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Muslim leaders urge Myanmar to restore order

Myanmar's Muslim leaders have appealed to President Thein Sein to take swift action to quell religious violence, accusing security forces of standing by as rioters went on a rampage.

Muslim leaders urge Myanmar to restore order

"These violent attacks include crimes such as arson and massacres which deserve heavy penalties," four groups including the Islamic Religious Affairs Council and the Myanmar Muslim National Affairs Organisation wrote in an open letter to the president.

"However, in this situation the authorities neglected to take swift and effective action against the perpetrators who recklessly committed crimes in front of them," they added, in remarks seen by AFP on Thursday.

"Massacres and damages to religious buildings and property are due to the weakness of the responsible authorities to protect and take effective action."

At least 40 people have been killed and mosques burned in several towns in central Myanmar since a new eruption of sectarian strife on March 20, prompting the government to impose emergency rule and curfews in some areas.

The clashes were apparently triggered by an argument in a gold shop that turned into an escalating riot during which mosques were burned, houses razed and charred bodies left lying in the streets.

But witnesses say much of the violence appears to be well organised.

Security forces fired warning shots on Wednesday to disperse rioters and dozens of people have been detained.

It is the worst sectarian strife since violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the western state of Rakhine last year left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced.

"The stability of the country and the protection of the lives, properties and religious buildings of Muslim communities across the country will be restored only by quick and effective action," the religious leaders said.

Nyunt Maung Shein, president of Islamic Religious Affair Council, said the letter was sent to the president's office on Tuesday but they had yet to receive a reply.

The communal clashes pose a major challenge to the reformist government of Thein Sein, a former general who took office two years ago following the end of decades of outright military rule.

Myanmar's Muslims -- largely of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent -- account for an estimated four percent of the population of roughly 60 million.

Religious violence has occasionally broken out in the past in some areas across the country, but was largely suppressed during the previous junta era.

Updated: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:52:15 GMT | By Agence France-Presse

Foto Pembunuhan Islam Rohingya

ROHINGYA WITH MALAYSIAKINI: What drives them to sea.

What drives
the Rohingyas
to sea?

By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Bangkok

The dramatic testimony from survivors of a draconian Thai military policy of towing Rohingya boat people out to sea and leaving them there has drawn international attention to the plight of one of the world's most oppressed people.

The numbers heading out into the Andaman Sea have increased sharply

So what is it that is driving so many Rohingya, a Muslim minority from the western-most part of Burma, to flee in rickety boats in the hope of finding refuge elsewhere?

The term Rohingya refers to a distinct, Muslim ethnic group living in northern Rakhine state, along the border with Bangladesh.

They are thought to be descended from Arab and other Muslim traders who travelled and settled there more than 1,000 years ago.

They speak a dialect of Bengali similar to that spoken in the Cox's Bazaar region of Bangladesh.

There are perhaps one million living there, but may be as many more living overseas, mainly in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

Harassed and beaten

Northern Rakhine state is one of the poorest and most isolated in Burma.

But the burdens imposed on the Rohingya by Burma's military rulers make their situation a whole lot worse than other people living in the area.

Survivor's ordeal on Andaman Sea

"Economic hardship and chronic poverty prevents many thousands of people in north Rakhine state from gaining food security," says Chris Kaye, the country director for the UN's World Food Programme who visited there two months ago.

"Many do not have land rights or access to farmland to grow food, and the restrictions and limitations on the movement of people, goods and commodities places additional stress on people's livelihood opportunities."

For a start, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under Burma's 1982 citizenship law, which leaves them out of the 135 ethnic groups officially recognised by the state.

The official view of the Burmese military is that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.

Rohingya trying to leave Burma are often harassed and beaten by the Burmese security forces, but then allowed to leave, and told never to return.

They are also unable to travel freely. The military demands that they obtain an official permit even to travel to the next town.

It is almost impossible for them to get permission to travel outside northern Rakhine.

Marriage restrictions

Rohingya are subjected to routine forced labour.

The amount of time they have to give varies, but Chris Lewa at the Arakan Project says that typically a Rohingya man will have to give up one day a week to work on military or government projects, and one night for sentry duty.

This reduces the time they have to earn a living for their families. Burmese Buddhists living in the area are usually not required to do this.

Some Rohingyas said they were beaten by the Thai authorities

The Rohingya have also lost a lot of arable land, which has been confiscated by the military to give to Buddhist settlers from elsewhere in Burma.

One of the most bizarre forms of discrimination imposed on the Rohingya is that they must get official permission to get married.

Like all the other documents they must obtain, these give opportunities for officials to extort money from them, and the marriage approval can take two years or more.

Couples caught getting married or sleeping together without this approval can be arrested.

The Arakan Project has documented a number of cases where the men have been jailed, in one case for seven years. When they get married they are required to sign a commitment not to have more than two children.

Camp squalor

This litany of abuse and harassment makes the Rohingya a downtrodden underclass even in Burma, one of the world's most repressive and impoverished states.

The Thai military's hardline approach in recent weeks has backfired badly

This is why 200,000 fled to Bangladesh in 1978, and another 250,000 between 1991 and 1992. There has been a steady stream into Bangladesh since then.

But the numbers heading out into the Andaman Sea by boat have increased sharply over the past two to three years.

There has been no discernable deterioration in the way the Rohingya are being treated by the Burmese authorities, as in 1978 and 1991, so other factors are driving them to leave.

Conditions for the Rohingya in Bangladesh are grim. Around 28,000 live in the two officially recognised camps, which get some assistance from the UN.

But 200,000 more eke out an existence outside the camps, in a desperately poor part of Bangladesh, with no official documentation, and no prospect of employment.

In the past they have made their way to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, in search of work, as many Bangladeshis do.

They could do that because it was relatively easy to obtain Bangladeshi passports. But heightened security concerns in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia over Islamic extremism have made it far more difficult for the stateless Rohingya to travel.

Rare publicity

Instead they have been making their way to Malaysia by boat.

There are already around 20,000 Rohingya in Malaysia, and the UN has had some success in protecting them from deportation.

Many who make the perilous journey at sea come close to death

The job prospects there are better than Bangladesh, and this slim hope of a better life is what is now driving thousands to take the risky journey across the Andaman Sea.

Inevitably some have landed in Thailand instead. Others have been intercepted by the Thai navy once they entered its territorial waters, which lie en route to Malaysia.

Networks of brokers have grown to cash in on this hope; they charge up to $800 (£547) to make the trip in rickety and overcrowded boats.

Shortages of food and higher prices over the past year in northern Rakhine state are also driving more people to flee.

Of the Rohingya survivors being washed up in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands after being set adrift by the Thai security forces, some left Bangladesh, some left Burma, and a few had been rounded up in Thailand after living there for some time.

The scandal over Thailand's treatment of the Rohingya has at least brought their plight some rare publicity.

It has also brought home to Thailand and Burma's other neighbours that the unending repression inside Burma affects them far more than anyone else, and that the Rohingya are a regional problem which requires a concerted regional response.

Whatever horrors they may have endured recently in the Andaman Sea, the flow of Rohingya boat people is unlikely to stop.

[What drives the Rohingya to sea? BBC News]

MYANMAR WITH MALAYSIAKINI: Poverty drives Rohingyas into death trap

Malaysia put heavy emphasis since day one on education as a way to bring up society and economy. Everybody has to go to school from year1 [standard 1 or darjah 1] right up to form 5 or tingkatan 5. Then they can venture out into higher learning or works. There is PTPTN which dutifully gives out loans for studies. Thats what some say as democratization of education. So democracy is not only about parading on streets or secretly videotaping people and show it to the whole world. Democracy is more than cheap political talks.

On a wider level, we are blessed with reasonably good transport network, bus systems, water reticulation system, power supply, and health system. I dont know, but past leaders, government and agencies must have played their role to bring about all these good things. Of course some would argue that it was the British that had put and left such a good system for the rest to improve further.

Wonder what happen over in Myanmar. They are hiding. But the Rohingyas, being the minority, and being neither here nor there are the real victims. Poverty had driven them into death traps. Lets read what Anis, Sanjeev, Nizam Ahmad from FADANARDALE, Bangladesh had to say....


Poverty drives
Myanmar Rohingyas
into death traps

by Nizam Ahmad

reuters
friday 30.1.2009

Mohammad Iqbal was one of a 250-strong group of stateless Rohingya who left Bangladesh a month ago in a rickety wooden boat, lured by agents promising a job in Malaysia.

Now his family is hoping he is one of those who survived brutal treatment at the hands of the Thai military who have admitted to towing hundreds of the Muslim boatpeople from Bangladesh and Myanmar far out in the Andaman Sea before cutting them adrift.

"I am waiting and waiting. No one knows anything about my husband and the others who were in the group," Iqbal's wife, Nur Kahtun, said in the coastal village of Fadanardale, 400 km (250 miles) southeast of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

Some people in the village said they had seen pictures of Iqbal, 30, in a television footage of a detention centre for illegal migrants in Thailand.

"I don't know if it is true, we haven't heard from him since he left," she said as her two-year-old son and her mother-in-law looked on.

More than 550 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in pre-dominantly Buddhist Myanmar, are feared to have drowned in the last two months after being towed out to sea by the Thai military.

The Thai army has admitted cutting them loose, but said they had food and water and denied the engines were sabotaged.

A group of 78 Rohingya are now in Thai police custody while another boatload of 193 washed up on Indonesia's Aceh coast.

Myanmar's military junta does not recognize the Rohingya as one of the country's around 130 minorities, and many have fled to Bangladesh alleging persecution at the hands of the military.

Bangladesh says there are some 200,000 Rohingyas living illegally in the country, in addition to the 21,000 housed in two UN refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district.

It is the men and women who are outside the camps who are fighting a desperate struggle for survival

Many such as Iqbal have been lured by human traffickers offering them jobs in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

"They (traffickers) take 30,000 taka (about $450) or more from each individual looking for a life in Malaysia or neighbouring countries," Iqbal's mother Nurun said.

"But not many could afford this. Those who did are cheated by the traffickers, like being dropped on unknown shores," she said.

The lucky ones have found work in Bangladesh, on fishing boats or rickshaws. Others have taken to chopping wood in forests and some others have taken to petty crime.

"These people take so much risks only because they need to survive, need to keep their families well," said a government official in Cox Bazaar.

(Writing by Anis Ahmed; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)




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