Give peace a chance, Malaysia tells Myanmar

THE Star  

By ALLISON LAI
Friday, 19 Mar 2021

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has called on Myanmar's ruling junta to change its course and choose a peaceful solution instead of violence against unarmed civilians.

Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (pic) said all concerned parties should work together towards a peaceful settlement of this crisis.

"Violence begets violence, and the nation's future may be plunged into irreversible destruction.

"The military leadership in Myanmar is strongly urged to change its course, and choose a path towards peaceful solutions.

Indonesia president urges halt to Myanmar violence, wants ASEAN talks

THE Star
Friday, 19 Mar 2021

FILE PHOTO: Indonesian President Joko Widodo gestures during an interview with Reuters at the presidential palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 13, 2020. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Friday called for bloodshed to be halted in military-ruled Myanmar and for Southeast Asian leaders to hold a high-level meeting to try to find a way out of the country's escalating crisis.

In some of the strongest comments yet by a regional leader on Myanmar's violent crackdown on anti-coup demonstrations, Jokowi, as the president is best known, said he would immediately call Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, the current chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and press him to call an urgent meeting.

Japan to provide $10m in emergency aid for Rohingya, host communities

Financial Express

FE Online Desk 

March 18, 2021

The Japan government has said it will provide 10 million US dollars in emergency grant aid to support the displaced Rohingya refugees and host communities in Bangladesh.

Of the total grant, 5 million US dollars will be provided to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), 4.3 million US dollars to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and 0.7 million US dollars will be provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for humanitarian assistance, according to a press release of Japanese Embassy received today (Thursday).

Chinese factory management rebukes rumors alleging its collusion with Myanmar's military to kill local workers

Global Times

By Li Sikun
Published: Mar 19, 2021

Cars are burned down at a China-invested factory in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo: Interviewee

Ever since Chinese factories in Myanmar were looted and set on fire over the weekend, more and more outrageous rumors have been infested on Myanmar's social media.

A rumor that the Chinese-owned Xing Jia Shoe Factory, located in Hlaing Thar Yar, Yangon, cooperated with Myanmar's military to trap and kill local workers, resulting in at least five deaths and many arrests, has been widely circulating on Twitter and Facebook since Wednesday.

Myanmar Buddhist Association Signals Possible Break with Military Junta

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio
March 18, 2021

The opposition of the country’s main Buddhist authority would undermine the military government’s already shaky legitimacy.

Myanmar’s influential Buddhist monks’ association has urged the country’s military junta to end violence against protesters, accusing an “armed minority” of responsibility for the killing of unarmed civilians protesting the February 1 coup.

According to a report in the local news outlet Myanmar now, the 47-member State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, a government-appointed body of Buddhist abbots, decided Tuesday to suspend its activities, calling for an immediate end to the junta’s violent attacks on anti-coup protesters

Supreme Court to hear plea for release of detained Rohingya refugees on March 25

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

PTI
March 18 2021,

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would hear on March 25 a fresh plea seeking immediate release of detained Rohingya refugees in Jammu and restrain the Centre from implementing any order deporting them to Myanmar.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, which initially observed that there was no urgency, took note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan that the detained Rohingyas may be deported to Myanmar where the Army has taken over and violence is taking place.

"Ok, then we will hear the Rohingya matter on Thursday," said the bench which also comprised justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian.

On March 11, an interim plea was filed in a pending PIL seeking immediate release of detained Rohingya refugees in Jammu and restrain the Centre from deporting them.

Tripura police detain Rohingya migrant

THE NORTHEAST TODAY

TNT Bureau
AGARTALA:
18 Mar, 2021 ,

Tripura police, on Tuesday, detained a Rohingya migrant while he was returning to Delhi after visiting his mother in Bangladesh.

The Rohingya migrant has been identified as Sona Mia from Myanmar.

According to the police, Mia left his country and fled to Bangladesh in 2009. In 2010, he entered India through the Malda district of West Bengal.

Mia was living in Delhi for the past 11 years and had set up a small business with a Rohingya group.

WFP Bangladesh | Rohingya Refugee Response Situation Report #47 - February 2021

 

What next for Burma?

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOK

Thant Myint-U
18 MARCH 2021

With their recent coup d’état the Burmese army hoped for a surgical shift in power that would leave everything else more or less untouched. Instead, the coup has sent the economy into freefall, raised the possibility of international intervention and triggered a political earthquake. The fight is no longer over elections and constitutional amendments. One path leads to dictatorship without end. The other to a revolution whose exact shape is difficult to see. A crumbling economy may send the lives of tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people spiralling into disaster. And what unfolds in Burma may be impossible for the region, perhaps the world, to ignore: a failed state between India and China, at the heart of 21st-century Asia.

Tension had been mounting for weeks. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the country’s de facto ruler since 2016, won a thumping victory in last November’s elections. Taking more than 60 per cent of the vote, she was set to consolidate her hold over Burmese politics, vowing to push for constitutional changes that would limit further the army’s once limitless powers.

Why Myanmar’s Junta Might Give Brief Reprieve to Embattled Muslim Minority

VOA

SOUTHEAST ASIA
Ralph Jennings
17 March 2021

In this June 26, 2014 photo, a girl, self-identified as Rohingya, stands close to her family's tent house at Dar Paing camp for refugees, suburbs of Sittwe, Western Rakhine state, Myanmar. Suu Kyi's many supporters overseas have been dismayed by her…

TAIPEI, TAIWAN —

Myanmar’s military government, seen as the chief force behind previous long-term violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority, is leaving the population alone for now as it battles protesters. But analysts say the junta is expected to resume the old crackdown over time.

The junta seized power in a February coup from a civilian government and has been focused on quelling protesters, rather than the Rohingya minority that lives in a western region of Myanmar and continues to push for civil rights. At least 11 protesters were killed on Monday and 57 over the weekend in the bloodiest period since the military coup last month, the United Nations says on its website.

ဘာဆန်ချားကျွန်းမှာ ကုလသမဂ္ဂကိုယ်စားလှယ်အဖွဲ့ရောက်နေ

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
18 မတ်၊ 2021

ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေထိုင်ရာ Bhasan Char ကျွန်း။ (ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၂၉၊ ၂၀၂၀)

ကုလသမဂ္ဂကိုယ်စားလှယ်အဖွဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည် ၁၀,၀၀၀ ကျော်ရွှေ့ပြောင်းထားတဲ့ ဘင်္ဂလားပင်လယ်အော်ထဲက ဘာဆန်ချားကျွန်းကို မနေ့ကစ၊ သုံးရက်ကြာခရီး ရောက်ရှိနေပါတယ်။

ရိုဟင်ဂျာနဲ့ လူနည်းစုက မြန်မာ့အပြောင်းအလဲအတွက် အရေးပါ

ဧရာဝတီ

လင်းငယ်
18 March 2021

၂၀၁၇ မှာ ရခိုင်ပြည်မြောက်ပိုင်း မွတ်စလင် လူနည်းစုတွေ စစ်တပ်ရဲ့ ရက်စက်မှုတွေကို ကြောက်ပြီး ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်ဘက် အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက် ထွက်ပြေးကြစဉ်

(၁) ဒီရက်ပိုင်းတွေမှာ မြန်မာပြည်သူတွေဟာ နိုင်ငံတကာ လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်တွေကို စိတ်ပါဝင်စားစွာ စောင့်ကြည့် ခဲ့ ကြပါတယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် ကြည့်ပုံကြည့်နည်းကတော့ မတူပါဘူး။ လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ နှစ်နှစ်သုံးနှစ်ကို ပြန်ကြည့်ရင်တော့ တော် တော်ကလေးကို ပြောင်းပြန်ဖြစ်နေတာကို တွေ့ရပါမယ်။ အရင်က ဆန့်ကျင်မလိုလားမှုကဲခဲ့ပြီး အခုချိန်မှာ တော့ မျှော်လင့်ချက် အားကိုးမှုတို့ ဖြစ်လာခဲ့ပါတယ်။

Myanmar Coup Is Xi Jinping’s Preliminary Skirmish:Detaining 75-Year-Old Aung San Suu Kyi Is a Human Rights Issue

The Liberty Web

March 16, 2021

 Detaining 75-Year-Old Aung San Suu Kyi Is a Human Rights Issue

One month has already passed since Myanmar’s armed forces, after suffering a landslide defeat in last November’s general election, seized power from the National League for Democracy (NLD) and detained Myanmar’s 75-year-old State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi among other senior leaders of the NLD.

Myanmar-Thailand: Organising resistance on the other side of the border

Aline BOTTIN

Will HILDERBRANDT

Sonia BARITELLO

Claire HOPES

16/03/2021 

For weeks now, hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar have marched against the military junta to protest last month’s coup. The people’s demand for democracy has put them in the army's crosshairs. Dozens have been killed, thousands more detained. But they have help. A network of exiled Burmese citizens living in Thailand is organising and financing their resistance movement.

Rohingya youth lands in Tripura jail on his way to Delhi

THE NORTH EAST AFFAIRS

NEA News Service
March 17, 2021

The accused was identified as Sona Mian (40) has been doing business in New Delhi for over a decade and his family is living in Chittagong of South Bangladesh.

Agartala: A local court of Sepahijala district in West Tripura has sent a Rohingya youth to jail yesterday for illegally crossing the border from Bangladesh.

The accused was identified as Sona Mian (40) has been doing business in New Delhi for over a decade and his family is living in Chittagong of South Bangladesh.

Soros philanthropic group demands release of staff member held in Myanmar

REUTERS
Reuters Staff

MARCH 16, 2021

(Reuters) - The Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic organisation founded by billionaire George Soros, called on Tuesday for the immediate release of a staff member held in Myanmar and said allegations of financial misconduct were false.

State media in Myanmar reported that authorities had detained an official from the Open Society Myanmar and were looking for 11 other employees on suspicion the group passed funds to opponents of a Feb. 1 coup.

“The Open Society Foundations are deeply concerned by reports that an OSM (Open Society Myanmar) staff member has been detained in Myanmar,” Open Society Foundations said in an emailed statement.

UN team visits remote Bangladesh island where Rohingya relocated

Aljazeera
17 Mar 2021

Delegation on three-day visit to Bhasan Char island in Bay of Bengal where Bangladesh moved more than 13,000 refugees.

Bangladesh says the relocation is voluntary, but some among a first group to be moved spoke of being coerced [File: Mahmud Hossain Opu/ Al Jazeera]

A United Nations delegation is on a three-day visit starting Wednesday to a remote Bay of Bengal island where Bangladesh has moved more than 13,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees since December despite criticism from rights groups.

Bangladesh wants to eventually transfer 100,000 of the more than a million refugees living in overcrowded border camps to Bhasan Char island, which emerged from the sea only two decades ago and is considered vulnerable to floods.

UN: Killings of Peaceful Protesters by Myanmar Junta Soaring

VOA

By Lisa Schlein
March 16, 2021 

People carry a wreath as they attend the funeral of Khant Nyar Hein, a medical student who was shot and killed during the security force crackdown on anti-coup protesters in Yangon, Myanmar, March 16, 2021.

GENEVA - Human rights officials are expressing alarm at the soaring death toll in Myanmar as the military junta’s security forces intensify their brutal crackdown on protesters.

The past week has been particularly deadly. The U.N. human rights office says 11 people were killed on Monday and 57 over the weekend by security forces that used live ammunition against peaceful protesters.

US Slams Myanmar Military For Brutal Crackdown On Protesters And Responding With Bullets

REPUBLIC WORLD

Written By Vishal Tiwari

16th March, 2021

US State Department criticised Myanmar’s military for “brutally” attacking their own people and killing dozens throughout the country last weekend.

The United States on Monday slammed Myanmar’s junta over a surge in violence against pro-democracy protesters, saying “they have responded to calls for the restoration of democracy with bullets”. US State Department deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter criticised Myanmar’s military for “brutally” attacking their own people and killing dozens throughout the country last weekend. Porter said the crackdown of civilians in Myanmar proves that the military orchestrated the coup for their own benefits.

ဆန္ဒပြသူတွေကို နှိမ်နင်းပုံနဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို နှိမ်နင်းပုံ အတူတူပဲလို့ လေ့လာသူပြော

လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ( RFA )

မြန်မာဌာန | သတင်းများ
ရဲခေါင်မြင့်မောင်(ဝါရှင်တန်ဒီစီ)
2021-03-17

ရန္ကုန်တိုင်း လှိုင်သာယာမြို့နယ်မှာ စစ်တပ်နဲ့ ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်တွေက ဆန္ဒပြ ပြည်သူတွေကို အင်အား သုံးနှိမ် နှင်းနေတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေဟာ ၂၀၁၇ ခုနှစ်က ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်းမှာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို နယ်မြေရှင်း လင်းရေး လုပ်ပြီး နှိမ်နှင်းခဲ့သလို ပြင်းထန် လုပ်ရပ်ဖြစ်တယ်လို့ ပြည်ပက လေ့လာစောင့်ကြည့်သူ တစ်ဦးက ပြောပါတယ်။