were carrying out   patrols round the clock to prevent illegal migration of Rohingya from Myanmar, we, the sailors at sea, were alert. Our mission was twofold -- first, to prevent another Rohingya influx, and second, to intercept or rescue them if they are stranded.