By Fiona Macgregor and Nyan Lynn Aung

The Myanmar Times

July 15, 2016

The mainly stateless Muslim people who identify as Rohingya have been called the most persecuted people in the world – but in the IDP camps and surrounding villages in Rakhine State, where an estimated 140,000 are interred, members of another, often-overlooked Muslim minority are also suffering. The Kaman ethnic group, who say they are ignored by the international community, report facing abuse and discrimination at the hands of the Rohingya, and it seems even those who claim to represent the Kaman politically refuse to stand up for those in the camps.

“Sometimes when I want to sell fish, some of the Rohingya people say, ‘Don’t buy from Kaman people.’” says Kyaw Myint, a 53-year-old displaced Muslim living in Tae Chaung IDP camp in Rakhine State. 

A fish-buying boycott is hardly the worst form of discrimination to be found in a country where people from ethnic minorities have for decades suffered murder, torture, rape and rights abuses at the hands of the authorities. 

Indeed, Kaman people interviewed for this article also spoke of death threats, assaults, intimidation and eviction by their Rohingya neighbours from the shelters they had taken refuge in after being forced to flee violence from Buddhists who had attacked the two Muslim groups without distinction. 

Yet the irony of a Muslim in Myanmar staging a sectarian shopping boycott is evident to anyone who watched the Buddhist nationalism promoted by the monk-led group known as 969 grow from a relatively low-key boycott of stores owned by Muslims into support for violence and gross human rights abuses. 

No one in the IDP camps or surrounding villages suggested tensions between the two Muslim populations equals that which both groups face from Buddhist extremists and state-backed oppression. But for the “forgotten” Kaman – trapped between Rakhine Buddhist extremists, hardline Rohingya activists and apathy from the international community – the present is a fearful place and the future one that often seems hopeless. 

“We had to move to this house three weeks ago after our [Rohingya] landlord put our rent up so much we could not afford to stay there. We had been living there for three years, but he didn’t want us any more,” says Kyaw Myint. “If we had a chance to go back to [our home] in Kyaukphyu I wouldn’t stay here a minute longer, but there is no way.” 

A place in history 

According to history books, the Kaman people, also known as Kamein, arrived in Myanmar in the mid-17th century along with the Mughal prince Shah Sujga. Eventually, they were banished to Rambre Island off southern Rakhine in 1710. 

Unlike the Rohingya, most of whom are stateless and denied citizenship rights despite many having lived in the  country for generations, the Kaman belong to one of Myanmar’s 135 recognised ethnic groups. 

But the conflict that broke out between the Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhist communities in northern Rakhine State in 2012 also sparked religious violence in the state’s southwest, including the town of Kyaukphyu on Rambre. Several thousand Kaman are estimated to have fled their homes and joined the Rohingya in IDP shelters that would soon become, in effect, open prisons. 

The displaced Kaman found themselves subject to the same rights abuses suffered by the Rohingya. Many had lost their identification papers when they fled, but even those who still have them say, like the Rohingya, they too face restrictions on movement. 

“I have an ID card and an NRC [national registration card], but the government does not allow us to go home or even visit Sittwe even if we have an ID card,” says U Kyaw Myint. “Even if we have an ID card, the government calls all of us Bengali because we stay in the same place and they treat us and consider us the same.” 

‘They threatened they would kill me’ 

Camp residents say initial relations between the two communities were good. Kaman community leaders say Rohingya rights campaigners were happy to have the Kaman included in camp numbers as they sought foreign aid and international support for their plight. 

But in 2014 – with the backing of the UN and other international actors – Myanmar held its first national census in three decades. Despite initial guarantees that the Rohingya would be allowed to use the controversial name, a volte-face by the government just before the big day meant enumerators were told not to count those who called themselves Rohinyga. 

The betrayal, though widely predicted, sparked anger and protests by Rohingya in the camps. Those residents who said they were Kaman, and therefore eligible to be counted, were accused of betraying the cause. 

“My problems started at the time of the census,” says Maung Win (not his real name). “I was staying in another village, Da Paing, at that time, and afterward my Rohingya neighbours said to me, ‘You identified as Kaman, so get out of here.’” 

A tall man in his late 20s, he says he did not face physical violence, but the threats were enough to make him move to Tae Chaung. 

“They threatened that if I identified as Kaman they would hit me or kill me. I thought if I stayed, violence might happen – so I left.” 

He now lives surrounded by other Kaman, but tensions and fear of violence remain. 

“Almost a month ago, a man, about 30 years old, who was mentally disabled ran out of his house at midnight. He was detained by the guards. When he was released the next morning, Rohingya people beat him up because they knew he was Kaman,” says Maung Win. 

The victim, he adds, was attacked by five or six people who beat him up and burned him with cigarettes, leaving him hospitalised for several days. 

“The big problem started at the census, but the tensions go on,” says Maung Win. “I think the problem will continue. Even if they live together as neighbours the Rohingya and the Kaman will be strangers.” 

Another Kaman community leader points out that relations are not always bad and that some Rohingya help their Kaman neighbours on the basis of their shared religion. But he adds it is often a problem when Kaman people want land to build a house and the Rohingya leaders won’t allow them to have it. 

“The Kaman are the minority here, so we face the same problems that minorities everywhere,” he says. 

A tragedy reveals a forgotten people 

According to U Chan Kyi, a Kaman community leader living in Tae Chaung, the Kaman people are not widely recognised by the international community and have few public representatives of their own. Those who do claim to represent the Kaman in the wider political realm have been accused of putting self-interest above that of those living in the camps. 

U Chan Kyi’s claims are backed by an incident in April when a boat carrying IDPs from a remote camp near Sin Tet Maw village sank en route to a Muslim village outside Sittwe, claiming at least 21 lives. 

The story of the “Rohingya tragedy” soon hit social media and made international news headlines, particularly when the US embassy used the controversial name in a statement on the event, prompting a protest by nationalists in Yangon. 

The UN, which keeps details of the ethnicity of camp residents, also released a statement on the sinking. It did not mention the Kaman. No one, it seems, noticed or cared that most of those on board were Kaman, originally from Kyaukphyu. 

Even more bizarrely, when The Myanmar Times revealed the true identity of those who died after speaking to dozens of relatives, survivors, community leaders and medical staff, the claim was denied by a Yangon political party that claims to support Kaman rights. 

A spokesperson for the Kaman National Progressive Party insisted to reporters that no Kaman had drowned and that only a handful of Kaman lived in the Sin Tet Maw camp. But UN records show the number of Kaman living in the camp is close to 2000. 

“There is no organisation here [specifically] helping the Kaman and just one organisation in Yangon – the development party [KNPP],” says U Chan Kyi, expressing disappointment that the party, which he said had sent letters to the camp about elections, had denied Kaman people had been on board. 

Betrayed by their own 

Why would a group that claims to represent an ethnic group deny the existence of its own people when they are trapped in camps living under an abusive regime? 

Writing in Islam and the State in Myanmar, Nicholas Farrelly of the Australian National University notes that the KNPP – whose executive committee is made up of retired government officials and businessmen – stresses national race status in Myanmar politics. 

Mr Farrelly quotes party chair Zaw Win – a former joint director of the Yangon Region High Court – as telling the magazine Mizzima in the lead-up to the 2010 election, “In Arakan State, Muslims are not allowed to travel freely. So, if we win some seats, we’ll address these and other problems. Though we should limit the rights of people who are not Burmese citizens, all Burmese citizens should get their deserved rights.” 

In choosing to focus on Kaman entitlement to recognition as a national race, is it possible that party leaders have been willing to sacrifice those who have lost their identification cards and are accused of being Rohingya/Bengali to safeguard the rights of the city-dwelling elite? 

This claim is backed up by a seemingly unlikely source. U Aung Win, a well-known Rohingya activist in Sittwe, denies there are disputes between the Rohingya and the Kaman in the camps, but says Kaman people in Yangon are determined to distance themselves from those who live close to the Rohingya in case it affects their citizenship claims. 

“The Rohingya and the Kaman in Rakhine live peacefully without discrimination,” U Aung Win says. “But some Kaman people in Rangoon don’t want to communicate with Rohingya people and want to say we are very different people and we don’t mix.” 

What’s in a name?

KNPP general secretary U Tin Hlaing Win continues to deny that those on board the sunken boat or most of those living in Sin Tet Maw are in fact Kaman, insisting such claims are a ploy to trade on Kaman ethnic recognition to gain citizenship. 

“Since the time of military rule,many people from Rakhine State tried to get NRCs identifying them as Kaman from corrupt immigration officers. That’s why we do not believe those who can’t show an NRC that does not mention the Kaman name,” he told The Myanmar Times this week. 

“Real Kaman people have a long family tree. There are fewer than 50,000 Kaman in the whole country now and fewer than 30,000 in Rakhine State. We will not be approve those people who do not have a long family tree of Kaman history.” 

In reality no one knows for sure how many people who identify as Kaman there are in Myanmar, as the ethnic identity figures from the controversial count have still not been made public more than two years later. 

Yet in Rakhine the claim that Rohingya are identifying as Kaman is rejected out of hand by representatives of both groups. 

“People are proud of their name,” says U Aung Win. “Rohingya people would not call themselves Kaman, and Kaman would not call themselves Rohingya.” 

Kaman community leader U Chan Kyi repeats that idea, saying that even under pressure, whether to avoid discrimination from authorities or neighbours, people don’t give up their name. 

“Everyone loves their own ethnicity. The Kaman say they are Kaman,” he says. “The government does not accept the Rohingya, but the people [themselves] know that is their name, so they do not say they are Kaman.” 

Who are the Kaman?

The Kaman, or Kamein, trace their history back to 1670 when they arrived in Arakan (modern-day Rakhine) alongside the Mughal prince Shah Shuja, who was on the run after a failed attempt to claim the Mughal throne.

Shah Shuja and his followers were initially welcomed to Mrauk-U by the king of Arakan, Sanda Thudhamma, but good relations soon faltered. Within a year Shah Shuja was dead after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow his host.

But while the rest of the prince’s family soon met a similar deadly fate, his surviving soldiers were given a place in a special archers unit in the Arakan palace guard. It is from this role that the Kaman gained their name – which comes from the Persian word for arrow.

Despite being relatively few in number, the Kaman archers played an influential role in Arakan’s complex politics, but in 1710 they were banished to Rambre Island by King Sanda Wizaya I where their descendents remain to this day.

According to historian U Thant Myint-U, “Unlike in other parts of Rakhine where records from the 1930s show there was a lot of mixing between the different Muslim groups living there at that time, the Kaman - perhaps partly because of their unusual and romantic story - may have kept a clearer sense of separate identity that is still there today.”

Their long and distinct history means that the Kaman were seen to be entitled to recognition as one of Myanmar’s 135 official ethnic groups under the 1982 Citizenship Law. There were 2686 Kaman in Arakan in 1931. Figures on ethnic identity from the most recent census are yet to be made public.

Can anyone help the displaced Kaman? 

Humanitarian organisations point to the grim effect that the travel restrictions placed on both Rohingya and Kaman Muslims have on people’s everyday lives. 

“Whether you are a recognised citizen or a stateless person, if you don’t have freedom of movement you will be vulnerable and will face many of the same hardships,” says Pierre Peron, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Myanmar. 

“Without freedom of movement, farmers can’t go to their fields, fishermen can’t go to the sea, traders can’t go to the market, students can’t go to university and sick people can’t get to the nearest hospital,” he says. “Restrictions on people’s freedom of movement severely compromise their basic rights to food, healthcare, education, livelihoods and other basic services.” 

Kyaw Myint, who spoke of his hopeless desire to go home to Kyaukphyu, explains the impact that travel restrictions have on the Kaman when discussing the possibility of moving from the camp. 

“There is only one place [outside the Sittwe camps and surrounding villages] we would feel safe: Thandwe,” he says. He is referring to the town in southern Rakhine near the tourist haven of Ngapali Beach where Kaman Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists live in relative harmony, and where the National League for Democracy won a rare victory in Rakhine State at the 2015 election. 

“But even if we had the money to make a home there, how could we travel? We are not allowed.” 

Kaman community leaders express fears that their situation will not be relieved in the foreseeable future. 

The new government has taken to describing those who self-identify as Rohingya as “Muslims from Rakhine State”. 

But the move, while attempting to find a sensitive compromise, has not only angered both Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya but also may further erode distinctions in the state between Kaman and Rohingya. 

For some Kaman living in the camps, the renaming highlights what they see lies at the heart of the problems they face. 

“I don’t think it is a matter of ethnicity for the government,” says U Chan Kyi.

“I think the government wants to restrict the Islamic religion.”

By Asian Correspondent

July 15, 2016

SEVERAL thousand protesters marched to the Burmese (Myanmar) embassy in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to denounce the treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist country.

Local reports say about 5,000 people took part in the rally to submit a memorandum to the Burmese mission in the Malaysian capital, but other estimates place the number at around 2,000 protesters who carried banners calling for the end of Burma’s alleged silence on systematic genocide and persecution of Muslims in Rakhine state.

The procession, which was organised by Malaysia’s Pan Islamic Party (PAS) and other non-governmental organisations, began after Friday prayers at the Tabung Haji mosque on Jalan Tun Razak at about 2pm, before the crowd made its way to the embassy some 2 kilometers away from where they gathered.

According to local newspaper Sinar Harian, the memorandum addressed to the Burmese government called for the country to recognize the rights of the stateless Rohingyas.

Sectarian violence, which erupted in 2012, has seen dozens of Muslim Rohingyas killed by vigilante mobs comprising hardline Buddhist nationalist groups and followers, with thousands more displaced.

However, PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, who was present at the rally, said the Burmese embassy did not send a representative to accept the protest note, adding he was disappointed that the envoy “turned a cold shoulder” to the crowd.

“We urge the ambassador to Kuala Lumpur to apologize for failing to send a representative,” he said.

“They should at least send some one to receive the memorandum.”

He said PAS also condemned the Burmese government and its leaders for their alleged silence on the killing of Rohingyas and the violation of their human rights.

Tuan Man also called on the Malaysian and ASEAN governments, as well as Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) member states, to take action on the matter.

“The governments must discuss the issue in ASEAN (meetings) to resolve the issue of refugees who have created a burden in other countries,” he said.

By Reuters

July 15, 2016

YANGON - Myanmar is cracking down on Buddhist extremism, aiming to curb ethnic and religious tension that saw two mosques destroyed and scores of Muslim residents fleeing their villages in recent weeks.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and government leader Aung San Suu Kyi has come under criticism from human rights activists and lawyers for not cracking down on the perpetrators of the attacks aimed at the Muslim minority.

In an apparent response to the criticism, the government has made a surprisingly decisive move against an organisation of radical nationalist monks, known as the Ma Ba Tha, threatening legal action if it spread hate speech and incites violence.

On Friday, the government launched a taskforce to prevent violent protests as part of a broader push to stop religious violence.

Religious tension simmered in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for almost half a century of military rule, before boiling over in 2012 in the west of the country into clashes between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

Violence between Muslims and Buddhists in other areas followed in 2013 and 2014.

President Htin Kyaw said in a statement the taskforce would not only move against violent protesters, but also investigate and hold accountable anyone inciting violence. "We do not want to disturb peaceful protests, but we do not allow violence while protesting," said Zaw Htay, spokesman of the State Councillor's Office occupied by Suu Kyi.

A government-appointed body that oversees Myanmar's Buddhist monkhood, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, issued a statement this week saying it had never endorsed the nationalist and anti-Muslim Ma Ba Tha.

In June, a group of 200 villagers destroyed a mosque and injured a Muslim man in central Myanmar after a dispute over the construction of a Muslim school.

In a separate incident in northern Myanmar in early July, nearly 500 Buddhists burned down a Muslim prayer hall. Police arrested five people in connection with the attack, media said.

In both incidents, Muslim residents fled from their homes fearing more widespread violence.

Some 125,000 Rohingya Muslims displaced by the 2012 violence remain in camps in the west.

By AFP
July 13, 2016

YANGON — The body representing Myanmar’s top monks has distanced itself from Buddhist hardliners behind an incendiary anti-Muslim campaign blamed for a surge in sectarian violence across the country.

The Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which represents the upper echelons of the clergy in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, issued a statement late yesterday saying it has never endorsed the ultra-nationalist “Ma Ba Tha”.

The Ma Ba Tha is a noisy monk-led group that has been at the forefront of anti-Muslim protests in Myanmar in the three years since it was founded.

It recently said it was established under Sangha rules, a claim refuted by the country’s top monks, putting clear water between the mainstream Buddhist clergy and the hardline group for the first time.

“The Ma Ba Tha organisation is not included under the basic rules, procedures... and instructions of the Sangha organisation,” the Sangha committee said in its statement.

“Starting from the first Sangha summit in 1980 until the fifth Sangha summit in 2014, no Sangha meeting has acknowledged or formed the Ma Ba Tha — and it has never used the term Ma Ba Tha.”

The statement came hours ahead of a two-day gathering of around 50 of Myanmar’s top monks in a meeting room inside a man-made cave on the outskirts of Yangon.

The Ma Ba Tha emerged as potent political force under the former military-backed government, successfully lobbying for a series of laws that rights groups say discriminate against women and religious minorities.

Scores of people have been killed in sectarian riots that have billowed out in step with their protests.

But the organisation lost out in November elections that saw their allies in the incumbent party trounced by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

It has since been trying to claw back ground, in recent weeks reviving its vitriolic rhetoric that portrays Islam as a threat to Buddhism.

Last month two mosques were destroyed by Buddhist mobs in the centre and north of the country.

Much of the anti-Muslim invective has targeted the ethnic Rohingya — a minority denied citizenship in Myanmar and relegated to apartheid-like conditions ever since deadly riots tore through western Rakhine state in 2012.

Their very name invokes strong emotions in Myanmar, with the Ma Ba Tha leading protests for the Rohingya to be known only as “Bengalis” — shorthand for illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

De facto premier Aung San Suu Kyi has faced widespread censure from rights groups for failing to speak up for the group — who the United Nations has labelled one of the world’s most persecuted people.

By Jamil Maidan Flores 

The Jakarta Globe

July 13, 2016

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s democracy icon, now the effective head of her country’s government, being both state counselor and foreign minister, has taken into her own hands the job of achieving peace and development in the country’s northwestern state of Rakhine. There’s a lot of power in those hands. There’s also blood on them.

Recently President Htin Kyaw, Myanmar’s nominal head of government, appointed his de facto boss, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as chair of the Central Committee for Implementation of Peace and Development in Rakhine State.

The office of the state counselor said members of the committee would soon go on an inspection trip to Rakhine State but didn’t say exactly when or if Aung San Suu Kyi herself would be going. She did call to the capital city, Nay Pyi Taw, the chief minister of Rakhine and ministers of the national government for a meeting on peace and development.

They also took up a tendentious citizenship verification process for internally displaced persons (IDPs), particularly the 120,000 Rohingya Muslims who live in internment camps in Rakhine State since 2012 after Buddhist militants rampaged through Rohingya villages, setting fire to houses and attacking people with machetes and improvised weapons.

There has been no report on the results of that meeting. An official from the Ministry of Labor, however, leaked to the press that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had cited economic development as the key to peace and stability in that poverty-stricken and chaotic part of the country. Thus she reportedly instructed both union and regional governments to carry out development projects fast and effectively.

At first blush, this sounds like a welcome development. But on deeper thought, it’s not good news. She’s barking up the wrong tree.

The pursuit of economic development projects, even if carried out quickly and effectively, even if it leads to high growth rates, does not necessarily bring about peace and stability. There will still be the question of whether the wealth created is equitably distributed. There will still be the question of whether bitter communal grievances, including those that have nothing to do with economics, are addressed to the satisfaction of all concerned. There will still be the issue of justice. And there will still be the matter of whether a population’s identity gets due respect.

The first requirement of respect is to call people by their right name. The Muslim ethnic group that’s found mostly in Rakhine state, who number about 1.3 million, has always been known as Rohingya. But extremist nationalists, led by a monk named Ashin Wirathu, who styles himself the “Burmese bin Laden,” refuse to call them Rohingya and insist on labeling them “Bengali,” implying that they’re illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and therefore have no citizenship rights. As such they’re entitled only to a life of misery if they’re allowed to live at all. The truth, however, is that they’ve grown roots on Rakhine soil since centuries ago.

Having been deprived of their citizenship by force of the military-imposed 1982 Citizenship Act, they’re denied basic health care and their movements are restricted so that they can’t earn a living and must therefore depend on aid. Those in the camps suffer hunger and lack of basic necessities, and when they get very sick they must pay for a police escort to get to a hospital—if they’re allowed to go there at all. Without a police escort they’d be ambushed. And when Buddhist militants are in the mood to carry out a bit of ethnic cleansing, the Rohingya get no government protection.

In the run-up to the elections last November, Suu Kyi personally made sure that her National League for Democracy (NLD) fielded no Muslim candidates — for fear of a massive loss of Buddhist votes. Now that the NLD has won by a landslide and she’s the effective head of government, she still lives in abject fear of the ire of Buddhist militants. Thus when 21 Rohingya were drowned when their boat capsized on their way from internment camp to market and a hospital, the foreign office, which she now heads, objected to the American embassy’s use of the term Rohingya in a letter of condolence to the Myanmar government. Maybe we should be grateful that her government allowed anybody to send a letter of condolence at all.

She says she’s against the use of the name because it’s “emotive.” She also says she’s also against the use of the term “Bengali” to refer to this unmentionable ethnic group — but when did she ever chastize anybody for using this expression of hatred?

There is now a formal peace process between her government and the various ethnic minority groups in the country: the Shan, the Kachin, the Karen, the Chin, etc. Not included, by virtue of the 1982 Citizenship Act, is the Rohingya. Indeed, why bother with this ethnic group when, unlike all the others, it doesn’t have an army?

So in Myanmar nothing has changed for the Rohingya. It’s still all right to persecute them, to deny them suffrage and freedom of movement, to withhold from them health and other basic social services. And it’s okay, under sufficiently “emotive” circumstances, to torch their houses and cut them down where they stand. The only difference is that these inhumanities are no longer carried out under a military regime but under a government headed by a democracy icon.

For all that, she’s been called a coward. That’s an obvious point, although it did take heroic courage for her to stand up against military fascism for all of two decades. She may indeed have a selective kind of courage. What she needs more of is conscience.

For there’s blood on her hands — Rohingya blood — and the memory of her legendary struggle for democracy won’t wash it away. Nor will it be washed away by the achievements of her current office.

It will cling to her until justice is done to the last Rohingya.

Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. He may be contacted at jamilmaidanflores@gmail.com.

By The Irrawaddy

July 13, 2016

Burma Army Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing requested soldiers stationed in Arakan State not to practice “extreme activities” while upholding their culture and religion.

He made the comments in a speech delivered on Wednesday to soldiers and their families at a military cantonment in the Arakan State capital of Sittwe. Min Aung Hlaing has been conducting a relief tour of several flood-hit areas in Arakan State.

In his speech, the armed forces chief cited previous official figures that Burma’s population is 87 percent Buddhist, six percent Christian and four percent Muslim, alongside smaller religious communities.

These figures, still in official use, have not been updated according to the 2014 census, whose breakdown on religious demographics has been repeatedly delayed due to concerns over social unrest, and is now scheduled for release later this month.

“People should not resort to extreme activities in upholding their respective religions and cultures, but must do so in a ‘just’ way,” said Min Aung Hlaing.

In his speech, later posted on his official Facebook page, Min Aung Hlaing said that it was necessary to “reestablish unity” among ethnic groups, which was “broken” after Burma lost its independence during the British colonial era.

He blamed “discriminatory” policies from colonial rulers for creating “disunity, division and misunderstanding” leading to ethnic armed conflict and “disagreements” over politics, religion and national identity. These factors lay behind current “internal instability,” he said, prompting the need to “rebuild unity among ethnic races based on facts.”

Anti-Muslim violence in Arakan State in 2012 and 2013 displaced around 140,000 people, the large majority belonging to the Rohingya Muslim minority, the majority of whom are denied Burmese citizenship. Many Rohingya remain confined to camps, with restrictions placed on their movement and access to healthcare and education. Buddhist and Muslim communities remain segregated across substantial areas of the state.

Earlier this month, Arakan State saw protests by the local Arakanese Buddhist majority, which has rejected the government’s attempt to adopt less polarizing terminology to refer to Buddhist and Muslim communities in the state.

By Mikha Chan

Free Malaysia Today

July 13, 2016

Perhaps we shouldn't judge her too harshly, considering the incredible pressure she faces from all quarters.

Until her party won a landslide victory in last year’s elections in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi was for nearly half a century the global face of peaceful political opposition. The 71-year-old stateswoman has received numerous international accolades for her long fight for democracy and human rights, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Congressional Gold Medal and the Rafto Prize.

It is perhaps this pivotal role that she has played in the annals of democracy that rankles most deeply today among human rights activists in the face of the persecution of the Rohingya community in her country.

We are familiar with her thoughts on the oppressing power of fear, having seen and heard of her fight for freedom under the notoriously dictatorial military junta of the 90s. She lived in a system that “denies the existence of basic human rights”, in which “fear tends to be the order of the day”, as she wrote in her 1991 anthology “Freedom from Fear”.

“It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear,” Suu Kyi wrote. “Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.”

At the time, Suu Kyi was speaking of the plight of political activists under the junta’s rule. However, her words apply all the more aptly today to the situation faced by the Rohingya community in the Rakhine region of Myanmar. Fear is the order of the day for the Muslim minority there, violently persecuted by the nation’s Buddhist nationalists who see them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh instead of a community that should have long been recognised as Myanmar nationals by virtue of their having lived in the country for generations.

Suu Kyi’s silence on the matter, as well as her government’s refusal to use the term “Rohingya” to describe the community, has been criticised by disappointed human rights activists internationally.

Of course, one may sympathise with her over the political situation she faces. Suu Kyi is caught between a rock and a hard place. Any bald call for an end to the violence to the Rohingya community would be interpreted as support for their fight to be recognised as Myanmar citizens. And that would be tantamount to political suicide considering her largely Buddhist support.

“The new government has inherited a situation where laws and policies are in place that are designed to deny fundamental rights to minorities, and where impunity for serious violations against such communities has encouraged further violence against them,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a report on the Rohingya community.

Suu Kyi has said that the country needed “space” to deal with the Rohingya issue and cautioned against the use of “emotive terms” that she said were making the situation more difficult.

However, her personal feelings on the matter may be somewhat skewed as well, given the reported response she had to being interviewed by Muslim BBC Today presenter Mishal Husain after losing her temper when Husain asked her to condemn anti-Islamic sentiment. “No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim,” she was heard saying under her breath.

It may not be an outright indicator of her feelings about Muslims, as Suu Kyi is under incredible pressure from all quarters to navigate the political minefield that she has inherited, and whatever she says will have the potential to affect Myanmar in very real and possibly bloody ways.

So perhaps Malaysians should not be too judgemental of Suu Kyi when she comes for her visit next month. She has done much for the progress of human rights and democracy. All the world and the Rohingya community can hope of her is that she makes a stand soon. Hopefully, she will take advantage of Tenaganita’s offer to connect her to the Malaysian Rohingya community. The gesture would make for a good peace offering.

Aman Ullah

RB Opinion
July 13, 2016

“What is being prosecuted in Rakhine State is an effort to remove the Rohingya from the area.” Benjamin Zawacki

The Burmese successive Military Regimes, its armed forces and other armed groups under the state patronization, are committing gross human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities such as extrajudicial killings, torture, and forced labor are prevalent; rape and sexual abuse by the armed forces are rampant; and shows a complete disregard for the principle of distinction, intentionally targeting civilians with impunity.

All Burmese citizens are subject to government oppression. However, the above crimes appear to be targeted primarily at five ethnic groups: the Karen, Shan and Karenni in eastern Burma, and the Rohingya and Chin in western Burma. While international actors have focused on the repression of the pro-democracy movement by the military government, crimes perpetrated against ethnic minorities for years have received little international attention and show no signs of subsiding. 

Among these ethnic groups, the Rohingya are the most oppressed minority in Burma. Military operations in 1978 and the early 1990s resulted in mass arrests and torture which led hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh. Of all the ethnic, racial, and religious minorities in the world, wrote the Economist last year (2015), the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, may well be the most persecuted people on the planet. 

In the recent Washington Monthly Newsletter, Joshua Kurlantzick wrote that, “Today nearly two million Rohingya live in western Myanmar and in Bangladesh. Inside Myanmar they have no formal status, and they face the constant threat of violence from paramilitary groups egged on by nationalist Buddhist monks while security forces look the other way.” 

In June 2012, in the aftermath of the alleged rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by few members of the Rohingya community, all hell broke loose. By invoking medieval conception of justice of punishing everyone for the act of a few errant members, not only did the Buddhist Rakhines inflicted disproportionate harm on the Rohingyas, on occasions induced and led by the monks; the Burmese state too instead of providing protection to the victims became an active party in the carnage. 

Since then, Muslim communities across Burma have suffered horrific violence, whipped up by hate speech preached by extremist Buddhist nationalists. Every aspect of their lives, including marriage, childbirth and ability to work, is severely restricted. Their right to identity and citizenship is officially denied. They have been systematically uprooted.

By the result, about 200,000 held in internal displacement camps and unknown thousands have taken to sea as refugees. The UNHCR estimates that more than 86,000 people have left the area by boat from the Bay of Bengal since June 2012. The government even denies humanitarian agencies unfettered access in their internal displacement camps. Their homes, businesses, and mosques have been destroyed. Amid the destruction, many Rohingyas have been unfairly imprisoned, with some tortured to death while behind bars. 

Anti-Muslim violence is a constructed consequence of the government’s “institutionalized discrimination and deliberate failure to intervene and enact legal accountability”. It is in fact widely believed internationally and in many parts of Burma that anti-Muslim violence is a state- driven movement “to generate chaos in an attempt to derail reforms, to maintain . . . political/economic power, and/or to provide an opportunity for the army to maintain its position in society.” 

The UN and all the international governments, regional bodies, and human rights groups, were roundly condemned in their statements to these violence. Even the United Nations has acknowledged the role of Burmese authorities in “widespread” and “systematic” attacks against Muslims that “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

However, The Burmese majority are in a state of denial that Burma now displays the early warning signs of genocide, “ethnic cleansing” or “crimes against humanity.” By rejecting the use of the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the attacks on Rohingya Muslims there, these people have become both active and passive accomplices to the crimes. The criminals enjoy safe haven, continuing to pursue a situation where full-scale mass killings are possible. They run the risk of staying silent while all the warning signs are there.

But internationally-recognized definitions are broader. The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as constituted by acts committed with intent to destroy an ethnic, racial or religious group. Physical as well as mental injury is included in the definition, as is preventing births and transferring children to destroy a group’s existence.

These violations perpetrated primarily by state actors on a widespread and systematic basis, rise to the level of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes - three of the four crimes states committed themselves to protect populations from in endorsing the responsibility to protect (R2P) at the 2005 World Summit.

In March 2015, staff of the Simon-Skjodt center for the prevention of genocide traveled to Burma to investigate the threats facing the Rohingya, who has been subject to dehumanization through rampant hate speech, the denial of citizenship, and restrictions on freedom of movement, in addition to a host of other human rights violations that put this population at grave risk of additional mass atrocities and even genocide. 

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide is mandated to monitor early warning signs of genocide and other atrocities and catalyze international action to prevent those crimes. According to them Burma deeply concerned that so many preconditions for genocide are already in place. With a recent history of mass atrocities and within a pervasive climate of hatred and fear, the Rohingya may once again become the target of mass atrocities, including genocide.

After the Holocaust, the United Nations created a new term — genocide — and defined it as any of the following actions committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: 

Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The term genocide was coined by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, who wrote that “By genocide we mean the destruction of a nation or ethnic group". Lemkin went on to argue that “Genocide has two phases one, the destruction of the national identity of the oppressed group, the other, the imposition of the national identity of the oppressor." The distinctive feature of genocide, according to Lemkin, is that it aims to destroy a group rather than the individuals that make up the group. The ultimate purpose of genocide is to destroy the group's identity and impose the identity of the oppressor on the survivors. 

In 2008, the U.N. Security Council expanded the definition of genocide with the passage of Resolution 1820 noting that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide”

The specific “intent to destroy” particular groups is unique to genocide. A closely related category of international law, crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks against civilians.

Myanmar’s Rohingya minority population is in “the final stages of a genocidal process” comparable to that in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and Rwanda in the 1990s, and attacks against them are planned at the highest levels of government, according to a new report from a British research institute.

With just weeks until the country holds its landmark elections, the report, the result of an 18-month investigation by the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Queen Mary University of London, found “compelling evidence” that Rohingya face “mass annihilation” by the government of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and that a genocide has been taking place for three decades.

The 106-page report includes evidence from leaked government documents and detailed accounts from witnesses about the severe lack of food and employment opportunities; difficulties trying to obtain health care; and discrimination and violence from Buddhist monks and non-Muslim villagers.

The Rohingya, a roughly 1.1 million-strong Muslim minority group living in Myanmar, are denied basic human rights in the country, where officials are working to remove their presence from the country’s history, according to the report. Human rights violations against the Rohingya include rape, torture, killings, arbitrary detention and confiscation of land, while ghettoization, sporadic massacres and limits against their freedom of movement amount “to a longer-term strategy by the state to isolate, weaken and eliminate the group,” the report says. The Rohingya are not recognized as a minority group in Myanmar, Rohingya babies are not issued birth certificates, and the Rohingya won’t be able to vote or stand for office in next month’s elections.

“It’s really important to construct genocide as a social process, because if we don’t, we can never intervene before mass killing takes place,” Penny Green, a professor of law and globalization at Queen Mary University of London and lead researcher of the report, tells Newsweek. She added that the elections “reinforce the elimination of the Rohingya from the political realm of responsibility of Myanmar.”

Green says it’s not a stretch to make a comparison between Myanmar and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, or Rwanda in the early 1990s, when around 800,0000 people, mostly Tutsi, were killed in a matter of weeks. She added that “the apartheid system in Myanmar is worse than that in South Africa” in the 20th century. The Rohingya are portrayed as illegal immigrants and terrorists, and they face “campaigns of race and religious hatred” from nationalists in Rakhine state—the western region where most Rohingya live—and Islamophobic monks, according to the report.

“You don’t need to engage in mass killing to obliterate an ethnic group. You can do it by other means,” says Green, who spent four months on the ground in Rakhine as part of her research. Green and her team of researchers were denied access to northern Rakhine state by the government. “You can make life so intolerable that they leave, and those remaining have no agency and are effectively in detention camps,” says Green. “You create a very fragmented diaspora around the world.”

Attacks against the Rohingya intensified in 2012, partly triggered by the rape and murder of a Buddhist Rakhine woman that was blamed on Rohingya men. The violence killed hundreds of Rohingya and displaced tens of thousands more to detention camps, ghettos or prison villages, says Green. Muslim businesses and mosques were torched in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, and Muslim students were banned from attending schools or universities in the city. Green says she saw evidence of malnutrition among children in the camps, where people are dying from treatable conditions like diarrhea and cannot access emergency health care.

The Rohingya are now two steps away from all-out genocide, having already been subjected to four stages: stigmatization, harassment, isolation and systematic weakening, according to the ISCI. There is evidence that the remaining two stages—extermination and “symbolic enactment,” or erasing the group from Myanmar’s history—are already well underway, says Green. The systematic weakening of the group has been so successful that the Rohingya’s rights have been “effectively destroyed” and “those who can, flee, while those who remain endure the barest of lives,” the report says.

The exact number of Rohingya in Myanmar is unknown because the term Rohingya is not featured in the census. They have the option to call themselves Bengali—the government believes the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh—but few do so, according to the report. The government of Myanmar refuses to recognize the term Rohingya and will not attend any conferences that include the name, therefore turning them into a non-people, says Green.

On Nov. 8, 2015, NLD win landslide victory and from government which started ruling the country from 1st April of this year. In her first speech the democratic icon leader of ruling party, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced that, “This victory should be for the whole country not a particular party or individual”. However, a fundamental question for the Rohingya is whether her vision of “the whole country” includes the Rohingya, who were systematically excluded from voting this election. 

In the recent report of UN Human Rights Office on the human rights situation for minorities in Myanmar, stated that “a pattern of gross violations against the Rohingya... (which) suggest a widespread or systematic attack... in turn giving rise to the possible commission of crimes against humanity if established in a court of law.” The report also criticizes the new government steered by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her pro-democracy party. There were huge expectations that Suu Kyi, after assuming power, will work to improve the plight of Rohingyas, but she has refused to act. The report lists a number of violations committed against the minorities, which include summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and ill-treatment. The report says the new government has “inherited a situation where laws and policies are in place that are designed to deny fundamental rights to minorities, and where impunity for serious violations against such communities has encouraged further violence against them.” 

Now, it is democratic government led by Daw Suu but the Rohingyas problems remain the same as previous regimes. According to UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, “The home ministry and the Special Branch of the police are the same people from the past government, that is why things have not changed…Old habits die hard.” Hatred and mistrust between majority Buddhists and religious minorities, especially Muslims, have been simmering for several years and often boils over into violence.

Ms Lee urged the government of Myanmar to make ending what she calls "institutionalized discrimination" against Muslims an urgent priority. She said government reluctance to crack down on perpetrators of religious violence out of fear that it would lead to more tension sends the wrong signal.

In her statement she said, “The recent establishment of the Central Committee on Implementation of Peace, Stability and Development of Rakhine [Arakan] State signals the priority given by the government to addressing the complex challenges facing both communities”. She also added that, “Nevertheless, my visit to Rakhine State unfortunately confirmed that the situation on the ground has yet to significantly change”.

In 2005, governments around the world unanimously agreed to the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P), which holds that all states have a responsibility to protect their populations from genocide and mass atrocities, that the international community should assist them to fulfil this duty, and that the international community should take timely and decisive measures to protect populations from such crimes when their host state fails to do so. R2P is committed to peaceful interventions including assistance, peaceful persuasion, and financial sanctions. The nature of collective action must exhaust the possibilities of “appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means” before ‘forceful means’ can be considered.

UN officials, Nobel Peace laureates, and human rights organizations have thus recognized the applicability of R2P and the need for an independent investigation. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has called for a prompt, independent investigation into crimes in Arakan State since June 2012. Twelve Nobel Peace laureates echoed and expanded Pillay’s call in June 2013, after violence spread beyond Arakan State, calling for an “independent investigation of the anti-Muslim violence in Burma” on the grounds that “some within Burma are propagating a politics of division—and using violence as a tool to manipulate feelings of fear and insecurity.” 

Moreover, holding the Burmese government accountable through an independent investigation is imperative to address the government’s culture of impunity and end mass atrocity crimes, which defy national reconciliation. While difficulties will doubtlessly arise in maintaining strong relationships with top government leaders, these relationships have proven inadequate at ending abuses of power and fulfilling the overarching rights-based U.S. policy goal to support a peaceful, stable Burma.

An investigation into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law with respect to Muslims is imperative because Burma routinely and injudiciously uses violence as a mechanism to control, terrorize, and suppress its people. Similar mass atrocity crimes in other nations have prompted the United States to support international, independent investigations, and providing an external forum of accountability for anti-Muslim violence is a natural articulation of U.S. policy.

This government defiance is the status quo. Far from pursuing justice, the government has persistently denied allegations of human rights violations against Muslims, and has “strongly rejected” human rights reports from the United Nations and other organizations. These public refutations of violence demonstrate how the Burmese government has not only intentionally failed to provide justice; it has also become emboldened by the lack of international pressure to stop the violence. Further international calls to stop violence would thus be redundant and ineffectual

As repression in Burma continues unabated, it is reasonable to expect that calls for intervention will continue to be heard from around the world.

The willingness and ability of the international community to get involved will continue to be crucial elements in resolving Burma's problems. The political will of the UN must be regarded as a particularly important factor in determining how and when Burma will finally shed the burden of repressive rule. The creation of an independent international commission on intervention would be a promising move, and Burma should certainly be one of the first cases to receive careful consideration and study.

By Kyaw Ye Lynn

Anadolu Agency
July 10, 2016

Government wants Rohingya referred to as 'Muslim community in Rakhine State', while protesters want them called 'Bengali'

YANGON, Myanmar -- Hundreds of people marched Sunday in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon demanding that the government use a discriminatory term to refer to around one million stateless Rohingya Muslims in the country’s west.

Most of the Myanmar public uses the term “Bengali” to describe the Muslim minority group in western Rakhine state -- who self-identify as Rohingya ethnic to the country -- suggesting they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

The government led by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, however, has suggested to the United Nations and the international community that “Muslim community in Rakhine state” should be used instead of controversial terms “Bengali” or “Rohingya”.

Several hundred people -- mostly supporters of Buddhist nationalist organization Ma Ba Tha -- took part in Sunday’s two-hour march in Yangon, demanding that the government readopt the term “Bengali” to refer to Rohingya -- described by the UN as among the world’s most persecuted minority groups.

One of the organizers, Win Ko Ko Latt from the Myanmar National Network, told Anadolu Agency, “we don’t want any other terms for the Bengali. Bengali are Bengali.”

He insisted during the march that “Bengali” were not the only Muslims in Rakhine and that the new term “would create more confusion”.

“That new term would not be accepted at all,” he asserted.

Rakhine is home to other Muslim groups such as the Kaman who -- unlike the Rohingya -- are officially recognized as among Myanmar’s 135 ethnic groups.

Around a hundred police had been deployed to stop the marchers near the Shwedagon pagoda, Myanmar’s most sacred Buddhist monument, but allowed them to proceed after an argument broke out between marchers and officers.

Thuzar New, an employee at a local company, told Anadolu Agency that she joined the march even though she is not a supporter of Ma Ba Tha, the Burmese acronym for the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion.

“I am not a racist. I am not an anti-Muslim. But I hate these Bengali Kalar,” she said, using a derogatory term for Muslims and Hindus in Myanmar that had originally been leveled against Indian migrants without any affiliation to Islam.

“These Bengali Kalars would make Rakhine people disappear,” she added.

Last week, thousands had participated in marches in Rakhine’s capital Sittwe and 17 other towns in the state as part of the campaign denouncing the government’s new term.

The powerful Arakan National Party -- which won the majority of seats in Rakhine in last year’s general election -- described the new term as “totally unacceptable” last month.

A statement insisted that such “illegal immigrants” had been listed under the category “Chittagonian” in censuses conducted during British colonial rule and under “Bengali” in censuses of 1973, 1983 and 2014.

“This new term would efface the origin of these Bengalis, and fabricate that these people are Rakhine natives,” it said.

Since her party's victory in the Nov. 8 election, Suu Kyi has been placed under tremendous international pressure to solve problems faced by Rohingya but has had to play a careful balancing act for fear of upsetting the country's nationalists, many of whom have accused Muslims of trying to eradicate the country's Buddhist traditions.

By Htet Naing Zaw
The Irrawaddy
July 9, 2016

NAYPYIDAW — Win Htein, spokesperson for the National League for Democracy (NLD), said that the party will not take seriously a demand by ultra-nationalist monks that the government punish a regional minister for recent remarks criticizing their hardline Buddhist group.

The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion—better known by its Burmese acronym “Ma Ba Tha”—on Thursday called for action to be taken by the country’s ruling NLD leadership against the Rangoon Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein—also an NLD member—for deeming the hardline organization “not necessary.”

In their statement released on the same day, Ma Ba Tha said they would send also their request to longtime NLD patron Tin Oo.

“Regarding that case, we only have the attitude of making big problems smaller, and making small problems none. We don’t take it too seriously. We won’t take it seriously just because of their demands,” Win Htein, one of the party’s central executive committee members, told the reporters in Naypyidaw on Friday evening.

He said that the NLD’s policy is not to mix religion and politics. For the time being, he added, the NLD’s primary focus is to smooth the political, economic and peace processes prioritized by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi. Win Htein described all other issues as “trivial” matters.

“We have no reason to respond to [those] who usually say terribly nasty things on Facebook. We won’t put those things into our minds while Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is moving forward shrewdly,” Win Htein said, referring to Ma Ba Tha leader Wirathu, a monk known for his anti-Muslim stance and public statements which have been criticized by rights groups as hate speech.

Burma’s 2008 Constitution forbids the abuse of religion for political purposes, he pointed out. If Ma Ba Tha abides by the law, Win Htein explained, issues will be settled under the law; if Ma Ba Tha fails to abide by the law, local authorities will be called in to regulate the group, he added.

By Mizzima

July 9, 2016

Myanmar’s new government is getting mixed reviews in the local and international press as it passes its 100th day in office.

The National League for Democracy-led government under the leadership of State Counsellor Aung San SuuK yi and President Htin Kyaw have had a raft of pressing problems to deal with, inherited from the previous administration of President Thein Sein.

July 7 marked 100 days in office.

As the BBC points out, the government has a great deal of pressing priorities but appear to be putting their main focus on working out a peace deal with the armed ethnic groups. The country has been blighted by decades of conflicts in many states, primarily Kachin, Shan, and Kayin states. The government is currently pressing ahead with a 21st Century version of the 1947 Panglong Agreement signed by, amongst others, the late General Aung San, Suu Kyi’s father.

The BBC raises a question of whether constitutional change – long a hot-button issue – has slipped down the list of priorities, claiming Suu Kyi’s government aides are now “parroting” that the issue has to be dealt with after there is a stable peace agreement with the armed ethnic groups.

Analyst Dr Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadipa Institute, talking to Channel New Asia, says it has been seven months since the elections and “people want results.”

He says Suu Kyi is running the government like the way she’s running the party and that’s not really advisable or realistic at all.

“In Myanmar, the pass grade is 40. Definitely, it would be less than 50, I’m sorry to say. And because you don’t want to give her an F, let’s say 45. She passes, but barely,” he told Channel News Asia.

Khin Maung Zaw, a political analyst, told the news channel that the Suu Kyi administration could have made better use of its first months in office to articulate a clear direction for the country. “The first 100 days are important for a new government to give people the impression of how confident and reliable they are to lead and govern our country for the next five years. At that point, in my opinion, they lost that opportunity.”

Many political commenters both at home and abroad are critical of the government’s handling of the communal tension and the recent attacks on two mosques.

The BBC described the situation for political prisoners as a “revolving door,” having released prisoners on taking office, only to see the old draconian laws – many dating back to British Colonial rule – kick in and be used to arrest people. They do, however, credit parliament with starting to change some of the worse laws but note that this will take time.

Inevitably the problem of frequent power outages comes up, but this is hard to fix quickly.

Analysts have said that while individual ministries such as that for health, construction and electricity have unveiled their plans, more details are needed to instill confidence in the government among the people of Myanmar.