#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.

New 'retaliatory' attacks on #Myanmar's #Rohingyas

Rohingya activists have alleged that Myanmar's Buddhist protesters have launched fresh attacks on Muslims in retaliation to last week's attacks by Muslims on Buddhist temples and houses in Bangladesh.

Nurul Islam, a Rohingya activist in Bangladesh, told DW that a number of Myanmar Buddhists took out a protest rally on Sunday against the attacks on Buddhist temples and houses in Bangladesh. He alleged that the protesters attacked a 400-year-old mosque and burnt hundreds of copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and other religious texts.

"In the past few days, many Burmese Buddhists have launched a series of attacks on Muslims," Islam said. "They are posting derogatory texts and pictures about Islam on social networking websites. They seem to be retaliatory attacks.”

Last month, an outbreak of anti-Buddhist rioting in Bangladesh left at least four temples and dozens of homes gutted by fire. Muslims had taken to the streets to protest against an internet photo they said defamed Islam. At least 20 people were believed to have been injured in these riots. The rioters targeted the Bangladeshi town of Ramu and its adjourning villages, some 350 kilometers (216 miles) from the capital, Dhaka.

Deadly riots erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine state in June. Rohingya activists claim that more than 650 Rohingyas have so far been killed in these riots.

"After the violence broke out in Rakhine in June, the Buddhists started using social networking sites to organise attacks on Rohingyas," Aung Kyaw Oo, a member of the Rohingya community, told DW. "Now, after the attacks on Buddhists in Bangladesh, they have taken the anti-Rohingya campaign to a new height."

The prejudice

Bangladesh has started turning Rohingya away

Myanmar's Rohingyas live predominantly in the western state of Rakhine. They are not officially recognized by the Burmese government as an ethnic minority group, and for decades they have been subjected to discrimination and violence by the Buddhist majority.

Viewed by the United Nations and the US as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, many Rohingyas have fled to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh and India to escape persecution.

Despite the fact that Myanmar has embarked on a series of political and economic reforms, human rights organizations and activists say the situation of Myanmar's ethnic communities has not improved significantly.

Mark Farmaner, head of the Burma Campaign UK, says that anti-Muslim prejudice is not restricted to the Rohingyas, and that it is certainly on the rise.

"While I was in Myanmar just before the start of the crisis, I came across anti-Muslim prejudice everywhere. This prejudice is encouraged by the Burmese government, with ministers making derogatory remarks about Muslims publicly," said Farmaner.

But experts say it is difficult to get credible information out of the region. They say it is hard to tell the difference between rumors, propaganda and the truth.

Source

US sanction policy not affected by Rohingya issue: US ambassador

Source : Mizzima News

The community violence in western Burma was surprising, but it hasn’t affected Washington’s views on easing sanctions, the US Ambassador to Burma said in a story in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Derek Mitchell speaks at the US embassy in Rangoon on July 20, 2012. Photo: Mizzima

“I have to say it did surprise us to the degree that there would be violence so quickly, that it would spread so terribly,” said newly appointed Ambassador Derek Mitchell. “I don’t think it affects our view on sanctions. It just means we have an even more complex challenge ahead of us in the country.”

Mitchell said much of the Rohingya conflict comes from everyday citizens, many of who would deny the Rohingyas the right to live in the country.

“It’s unfortunate when you see the depths of intolerance and discrimination….among citizens,” Mitchell said—including “people who otherwise you would think of as progressive and who have fought so long for civil rights.”

He said the community violence “had to do with the deep-seated intolerance that seemed to be within the society writ large. So I think that’s where the deep disappointment came.”

He told the newspaper that the US understands the feelings among Buddhists in western Burma that they, too, have also suffered in recent years, and that international organizations have focused too much on Rohingya concerns.

But he said the Rohingyas “are stateless."

"They have nowhere to turn," he said. "And it is not going to be lost on the international community.”

The Burmese government recently named a 27-member investigation commission that included former student activists, representatives from political parties and government critics who spent time in jail as political prisoners. 

The commission is on a two-day trip to Rakhine State at this time and is expected to have a report finished by late September.

Rohingyas treated as collateral damage

Violence against Myanmar’s Muslim minority is only the latest chapter in a history of state-sponsored repression that began in the 1950s in a bid to achieve racial purity

• By Azad Essa
• Published: 00:00 August 18, 2012

A few weeks ago, a picture showing hundreds of dark-skinned men splayed across a beach was passed around on Facebook. The men appeared to be either asleep, or more likely, dead. They lay against each other, their faces averted from the camera, while men in fatigues holding semi-automatic weapons towered over them. The caption read: ‘Continuity of massacre of Muslims of Myanmar by Buddhists. More than 1,000 killed yesterday. Please share.’

After some probing, the photograph turned out to be a fake. But all fabrications aside, there actually is a bona fide crisis unfolding along the Myanmar and Bangladesh border — despite the poppycock on social media, the sham did raise questions that traditional media have largely ignored.

Violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine region erupted in June after the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist girl by Muslim men. The scale of violence has led to scores of deaths and the mass displacement of tens of thousands of people.

After a state of emergency was declared in the province, the entry of Myanmar’s security forces lent another dimension to this conflict. Amnesty International said in early August that Rakhine Buddhists, together with security forces, purposefully meted out devastating violence against the Muslim minority.

Article continues below

This violence is only the latest chapter in a long history of state-sponsored repression against the Rohingyas. It began when Myanmar began its project of ‘Myanmarnisation’ in the 1950s, with its lofty aims for racial purity and the nationalisation of resources following the end of British rule. The minority was targeted in pogroms in 1978, stripped of their citizenship in 1982 and became the perfect foil for rampant human rights abuse, including slave labour and torture, that led to a second exodus into Bangladesh in 1991-92.

But not only are the Rohingyas a disenfranchised people, they are dark-skinned Muslims with little relevance, representation and significance to anyone. Unable to deal with a matter the much-vaunted Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has not endorsed, the western world has tiptoed around the issue.

Suu Kyi’s silence is evidently an attempt to placate her constituency ahead of general elections in 2015, and to criticise her now would be like admonishing Nelson Mandela in the run-up to the 1994 election in South Africa. But unlike South Africa in the 1990s, Myanmar is not on the verge of some tremendous political shakeup; while the Rohingyas are being sacrificed as collateral damage in the greater project of the democratisation of Myanmar, Suu Kyi is missing an extraordinary opportunity to live up to her reputation.

Delayed reaction

Meanwhile, in that parallel universe known as the ‘Muslim world’, the Rohingyas have joined Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq and Afghanistan on the list of flagship Muslim causes. In a region that is home to the world’s greatest concentration of Muslims, the delayed reaction of neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei is startling.

Last week, Bangladesh, another Muslim country, ordered three NGOs to stop providing food and other humanitarian assistance to Rohingyas in the border area, claiming it did not want to encourage more asylum-seekers to its shores. Already 40,000 unregistered Rohingyas live in makeshift camps in Bangladesh, and according to the UN Refugee Agency, the latest violence will result in a greater influx of people — whether Bangladesh likes it or not.

While Myanmar’s Muslim neighbours struggle to respond, Saudi Arabia has donated money. It has fallen to Turkey to act decisively by further extending its newly found benevolence to the Islamic world. As images of the Turkish prime minister’s wife sobbing as she witnessed the effects of the violence herself begin to be passed around online — further cementing the Rohingya cause to the long list of Muslims’ suffering — Muslim prayers have bemoaned the global silence. And yet little is being done by Muslims to actually reverse the treatment of their purported brethren themselves.

It all makes for a rather disempowering picture, but it doesn’t have to. Given how fast a fake picture can spread its way across the world, imagine what we could do with a little engagement.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Azad Essa is a journalist and the author of Zuma’s Bastard and The Moslems are Coming.

Burma Lets the Rohingya Burn

Associated Press//Khin Maung Win
Police walk toward burning buildings in Sittwe on June 12.

By MATTHEW F. SMITH

Bangkok

The West's faith in Burma isn't being repaid. When U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on investments by American companies in the country last month, state security forces were still committing killings, rape and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state. These abuses came after the authorities failed to protect both Rohingya and Arakan Buddhists during sectarian violence that erupted in early June and which continues today.

The Rohingya, largely scorned by Burmese society, are treated as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Because they were stripped of citizenship in 1982, even in the best of times they are subjected to forced labor, arbitrary detentions, beatings and restrictions on movement.

But they've had it worse since June. We can trace the immediate causes of the violence to the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman, allegedly by three Muslim men, which was followed on June 3 by the retaliatory massacre of 10 Burmese Muslim travelers in the town of Toungop. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims in northern Arakan soon rioted, and then violence quickly spread to the state capital Sittwe and beyond.

Despite the large Burmese military presence in the state, local Arakan and Rohingya residents described how the authorities failed to protect them through the days of grisly violence. A displaced Arakan mother of five told me how she witnessed a mob of Rohingya kill and nearly behead her husband, chopping off his arm. A displaced Rohingya woman explained how an Arakan mob beat her and her family in their home, killing her brother-in-law when he attempted to flee.

While the army eventually contained the violence in Sittwe, local security forces still opened fire on Rohingya as they attempted to extinguish fires set by groups of Arakan. A 36-year-old Rohingya man from the largest Muslim neighborhood in Sittwe told me that an Arakan mob set fire to his family's home in the presence of security forces. "When the people tried to put out the fires," he said, "the paramilitary shot at us."

Scores of witnesses to the violence say the same thing. "The government could have stopped this," a young Arakan man told us in Sittwe. Just days later an ethnic Rohingya elder used the exact same words: "The government could have stopped this."

Testimonials such as this should make observers doubt the government's word. The government claims 78 people died in the violence. Human Rights Watch fears the number is significantly higher.

In the predominantly Muslim townships of northern Arakan, state security forces have killed and rounded up fleeing Rohingya in violent mass arrests, holding detainees incommunicado and subjecting them to beatings and torture. Over 100,000 people have been displaced and the government has restricted humanitarian access to the Rohingya community, leaving many in dire need of food, shelter and medical care.

Successive Burmese governments have long abused both the Rohingya and Arakan populations—the Arakan because of their fierce ethnic nationalism, and the Rohingya because of a wholesale denial the group has any place in Burma, a view shared by much of Burma's population. The abuses we're seeing now are simply an extension of decades of state policies of persecution.

These human-rights abuses are worrying because they raise doubts about President Thein Sein's political-reform program. To his credit, he has instituted important changes in Burma since taking office in March 2011. Hundreds of political prisoners have been released, freedoms of assembly have been respected, and the democratic opposition now holds several seats in parliament. This is surely cause for hope.

Nevertheless, because these changes were carefully planned, it appears the government is now willfully ignoring the Rohingya stain on its human-rights record. Leave aside for a moment the fact that Burma's discriminatory citizenship law denies 800,000 to one million Rohingya their rights. Now, President Thein Sein proposes to address the crisis in Arakan by expelling them from the country. This would be the "only solution," he told the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Before Westerners treat the Rohingya story as a remote incident, consider that Arakan state is home to tens of billions of dollars worth of verified natural gas deposits. U.S. firms hope to compete in this area with Chinese, Korean, and Indian oil companies that have been there for years, but now it's in a state of emergency. If the government is violating human rights, businesses can't depend on the maintenance of law and order. Aung San Suu Kyi argued as much a few months ago.

Transition from authoritarian rule will not come without setbacks. But no one is served when the state fails to address the gravity of such abuses. Rather than generate undue optimism for the country's investment prospects, world leaders need to let Burma's rulers know they will not be rewarded for continuing these atrocities.

Mr. Smith is a researcher with Human Rights Watch and an author of the new report, "The Government Could Have Stopped This: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma's Arakan State," published last week.

France calls on Myanmar to protect Muslims

Source : Bangkok Post

France called Monday for Myanmar authorities to protect civilians of all ethnic groups "without discrimination'' after reports of renewed deadly violence between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya.

"France attaches great importance to a peaceful and concerted resolution to ethnic questions in Myanmar, in order to achieve national reconciliation,'' foreign ministry deputy spokesman Vincent Floreani said in a statement.

The ministry called for the status of Muslims in Myanmar's western Rakhine state "to be clarified with regard to right to nationality and for them to enjoy, whatever their status, full respect for human rights.''

"There are reports of worrying acts of violence by security forces against civilians. We call on the Burmese authorities to protect all civilian populations, without discrimination, and to investigate possible abuses,'' Floreani said.

Fighting in western Rakhine state has killed 80 people from both sides since June, with six reportedly killed on Sunday, although authorities say the situation has been generally calm in recent weeks.

The violence initially broke out in June following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman and the subsequent lynching of 10 Muslims by a crowd of angry Buddhists.

The bloodshed has cast a shadow over widely praised reforms by President Thein Sein, including the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the election of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to parliament.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar forces of opening fire on Rohingya, as well as committing rape and standing by as rival mobs attacked each other.

Decades of discrimination have left the Rohingya stateless and they are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

Saudi Arabia accuses Myanmar of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Muslims

Violence which erupted in June in the Myanmar state of Rakhine, between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya, has reportedly left about 80 people dead on both sides. (Reuters)

By AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES 

Saudi Arabia accused authorities in Buddhist-majority Myanmar on Monday of “ethnic cleansing” against the Muslim Rohingya minority in the west of the country, state media reported on Tuesday.

The Saudi cabinet said it “condemns the ethnic cleansing campaign and brutal attacks against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya citizens, as well as violation of human rights by forcing them to leave their homeland,” in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The cabinet, chaired by King Abdullah, urged the “international community to take up its responsibilities by providing needed protection and quality of life to Muslims in Myanmar and preventing further loss of life.”

Fighting in western Rakhine state between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya left three killed on Sunday, a government official in Yangon said.

The violence initially broke out following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman and the subsequent lynching of 10 Muslims by a crowd of angry Buddhists.

The bloodshed has cast a shadow over widely praised reforms by President Thein Sein, that have included the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the election of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to parliament.

The head of the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Sunday proposed sending an OIC mission to probe the “massacres” of Rohingya Muslims.

The OIC will try to persuade the government in Yangon to accept an OIC fact-finding mission, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told an executive committee meeting of the world's largest Muslim grouping which is based in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

He “expressed disappointment over the failure of the international community to take action to stop the massacres, violations, oppression and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the government of Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslims.”

“The OIC has directed its offices at the United Nations in New York to urge the Council to look into the suffering of the Rohingya minority,” he said, quoted in a statement issued by the 57-member organization.

Violence which erupted in June in Rakhine state between Buddhists and Rohingya left about 80 people dead from both sides, official figures showed.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that figure appeared “grossly underestimated,” however, and accused security forces of opening fire on Muslims and committing rape.

Hundreds of Rohingya men and boys have been rounded up and remain incommunicado in the western region of the country formerly known as Burma, it said in a report.

Members of both the Muslim and Buddhist communities committed horrific acts of violence with reports of beheadings, stabbings, shootings and widespread arson in Rakhine, also known as Arakan state, the report added

On Sunday, the Speaker of the Arab Parliament, Ali al-Salem al-Dekbasi said the violent incidents taking place in Myanmar against the Muslims were “ethnic cleansing”.

“Thousands of Muslims in Myanmar face massacre, genocide and ethnic cleansing. I call on all Muslim leaders to urgently intervene in the incidents,” al-Dekbasi said.

“I call on the Myanmar authorities to arrest those responsible for the attacks against the Muslims. All those responsible should be tried by the International Criminal Court,” al-Dekbasihe added/.

Myanmar’s government considers the estimated 800,000 Rohingya in the country to be foreigners, while many citizens see them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and view them with hostility.

Decades of discrimination have left them stateless and they are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

'Truth Commission' Proposed

  Copyright © 1998-2011 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

 The U.N. asks Burma to set up a South African-style panel to probe human rights abuses.

AFP U.N. Human Rights envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana talks to journalists at the Rangoon international airport, Aug. 4, 2012

A senior United Nations human rights expert has called on Burma to establish a "truth commission" to investigate human rights abuses committed mostly under the previous military junta's harsh rule, as the country enters a new era of liberalization.

UN Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana, speaking late Saturday after a week long visit to the country, also called for an "independent and credible investigation" into the June violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state.

He said that he had discussed with various "stakeholders" in Burma, including ethnic groups, political party leaders, and members of parliament, a proposal for establishing a truth commission based on a model used by South Africa to address rights violations during apartheid rule.

The military junta especially under retired general Than Shwe's two decades of ironclad rule has been accused of widespread rights abuses.

The well-documented abuses, including forced labor, killings, torture, displacement of ethnic minority people, and use of rape as a weapon to terrorize them, may amount to war crimes, some U.N. officials and human rights groups have said.

"I remain of the opinion that addressing grievances from decades of human rights violations is crucial for democratic transition and national reconciliation.  Acknowledging the suffering of victims and allowing them to heal will help to prevent future violations from occurring," Quintana said in a lengthy statement after his Burma visit.

He said that the Burmese parliament, as the only multi-party and multi-ethnic public institution, was the most appropriate body for the creation of such a probe commission.

"As a first step, there should be a process of consultation with all relevant stakeholders, including victims of human rights violations, in order to get their advice and views on how this truth commission should be shaped," he said, adding that U.N. and other international organizations could provide assistance in the endeavor.

'Serious'

Quintana, who also visited violence-hit Rakhine during his trip, said the human rights situation in the western Burmese state is "serious."

"I am concerned...at the allegations I have received of serious human rights violations committed as part of measures to restore law and order.  These include the excessive use of force by security and police personnel, arbitrary arrest and detention, killings, the denial of due process guarantees and the use of torture in places of detention," he said.

"While I am in no position to be able to verify these allegations at this point in time, they are of grave concern."

He said it is therefore of "fundamental importance to clearly establish what has happened in Rakhine State and to ensure accountability.

"Reconciliation will not be possible without this, and exaggerations and distortions will fill the vacuum to further fuel distrust and tensions between communities." he said, calling for "an independent and credible investigation into these allegations of human rights violations as a matter of urgency."

The Burmese government has moved to restore law and order in Rakhine state, including the deployment of additional security forces to the area, and the establishment of a commission to investigate the incidents that sparked the communal violence.

Both the Rakhines and the Rohingyas have been blamed for sparking the violence but human rights groups say the minority Muslim Rohingya group bore the brunt of action by the Burmese security forces.

U.S. based Human Rights Watch said government forces had sided with ethnic Rakhines and committed killings and rape on Rohingyas.

Witnesses told HRW they saw security forces opening fire on Rohingya villagers fleeing their homes and groups of armed Rakhines traveling together with police, the rights group said.

'Systematic discrimination'

Quintana also highlighted what he called "systematic discrimination" against the Rohingya community, citing a host of concerns including the Burmese government's denial of citizenship or legal status to the minority ethnic group as well as limitations on their freedom of movement and marriage restrictions.

"I hope that steps will be taken to address these issues, including a review of the 1982 Citizenship Act to ensure that it is in line with international human rights standards," he said, referring to the law which barred citizenship for the Rohingya group.

Burma does not recognize the Rohingya as one of its ethnic groups, considering them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though they have lived in the Southeast Asian country for generations.

The U.N. says about 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma and they are one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

Quintana also said he received allegations of attacks on civilians, sexual violence, torture and recruitment of child soldiers in northern Kachin state, where violence between troops and Kachin rebels resisting calls for dialogue have displaced at least 50,000 people.

"I must therefore reiterate that it is vital for these allegations to be addressed as a matter of priority," he said.

President Thein Sein's administration has struck ceasefire agreements with 10 ethnic armed groups since taking over from the junta in March last year, aside from a series of democratic reforms including releasing hundreds of political prisoners.

Reported by RFA's Burmese service. Written in English with additional reporting by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

Copyright © 1998-2011 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

Massacre of Muslims in Burma; NAMF call Canadian Govt to Act

Source: S.O. News Service, I.G. Bhatkali

North American Muslim Foundation (NAMF) has called for urgent action to halt killings, rapes and expulsions being carried out in western Burma against ethnic Rohingya (Muslim) Burmese citizens.

In a press statement on Aug 4, NAMF condemn the attack and brought to the attention of the issue of the current genocide of fellow Muslims in Burma. It said that the United Nations calls them as -one of the most persecuted minorities of the world.- Most recently, over 1000 Rohingya Muslims were killed, 1,200 plus are missing and more than 100,000 have been displaced due to rape, arson and killing. 1,336 homes belonging to the Rohingya Muslims have been burnt to ashes during the recent unrest.

It further said that, the Burmese military government, far from trying to resolve the problem and protecting the Rohingya, has been silently convening with the rioters to add to their plight and suffering. This atrocity must stop now

In order to avoid the worsening of the situation NAMF demanded the Canadian government to take urgent action in addressing this issue with the UN Security Council in order to pressure the Burmese government to stop all atrocities.

NAMF also demanded International relief organizations to be allowed to provide immediate access and humanitarian aid to the victims.

NAMF demanded the Ministry of Canadian Foreign Affairs to put pressure on the Bangladeshi government to open its borders to the fleeing Burmese refugees who are in dire need of aid and protection.

"We request all Canadians to protest against the Burmese state-sponsored oppression against the Rohingya and strongly denounce all acts of cruelty against them", it added.

4,000 Muslim Rohingyas killed, 8,000 blank in Myanmar

By Myanmar News Linking Site

Speaking to Today’s Zaman on Monday, Tin Soe, a ubiquitous executive of a Kalaban Press Network, a internal media opening determined by Muslim Rohingyas in Bangladesh, pronounced a atrocities took place as a outcome of irritation by Buddhists and a coming of built reports in a media.

Soe claimed that a built reports of a rape and murder of a Buddhist lady by 3 Muslims were consciously disseminated and led to widespread atrocities opposite Muslims. However, Soe argued that rapes of Muslim women, woe and mass killings of many Rohingyas have not come to a courtesy of a world’s media.

According to Soe, before a attainment of United Nations Human Rights observers, several scenarios were played out, with Rakhine Buddhists sanctimonious to take preserve in temples and schools to remonstrate UN officials that they are victims of intra-communal violence. In return, camps in that thousands of Rohingyas had collected were diluted to remonstrate officials that they were empty.

Since a initial reports about atrocities pennyless in universe news agencies, Buddhists have strong their aroused acts opposite Muslims and killed 10 Muslim Rohingyas.

Since May 29, scarcely 4,000 Muslim Rohingyas have been massacred and a predestine of 8,000 others who have left blank is unknown, Soe claims.

Fears and concerns have flared about those that are missing, in that they competence be being hold in jail or buried in mass graves. The Myanmar supervision has declined to criticism on a emanate so far. Soe, who is himself an racial Muslim Rohingya, pronounced a many cryptic areas are located along both sides of a Naf River between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Maungdaw and Bulhidaumg are a cities where a systematic killings are holding place, he said.

Noting that a supervision of Bangladesh is incompetent to accommodate a needs of a 500,000 Muslim Rohingyas who have taken preserve in a country, he pronounced a supervision is usually able of providing