#UN chief tells #Myanmar to give #Muslim #Rohingyas full citizenship, end religious violence

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. chief on Wednesday warned Myanmar that it must end Buddhist attacks on minority Muslims in the Southeast Asian country if it wants to be seen as a credible nation.
Sectarian violence against Rohingya Muslims in the predominantly Buddhist nation has killed hundreds in the past year, and uprooted about 140,000, in what some say presents a threat to Myanmar’s political reforms because it could encourage security forces to re-assert control.

ecretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday: “It is important for the Myanmar authorities to take necessary steps to address the legitimate grievances of minority communities, including the citizenship demands of the Muslim/Rohingya.”
He says failing to do so could risk “undermining the reform process and triggering negative regional repercussions.”
In 1982, Myanmar passed a citizenship law recognizing eight races and 130 minority groups — but omitted the nation’s 800,000 Rohingyas, among Myanmar’s 60 million people. Many Myanmar Buddhists view the Rohingyas as interlopers brought in by the British colonialists when the nation was known as Burma.
Earlier this year, Myanmar passed a law limiting Rohingyas in two townships in the western state of Rakhine, bordering Bangladesh, to having two children, a law that does not apply to Buddhists. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi criticized the law, and was widely denounced by Buddhists in Myanmar. Seen as likely to be elected president of Myanmar, she has had little else to say about Rohingya rights.
Myanmar had been ostracized by most of the world for 50 years after a coup that instituted military rule. But in recent years the country has been cautiously welcomed after it freed many political prisoners and ended the house arrest of Syu Kyi and instituted reforms. President Barack Obama visited the country last year on an Asian tour, as a hallmark of Myanmar’s rehabilitation.
Muslim ambassadors on Wednesday said Myanmar cannot rejoin the community of democratic nations if it doesn’t protect minority rights.
“It is not enough to just have elections, you have to end the killings and persecutions,” Saudi Arabian U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Yahya al-Mouallemi told reporters. He said the Rohingya are barred from citizenship, work, travel, religious practice, and even the proper burial of their dead.
Djibouti’s U.N. Ambassador Roble Olhaye, representing the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said that the Rohingya live in “permanent segregation in what amounts to ethnic cleansing.”
A call to the Myanmar U.N. Mission went unanswered on Wednesday evening.
Ban spoke at a meeting of ambassadors from the “Group of Friends on Myanmar,” consisting of Australia, China, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Britain, the United States, Vietnam, and the country holding the presidency of the European Union, currently Lithuania.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

#Yunus pitches for #Rohingyas

Bangladesh's Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, supported by former Timor-Leste president Ramos-Horta, has pitched in strongly for the persecuted Rohingyas of Myanmar.

"There is evidence that the Rohingya have been in present-day Myanmar since the 8th century,” the two wrote in Huffington Post. “It is incontrovertible that Muslim communities have existed in [Rakhine] State since the 15th century, added to by descendants of Bengalis migrating to Arakan [Rakhine] during colonial times.”

“The minority Muslim Rohingya continue to suffer unspeakable persecution, with more than 1,000 killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes just in recent months, apparently with the complicity and protection of security forces,” the two Nobel laureates wrote.

Ramos-Horta and Yunus also criticised Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law which denied Rohingyas citizenship of Myanmar and forced on them severe restrictions of travel, marriage and reproduction by the State. Yunus and Ramos-Horta urged the Myanmar government to protect the Rohingyas and welcome them as full citizens of the country.

The outspoken support for the Muslim Rohingya minority group stands in contrast to the surprising silence maintained on the issue by Myanmar's own Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

It also goes against a recent comment made by Deputy Immigration and Population Minister Kyaw Kyaw Win on the Rohingyas.

Recently speaking at the House of Representatives in Naypyitaw, Win said that “there is no so-called Rohingya ethnic race in Myanmar.”

Myanmar president Thein Sein, a former army general, has said that the Rohingyas are not of Myanmar but are "illegal Bengali migrants". He pitched for deporting them to third countries.

Rohingyas ‘have the right’ to apply for Burmese citizenship: minister

Rohingyas born in Burma are eligible to apply for citizenship if at least two generations of their families have lived in the country, Immigration Minister Khin Ye told the Radio Free Asia Burmese Service on Wednesday.

He said that those who met these requirements “have the right” to apply for citizenship in Burma, where many of them have lived in Rakhine State along the Bangladesh border for generations.

“Foreigners, like the Bengalis, have the right to apply for citizenship if they want to,” Khin Ye said, citing an amendment to the country’s constitution in 1982 during the rule of the former military regime.

“The requirements are that their grandparents and parents must have lived here and died here, that the applicant was born here and can speak the Burmese language, and that he or she wants to live here, among other things,” he said.

He maintained that the Rohingya, which he referred to as Bengalis from neighboring Bangladesh, were first brought to Burma as laborers during British occupation from 1824 until the nation gained its independence in 1948.

Khin Ye also explained why the government does not treat the Rohingya as an ethnic group in Burma, the RFA said. 

During the colonial era, Khin Ye said the Burmese “had no right to protect and manage our country,” meaning that the Rohingyas were never invited to stay by the country’s citizens.

“So unless they are blood-related with our people, there is no way they [can be automatically considered] our citizens,” he said.

Khin Ye said that some of the Rohingyas “have become citizens according to the law,” but said that most Burmese frequently assume that they have obtained their documentation through corrupt immigration officials.

The minority is not officially recognized as one of the more than 100 ethnic groups of Burma.  The country’s last two official censuses in 1973 and 1983 also did not list them amongst the population.

But he said he agreed with the international community that more must be done to address the root causes of the ethnic violence that shattered Rakhine state in June.

“When I met with international organizations and with the US ambassador yesterday, we never disagreed on the Rohingya issue,” he said.

“Mostly we discussed how to avoid this kind of conflict in the future and what needs to be done.”

Source

Diplomatic solution: Zaw Min Htut (second from left) and other Rohingya people in Japan stage a protest in front of the Myanmar Embassy in July. AYAKO MIE

Rohingya ask Japan to help stop Myanmar violence

By AYAKO MIE

Staff writer

Rohingya people in Japan, a Muslim ethnic minority in their home country of Myanmar, are asking the government to help ease escalating tensions there between Buddhists and Muslims that experts warn could develop into an international conflict.

Deadly riots first broke out in the western state of Rakhine near the border with Bangladesh in July after an Arakanese Buddhist girl was raped and murdered in May, allegedly by three Rohingya youths. The incident set off an onslaught of revenge attacks against Rohingya.

Even though the Myanmar government announced emergency rule in Rakhine, human rights observers said security forces did little to stop the violence and in some cases took part. At least 78 people were killed and more than 5,300 houses destroyed, according to government figures.

Rohingya in Japan who fled Myanmar to seek political asylum here are pinning their hopes on the Japanese government to pressure the Myanmar government to treat their compatriots better, as Japan has had an amiable history with the government during its years of repressive military rule.

"If there is a government the Myanmar government would listen to, it's the Japanese government," said Zaw Min Htut, president of the Burmese Rohingya Association of Japan.

In 1998, he fled political persecution in Myanmar and came to Japan, where he was first detained as an illegal immigrant. He is one of only a few Rohingya to be granted refugee status in Japan. Of 200 Rohingya who belong to the association, 15 have been granted official asylum.

The government of Myanmar President Thein Sein is now bringing sweeping changes to the once isolated nation since it pledged to transition into a democratic system. It has made reconciliation efforts among Myanmar's more than 100 ethnic minority groups, but not the Rohingya, who were excluded by the government from holding citizenship when the country enacted a citizenship law in 1982.

The United Nations estimates that about 800,000 Rohingya live in Rakhine state and describes them as one of the most persecuted and stateless minorities in the world.

The Rohingya issue is such an emotional one in Myanmar that even opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains silent, even though the ethnic Muslim group has been a staunch supporter of the democratic leader. Some pundits say the hatred against the Rohingya has been ingrained even among the most vocal human rights activists in Myanmar.

In an interview with The Japan Times, Zaw Min Htut said Japan wields more diplomatic clout as it was never a harsh critic of the military junta, while the United States and the European Union imposed economic sanctions against the military dictatorship. When Thein Sein visited Japan in April on the first state visit by a Myanmar leader in 28 years, Japan forgave $3.7 billion in debt to support the country's nascent democratization.

Officials at the Foreign Ministry said they recognize the clashes in Rakhine state, and that the government is paying close attention to developments, but they are on the fence about taking direct action aside from providing humanitarian assistance through the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Mizuho Fukushima, president of the Social Democratic Party and a lawyer who has worked on human rights issues, believes Japan could at least express concern to prompt the government of Thein Sein to take a more humanitarian approach to this issue.

The Upper House lawmaker has been supportive of Zaw Min Htut's human rights activities since the time he was detained by immigration authorities in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture.

"With the Myanmar government shifting toward a democratic system, more Japanese companies are eyeing business opportunities there," said Fukushima, who met with officials from the Foreign Ministry and Zaw Min Htut to discuss the Rohingya issue in early August.

"It might impact Japanese businesses if the clash escalates even further," said Fukushima, who said she will push the government to support an independent United Nations investigation into the matter.

Following international pressure, Thein Sein launched a commission to investigate the August sectarian killings. But experts warn that the clashes could get worse and have the potential to develop into an international conflict involving Muslim Bangladesh. They say mediation by a third party, such as Japan, is needed.

"It would be a great opportunity to exercise Japan's diplomatic skills," said Kei Nemoto, a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo and an expert on Myanmar, likening the situation to when Japan mediated peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the rebel Tamil Tigers in 2003. "But first Thein Sein has to agree to such a third-party mediation framework, which might be difficult."

Source 

Rohingya deserve to be treated as full citizens, UAE paper

Aug 13, 2012 - 10:03 - 

WAM Abu Dhabi, Aug 13th, 2012 (WAM) -- A UAE paper has praised President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan's decision ordering immediate aid for displaced Rohingya Muslims.

"Given the serious deterioration of the Rohingya's situation, the UAE was one of the first nations to highlight their plight and send them aid," "Gulf News" commented today in its editorial.

There is a tragedy and a humanitarian crisis that is unfolding on a massive scale in Myanmar. The Rohingya Muslims in the country are facing a brutal attack on their very existence, and it is time that the international community took a firm stance on the matter.

In addition, the UAE has called on the international community to take immediate steps to stop the violence that has been going on for a long time. Foreign Minister H.H. Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Saturday expressed the UAE's extreme concern over the killings of thousands of the Muslims in Myanmar.

The tragic situation of the Rohingya started when the military junta amended the country's constitution in 1982, thus branding the minority community as non-citizens. From then on until today, this group has only experienced suffering and deprivation. They have been denied personal and religious freedoms and their basic human rights abused. Such treatment has initiated an exodus to neighbouring countries and the resultant refugee status.

"Today, Rohingya Muslims need immediate assistance. But the root cause of the tragedy must be eliminated and that begins with addressing their rights as full citizens," the paper added.

WAM/AM

“I Have never heard the name Rohingya” – Islamphobia & Xenophobia or Racism!

Abid Bahar Ph.D.

Well, the above can't be my statement. Those of you, who know me, know I have been working with the Rohingya people and on Burma for the past 31 years. So I have heard the name “Rohingya” many times. But surprisingly some Burmese people, who lived with the Rohingya people in Arakan and in Burma all their lives are of the claim that they have never heard of the name "Rohingya. It is as if saying “I have never met my brother, I have never seen my sister or even saying I have never seen my neighbor;” It sounds strange to me but not funny. Such assertion about an ethnic group aimed at intentionally ignoring them because you dislike them is called xenophobia, fear of the stranger. When Rohingyas as Burmese are made into strangers by the Rakhine gentlemen like Aye Kyaw, Aye Chan and the monk Ashin Nayaka, it is more than xenophobia; it is racism. It is a matter of extreme intolerance: an idea that also goes against even Buddhism.

What is behind all this?

1.    Burma is a huge country with more than 130 ethnic groups. Rohingyas are not included within them by the military government and their collaborators because the xenophobe’s assertion that they entered Burma after 1825 when the British occupied Arakan.

How is this possible? The recently arrived Rohingya refugees from Arakan show some of them are not even as old as 5 years to enter Burma in 1825? Strange logic indeed, against some people's birth rights. Well, the real story is Rohingyas as the Arakani Muslims are racially and religiously different from the racially Asian and religiously Buddhist Arakani and the Burmese majority population. The Karen Christians also have similar problems in Burma because of their religious differences. There you go! 

2.    The fact is Arakan had an Indian kingdom first Hindu, later on Mohayana Buddhist (See the history of Mohamuni of Buddha statue now in Mandalay, see in the research work of Martin Smith "Muslim Rohingya of Burma, 1995). About Buddhism, this is similar to Mohayana Buddhism in Bengal of the time. The Rakhines (also known as the Moghs, identified in British history) took their official name Rakhine during the 40's was recorded in history (not in Aye Kwaw's proto-history) to have entered Arakan with Theravada Buddhism in the 10th century, much later than Rohingya Muslim's arrival in Arakan in the 8th century.   

Where did all these people called Arakani Muslims go who began to settle in Arakan from the 8th century?

Where did the decedents of the soldiers of Wali Khan and Shandhi Khan who married with the local women in the 15th century go? This Muslim army of 30,000 by Wali Khan and 40, 000 by Sindkhan went to Arakan to help the Arakani king settled in the Kaladan valley. Where did the decedents of the captured Bengalis forcefully brought to Arakan by the Portuguese in the 15th century to work in agricultural lands go? 

Well, they were all there settled in all over Arakan. But after the 1942 Arakani Muslim genocide most of the Arakani Muslims began to retreat to the north of Arakan called the Mayu frontier area and the Rakhines feeling unsafe began to settle in the north settled in the South; some Rohingyas from 1942 even began to cross to Bangladesh. Then the situation was made more complicated when the British identified all the Arakani Muslims as being the Indian Muslims this was because India and Burma were under the one British Empire. However, in 1937 Burma was separated from India and the Arakani Muslims’ were seen as “foreigners,” and their fate was allotted with the Burmese Buddhist majority country. 

To avoid the anti-foreigner movement that first began in Rangoon by Ottama, an Arakani reactionary monk, Rohingya leaders began to separate their British labeled identity (of being the Indian immigrant Muslims settled in Rangoon.)to their indigenous identity. In order to do that they officially adapted an existing Burmese name called the "Rohingya” used by the Arakani Muslims for themselves before Britain occupied Arakan. The leaders officially adapted the name during the 50's.That was a smart move by the Rohingyas but to the military and the xenophobes, it was another excuse to attack the victim; the Rohingya. It had turned out to be another excuse as if like in the wolf vs. lamb story of blaming the victim. The naming provided the military and the xenophobes the excuse that Burmese people have never heard of the name "Rohingya." "They must be "Bengalis"” immigrant” "Kula" and thus the contemporary anti-Rohingya propaganda began.

3.    Surprisingly, the name "Rohingya" was heard by Francis Buchanan in 1798 in Burma, recorded in Francis Buchanan, in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla, (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1992), 82. It is true, Rohingyas look more like the Bengalis across the border from Burma but, Jacques Leider calls Arakan a "frontier culture."  And it is true, Rohingyas are as if the Shans of Burma who have their Thai cousins across the border. But that doesn’t make Rohingyas non Burmese. 

4.    No wonder, there are still some Rakhine Burmese people in Arakan says "We have never heard the name "Rohingya." Well, my question to a xenophobe Burmese who says " I have never heard of the word "Rohingya," question #1 Did you hear the news of Rohingya exodus of 1978 when 200,000 Rohingyas were forced out from Burma who were carrying NRC (national Registration Cards) because as a researcher I personally verified their NRC cards in refugee camps in Ukiya Bangladesh. Burmese government was forced to take back Rohingyas due to the pressure from international body because Rohingyas were carrying official documents. (b). did you also hear that in 1982 Burmese military government through a constitutional Act officially denied Rohingyas's Burmese citizenship? (c) Did you hear that in the 1991-92 there was another huge Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh? This time Burma made sure that Rohingyas don't carry any NRC.

Are you still confused? If you are still not sure about the name “Rohingya,” it is your problem because you are most likely not informed of your country; in that case I can not help your ignorance. 

Worst of all if you as a xenophobe are acting strangely, it is called hypocrisy. In that case, if you are a citizen of Burma, you are intentionally keeping yourself ignorant, so that you can pretend, surely then you are a charlatan. 

But if you are promoting this pretension saying "I have never heard the name Rohingya," they must be foreigners," and you are helping the military to exterminate them, and let me tell you, even if you have deserted a Burmese government job in a foreign embassy and is now a powerful democracy movement leader in USA or in UK, it is true, you are more likely to be a double agent, a war criminal that demands to be investigated and exposed to the world. 

Why is it important to identify this type of assertions? Because in saying “I have never heard of the word Rohingya before" some leaders of Burma deny a people's birth rights, and help the military to exterminate them.  

Strangely, it is some opportunist Arakanese Rakine gentleman pumped up in prejudice, posing as the devoted democracy movement leaders in everywhere, do everything to block Rohingya leader's participation in Burma's ethnic nationalities’ programs quietly asserting the statement " I have never heard of the name Rohingya."   

But revolutionaries are not shy people. They know the difference between democracy-lovers and the reactionaries. As a matter of duty to Burma's democracy movement and particularly to discourage the growth of xenophobia, reactionaries and their pretensions in Burma, by seemingly responsible people should be brought to public attention.  In the meantime, Rohingyas continue to leave Arakan. FIDH International Federation of Human Rights says: 

The …exodus is a deep, sustained trickle of low visibility. The Rohingyas progressively leave Burma in small groups, families or individuals…. Little by little, the population is being forced to leave Arakan because of a deliberate policy of cleansing.”

In that situation an observer lately commented about the Rohingya situation "The life of a refugee is like a football, kicking from bar to bar. One goal bar is on the soil of east Naff River and another is west Naff River. The Naff River is a football ground." 

The international community should know that those people in the democracy movement leadership who receive huge donations from Western democracies in the name of promoting democracy in Burma are tolerating the military’s exclusion of the Rohingyas from Burmese citizenship; in the name of democracy they are tolerating and some even promoting racism in Burma. One Aye Chan published a book called Rohingyas as the “Influx Viruses.” The book was forwarded by Monk Ashin Nayaka. For the international community, in addition to sanction grants, there is much to be done to promote democracy in Burma.

(The text is adapted from Abid Bahar’s book: Burma’s Missing Dots, 2009, Chapter 12)

OIC slams global inaction on Myanmar Muslims

Jeddah: The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed disappointment over the inaction of the international community to stop the massacres, injustice and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Myanmar government against Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan region.

In his speech at the extraordinary meeting of the OIC Executive Committee on this issue on Sunday, Ihsanoglu explained the steps being taken by OIC to protect Muslim minority in Myanmar.

He said that the neglect of the rights of Rohingyas by the international community and the lack of unity among Rohingya organizations spurred the OIC to exert earnest efforts to unite these organizations for the first time at the OIC headquarters in May 2011.

 

The OIC General Secretariat had directed its offices at the United Nations in New York to coordinate with its member states which are also non-permanent members of the UN Security Council (Azerbaijan, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo) to urge the Council to consider the plight of the Rohingyan minorities, he noted.

 

The secretary general condemned the continued repression and ethnically-motivated oppression of the Rohingyan Muslims as well as to demand restoration of their legitimate rights and request member states, particularly those with representation with the Myanmar government, to do all within their means to convince the Myanmar government to repeal the arbitrary 1982 Citizenship Law which led to withdrawal of citizenship from Rohingyan Muslims.

Ihsanoglu also urged countries, especially Myanmar’s neighboring countries, as well as Islamic organizations and bodies to provide urgent assistance to the Rohingyan Muslims.

He proposed that the Islamic Group in Geneva should dispatch and urgent request to the Human Rights Council to send a fact-finding mission to investigate the massive violation perpetrated against the Muslims inhabitants of Arakan.

The OIC Secretary General also proposed that setting up of an Islamic fact-finding committee on the events should be considered, and that a report in that regard should be submitted to the next ministerial conference. 

He also proposed that an Islamic ministerial contact group should be established to find a just radical solution to this pending issue by contacting all relevant parties, including the government of Myanmar, as well as international and regional organizations and bodies.

 

Ihsanoglu called on the OIC Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission to consider the issue at its next session to be held in Turkey at the end of August.