Press Release: Stop Rohingya Ethnocide

                                                                                                            28th April 2013

From 26 April the police have arrested six innocent Rohingya people under concocted charges. They are U Ba Tha (47), U Kyaw Myint (46), Mohammad Hussain (45) Saw Lay Ma (35), San Lin (45) and Kyaw Khin (40). The police are also hunting down more Rohingya elders in an attempt to terrorise the Rohingya community. All these have been done under the direction of Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) which dominates the Arakan Sate government and pursues a policy of Rohingya extermination with the blessing of the central government. An atmosphere of terror has been created while the whole Rohingya community is being affected by the humanitarian disaster.

The so-called census operation was first conducted immediately after June and October 2012 deadly violence against Muslims in Arakan at irregular intervals but was stopped when the Rohingyas rejected to be registered as “Bengali”. But from 10 April 2013 the authorities resumed it selectively in Maungdaw and Buthidaung township torturing and forcing the Rohingyas into agreeing to register as “Bengali” .

The Rohingya people ‘have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct people’ and additionally they have the right to life. Burma is a state party to the UN Convention on Rights of Child and it has basic obligation to ‘respect and ensure’ the rights in the convention to Rohingya children without discrimination of any kind. To force the Rohingya people into accepting ‘Bengali’ against their will is an ethnocide or an international crime, and to this fact we invite the attention of the United Nations and the international community.