An Urgent Appeal to save the Rohingyas of Arakan-Burma

To:

President Barack H. Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Date: March 14, 2013

Sub: An Urgent Appeal to save the Rohingyas of Arakan-Burma

Dear Mr. President,

First of all, we, the members of the Burmese Rohingya American Friendship Association (BRAFA) would like to thank you for your historic visit to Burma (Myanmar) on November 19, 2012 and your great speech in Yangon University Convocation Hall in which you brought the issue of the suffering Rohingya people to the audience of the people of Burma.

The Rohingya community of Arakan, Burma (Myanmar) is one of the most down-trodden ethnic minorities of the world. They are victims of political, racial and religious oppression, economic exploitation and cultural slavery in their ancestral homeland-Arakan where they have been living for many centuries.

In this regard, we would like to bring to your kind attention that after your visit and the advocacy of solution of the Rohingya people nothing was changed. Moreover, the situation of the suffering Rohingya people has been more worsen and still today going on as following.

(1) No any kind of appropriate action and concrete plan has been taken yet by the Burmese quasi-civilian Government to solve the problems of the Rohingyas, to resettle them in their original villages which were burned down and destroyed by the Buddhist Rakhine people and Burmese security forces during the year 2012 in June and October and including the restoration of Rohingyas citizenship rights;

(2) The lives of the Muslim Rohingyas become so miserable with the artificial creation of starvation and unbearable hardship that Rohingyas are risking their lives escaping in small wooden boat by sea in search of safety and shelter unaware of where they are going, most of them were drown and died whereas some of them were able to reach floating to Indian Andaman island, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and etc…;

(3) The Arakan State Government officials and its supported Rakhine ruling political party (RNDP) leaders and members are blocking the humanitarian relief goods and medical supplies to the segregated camps where more than 120,000 Rohingyas are passing their days in subhuman condition. So, the situation of the Rohingyas in the camp is very bad as there is not enough food, clean water, hygiene and medical facilities for which hundreds of people comprising pregnant women, elder people and children have died due to severe starvation;

(4) The Immigration authority of the Arakan State Government with the direction of central government administration officials has been inflicting physical and psychological trauma by forcing the Rohingyas to confess Bengali ethnicity instead of Rohingya identity in the family data-checkup;

(5) More than 1,100 Muslim Rohingyas comprising scholars, religious and community leaders, students and youths are being arrested on fabricated charges and false accusations who are severely tortured in the prison some of whom were found dead due to excessing use of force and inhuman treatment by the Burmese prison security officials on the basis of reliable witnesses who came out from the prison paying a large amount of bribe to the government officials and security forces;

(6) Bangladeshi citizens Buddhist Rakhine families are brought into the Arakan by the local Arakan State Government and resettle them in the confiscated lands owned by the Rohingya people. The current Arakan State Government also has replaced Rohingya Holy places, historical monument and relics by building monasteries, pagodas and other Buddhist structures;

(7) The one sided violence against the innocent Rohingya people still today not mitigated and the President Thein Sein led Burmese Government authority has been subjecting them to severe persecutions including torture, looting, extortion, arbitrary arrest, summary executions, serious restriction on movement, restriction on employment, trade and business, seizure and confiscation of land and property, raping of Muslim women and young girls have become common practice, forced relocation and eviction, restriction to pursue higher education, prohibition of marriage of Rohingya couples, forced birth control and restriction on daily religious practices etc. rendering them to the status of modern-day slaves;

Considering the above mentioned major factors of the extreme suffering and worsening condition of the Rohingya people of Arakan State-Burma, we, the members of the Burmese Rohingya American Friendship Association (BRAFA) would like to urgently appeal our President of Great America to help and save the Rohingyas of Arakan on humanitarian ground.

Thanking you very much in advance and we greatly appreciate your kind attention to this very important matter of the suffering Rohingya people of Arakan.

Respectfully,

The Executive Committee Members

Burmese Rohingya American Friendship Association (BRAFA)

Milwaukee

Wisconsin.