The Rohingya News Bank

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Part II: Refugees trafficking network’s route to false salvation

MYANMAR TIMES

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
17 DEC 2020

Northern Rakhine Muslim refugees alight from a ship that brought them to Aceh Indonesia in June. Photo: AFP

For the northern Rakhine Muslim refugees, escaping the Bangladesh camp starts with a down payment that can reach the equivalent of $2,000, often paid by a northern Rakhine Muslim's husband or other relatives in Malaysia using mobile banking applications.

Refugees then get a phone call typically from someone they do not know.

"The call came after a few days and a man instructed us to go to the rickshaw stand in the main food market area of the camp," said 20-year-old Julekha Begum, who married a northern Rakhine Muslim man in Malaysia via a video chat app.

This Week’s Under-reported News Summary – Dec. 16, 2020

Between the lines
Compiled by Bob Nixon
Dec. 3, 2020

Halt relocation of Rohingya refugees to remote island
Making coal history
NYPD cops cash in sex trade arrests with little evidence

Thousands of Rohingya refugees, who fled mass violence in Myanmar are being relocated to an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal, named Bhasan Char. In early December, Bangladeshi authorities transported over 1,600 refugees there from a massive camp on the border with Myanmar. Human rights groups protested the move, charging that the refugees were forcibly relocated to the island. Facilities there had not been inspected by the United Nations. Bangladesh plans to send a total of 100,000 refugees to low-lying Bhasan Char, which is vulnerable to cyclones and other dangerous storms.

Traffickers: Selling False Dreams To The Rohingya

THE ASEAN POST
Athira Nortajuddin

16 December 2020

This photo taken on 25 June, 2020 shows six-year-old Nosmin Fatima (R) with other Rohingya migrants as they arrive in Lhokseumawe in North Aceh. (AFP Photo)

From Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Rohingya are an ethnic community of largely Muslim people. Perhaps a million of them have fled from violence in the ASEAN member state in successive waves of displacement since the early 1990s. In 2017, hundreds of thousands more fled Myanmar to escape persecution, war crimes and alleged genocide.

Today, over 900,000 Rohingya live in camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee settlement. Some have escaped to other neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia – said to be among the Rohingya’s favoured destinations.

‘What choice do we have?’

The Daily Star

AFP, Kutupalong
December 17, 2020

After escaping prosecution in Myanmar, Rohingya women face odyssey of misery

In this file photo taken on September 7, 2020, Rohingya migrants look on following their arrival by boat in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, Indonesia. Photo: AFP

Stay in a squalid refugee camp -- hopeless, starving, and made to feel a burden -- or leave, risking death, rape, human trafficking and months at sea to reach a husband you've never met.

This is the bleak choice many Rohingya women, already scarred from fleeing violent persecution in Myanmar, are now facing.

As conditions deteriorate in increasingly overcrowded Bangladeshi refugee camps, desperate parents are marrying off their daughters to Rohingya men thousands of kilometres (miles) away in Malaysia.

ေသဆုံးၿပီ ထင္ကာ ဇနီးနဲ႔ သမီးကို အသုဘခ်ၿပီးမွ ျပန္လည္ ဆုံဆည္းနိုင္ခဲ့တဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မိသားစု

မဇၥ်ိမ

ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၁၇ ၊ ၂၀၂၀

Photo: AFP

ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာအမ်ိဳးသား နီမတ္ရွာဟာ သူ႔ဆီ လာဖို႔ႀကိဳးစားရင္း သူ႔ဇနီးနဲ႔ သမီးဟာ ပင္လယ္ျပင္မွာ ေသဆုံးခဲ့ရၿပီ လို႔ ယူဆၿပီး အသုဘခ်ေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။

သီတင္းပတ္ေတြအၾကာမွာေတာ့ အင္ဒိုနီးရွားက ဒုကၡသည္ေလွတစ္စင္းေပၚမွာ သူ႔သမီးနဲ႔ ဇနီးရဲ့ ဓာတ္ပုံကို အြန္လိုင္းကေန ေတြ႕လိုက္ခ်ိန္မွာေတာ့ ၾကက္ေသေသသြားေအာင္ အံ့ဩဝမ္းသာသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။

အခုလို ပုံဝတၳဳဆန္တဲ့ မိသားစု ျပန္လည္ေပါင္းစည္းနိုင္တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းကို ေအအက္ဖ္ပီရဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ လူ ကုန္ ကူးခံရအေၾကာင္း ေထာက္လွမ္းစုံစမ္းေရးသတင္းမွာ နီမတ္ရွာက ျပန္ေျပာင္းေျပာဆိုတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္နဲ႔ လူကုန္ကူးမႈကြန္ယက္

VOA

ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)

မသိဂႌထုိက္

16 ဒီဇင္ဘာ၊ 2020

ေလွတစင္းေပၚေတြ႔ရတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား။ (ၾသဂုတ္ ၂၆၊ ၂၀၂၀)

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ စခန္းေတြက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို မေလးရွားကို ပို႔ေဆာင္ေပးတဲ႔ လူကုန္ကူးမႈဟာ ဆန္း ၿပား ရႈပ္ေထြးၿပီး စခန္းတြင္းက လူေတြ အဓိက ပါ၀င္ပတ္သတ္ေနတဲ႔ ေဒၚလာ သန္းခ်ီတဲ့ လုပ္ငန္းျဖစ္တယ္ ဆို တာကို ဒီ လူကုန္ကူးမႈ ကြန္ရက္ထဲမွာ ပါတဲ႔ သူေတြနဲ႔ စံုစမ္း ေမးျမန္းမႈကေန ထြက္ေပၚလာပါတယ္။ လူ ၁,၀၀၀ ဆန္႔တဲ့ ထိုင္း မွတ္ပံုတင္ ငါးဖမ္း သေဘာၤေတြ၊ ၿဂိဳဟ္တုဖုန္းေတြ၊ ေထာက္ပံ႔ေရး ေရယာဥ္ငယ္၊ ဘဂၤ လားေဒရွ္႕ စခန္းေတြနဲ႔ အေရွ႕ေတာင္ အာရွ တလႊားက လာဘ္စားတဲ႔ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြဟာ ဒီကြန္ယက္ႀကီး ထဲ မွာ ပါ၀င္ ပတ္သက္ေနတယ္လို႔ AFP ရဲ႕ စံုစမ္းေဖာ္ထုတ္ထားတဲ႔ ေဆာင္းပါးက ေဖာ္ျပပါတယ္။ မသိဂၤ ီထုိက္ တင္ျပေပးမွာပါ။

၁၁၈)ကြိမ်မြောက်ထုတ်ဝေသည့် ရုရှားနိုင်ငံ၏ နိုင်ငံရေးစာ စောင်တစ်ခုဖြစ်သည့် Politics Magazine တွင် ရုရှား-မြန်မာ ချစ်ကြည်ရေးအသင်း၏ဥက္ကဋ္ဌ Mr.Mikhail Dmitriev ရေး သား ဖော်ပြထားသောဆောင်းပါး

(၁၁၈)ကြိမ်မြောက်ထုတ်ဝေသည့် ရုရှားနိုင်ငံ၏ နိုင်ငံရေးစာစောင်တစ်ခုဖြစ်သည့် Politics Magazine တွင် ရုရှား- မြန်မာ ချစ်ကြည်ရေးအသင်း၏ဥက္ကဋ္ဌ Mr.Mikhail Dmitriev ရေးသားဖော်ပြထားသော ''တောင့်တင်းခိုင်မာသော တပ်မတော်သည် အမိမြေ ငြိမ်းချမ်းသာယာရေး၏ အာမခံချက်ဖြစ်သည်''ခေါင်းစဉ်ပါ ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် တပ်မတော် ကာကွယ်ရေး ဦးစီးချုပ် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး မင်းအောင်လှိုင်အကြောင်း ဆောင်းပါးအား ဘာသာပြန်ဆိုရေးသားဖော်ပြခြင်း

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(၁၁၇)ကြိမ်မြောက်ထုတ်ဝေခဲ့သော Politics Magazine တွင် ရေးသားဖော်ပြခဲ့သော ဆောင်းပါး တစ်ပုဒ် ဖြစ် သည့် ''တပ်မတော်သည် နိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံ၏ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် အချုပ်အခြာအာဏာ နယ်နိမိတ်တည်တံ့ ခိုင်မြဲရေး အတွက် အာမခံချက်ဖြစ်သည်'' ခေါင်းစဉ်ပါ ဆောင်းပါးကို မိမိအနေဖြင့် အမှတ်ရနေမိပါသည်။

Video shows Rohingya refugees beaten by traffickers on boat

TRT World Now
Dec 16, 2020

AFP news agency has obtained video evidence showing brutal treatment that Rohingya refugees are facing at the hands of the traffickers. We speak to Co-founder at Free Rohingya Coalition Nay San Lwin.

#Rohingya #Smugglers #HumanTrafficking

Video shows smugglers beating Rohingya on trafficking boat

Aljazeera
15 Dec 2020

This video grab taken on December 4, 2020 from an AFPTV video shows Rohingya refugees in a boat in Chakmarkul on August 26, 2020 [AFP]

Smugglers mercilessly beat rake-thin refugees crowded onto a fishing boat, in a video obtained by AFP news agency that shows rarely seen images from the front lines of the Rohingya trafficking network.

Filmed on a mobile phone by a smuggler who later fled the vessel, the video shows dozens of asylum seekers, including children, sitting in the hull and on the deck as smugglers stand among them.

Commission redistributes nearly £200,000 to Rohingya refugees as two trustees are disqualified

Charity Today

15/12/2020

A Charity Commission inquiry, published today (Tuesday 15 December), is highly critical of a pair who raised money for Rohingya refugees but could not show how all funds were used.

The Commission has redistributed approximately £196,000 of the money Mr Mohammed Hasnath and Ms Ruksana Ali (the former trustees) raised and both have been removed as trustees from the fund and disqualified.

The former trustees operated two online fundraising platforms, creating a fund for Rohingya refugees. Whilst they never registered the fund as a charity, its stated purpose made it charitable under the law.

Over 2,000 houses destroyed by fire in Rakhine conflict

Narinjara
Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Ein Soe Pru — Nearly 2005 houses were burnt during the two-year long war in Rakhine State and Paletwa township of Chin State, said a report released by Rakhine Ethnics Congress (REC).

Some of the houses caught fire from artillery shells but most were set on fire by the troops, added the report.

The reported damaged houses belong to eight villages under Buthidaung township (163 houses), 14 villages under Kyauktaw township (1275 houses ), 9 villages under Rathedaung township (69 houses), four villages under Mrauk-U township (210 houses) and one village under Minbya township (28 houses).

Rohingya trafficking network sells dreams, delivers violence and extortion

FRANCH 24

Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) (AFP)

Issued on: 15/12/2020 -

A months-long AFP investigation uncovered mobile phone images taken by a smuggler aboard a boat - AFP

Auto rickshaws slip easily past barbed-wire checkpoints at the world's biggest refugee camp, their drivers among the smallest players in a complex human trafficking network involving high-seas extortion gangs, corrupt police and drug lords.

Aboard the spluttering rickshaws are small groups of young men, women and children hoping to escape the misery of life with other members of their stateless Rohingya group who are crowded into shanties in Bangladesh.

Smugglers beat Rohingya on trafficking boat

rappler

Agence France-Presse
Cox's Bazar,Bangladesh
Dec 15, 2020

Filmed on a phone by a smuggler who later fled the vessel, the video shows asylum seekers sitting in the hull and on the deck as smugglers stand among them

Smugglers mercilessly beat rake-thin refugees crowded onto a fishing boat, in a video obtained by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that shows rarely seen images from the frontlines of the Rohingya trafficking network.

Why Is Jordan Selling Arms to the Sanctioned Myanmar Military?

A report published lately by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has revealed a Jordanian role in supporting efforts of the military in Myanmar to acquire European-manufactured aircrafts, in an attempt to circumvent international sanctions on the Tatmadaw.

Video chat only hope for divided Rohingya couple

FRANCH 24

Kutupalong (Bangladesh) (AFP)
Issued on: 15/12/2020

Rohingya refugee Julekha Begum is stuck in a camp in Bangladesh; her husband, who she married via video call, lives in Malaysia Munir UZ ZAMAN AFP

The human traffickers told Julekha Begum it would take less than a week to smuggle her to Malaysia to meet the husband she barely knows.

Instead she spent two months marooned at sea in the hold of a fishing boat with 500 others. In that time, she said traffickers beat her sister to death and threw countless bodies into the sea.

လူကုန္ကူးကြန္ရက္ရဲ့ သားေကာင္ျဖစ္ေနရရွာတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မ်ား

မဇၥ်ိမ
By AFP
15 December 2020

Photo: AFP

ငါးဖမ္းေလွနဲ႔တင္ေဆာင္လာတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို လူေမွာင္ခိုကူးသူေတြက ရက္ရက္စက္ စက္ ရိုက္ႏွက္ေနတဲ့ ဗီဒီယိုဖိုင္တစ္ခုကို AFP က ရရွိခဲ့ၿပီး ဒါဟာ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာလူေမွာင္ခိုကူးကြန္ရက္ေရွ႕တန္းမ်က္ ႏွာ စာမွာ ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနတာေတြကို ရွားရွားပါးပါး ျမင္ေတြ႕လိုက္ရတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ ေရယာဥ္ကေနထြက္ေျပးသြားတဲ့ ေမွာင္ခိုကူးသူတစ္ေယာက္က မိုဘိုင္းဖုန္းနဲ႔ရိုက္ထားတဲ့ ဗီဒီ ယိုဖိုင္ထဲမွာ ကေလးေတြအပါအဝင္ ခိုလႈံခြင့္ရွာသူ ဒါဇင္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာဟာ ေလွကုန္းပတ္နဲ႔ စင္ေတြေပၚမွာ ထိုင္ ေနၾကတာကို ေတြ႕ျမင္ရပါတယ္။

Int’l community must acknowledge its policy to Rohingya failed: UN expert

Prothum Alo------

Prothom Alo English Desk

Updated: 11 December 2020, 11:36

It was reasonable for the Bangladesh government to seek to create options for the refugees who desire alternatives to the mega camps in Cox’s Bazar, said Thomas Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar

Rohingya camps south of Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh that now make up the world's largest refugee settlement, home to more than 900,000 people. Balukhali camp, Bangladesh, on 28 January 2019Thomson Reuters Foundation

The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Thomas Andrews on Thursday said the international community must acknowledge that after three years its policy with respect to the Rohingya refugees has failed, reports news agency UNB.

ANALYSIS - Anti-Rohingya monk promotes Myanmar ‘Buddhist’ nationalism

Maung Zarni

LONDON

14.12.2020

Monk’s description of ‘Buddhists truths’ superior to Universal Declaration of Human Rights is far from ground realities.

The writer is a Burmese coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia.

Exuding a palpable sense of spiritual and cultural superiority, a genocide-denying Myanmar Buddhist monk declared Myanmar’s “true nationalism” which is anchored in the “universal declaration of Buddhist truths” to be even superior to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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