RB News
September 20, 2018

Buthidaung — The Myanmar government is planning to house forcibly displaced Rohingya villagers of 'Gudar Pyin' in internment-camps-like houses, villagers say.

'Gudar Pyin' or 'Gudam Fara' as called locally is a Rohingya village in Buthidaung Township that came under brutal attacks of the Myanmar armed forces and the Rakhine extremists in late August 2017. They massacred hundreds of the Rohingya villagers and burned down about 200 homes forcibly displacing them and making them homeless. 

While many families from the village have fled to Bangladesh for lives, others have remained in the country by seeking refuge in neighboring villages. Nine months after the violence, in late May 2018, of the families seeking refuge in the neighboring villages, some about 77 (76, according to the Government) households/families returned to their burnt home grounds at 'Ywa Gyi' hamlet and 'South' hamlet of 'Gudar Pyin' and pitched tents for them to live in.

A week after that, a joint team of officials from different administrative departments and armed forces arrived at the village and prevented the villagers from erecting the (self-made) shelters. A villager recounted how the Myanmar authorities threatened them "you can't pitch tents here without permission. If you do so, you will be punished severely."

On Tuesday (Sept 18) afternoon, a tasked team of ten government officials from Buthidaung Township General Administration Department, Land Records Department and the Department of Municipality arrived at 'Gudar Pyin' village and allotted a small area of land to build small barrack-style houses for the 77 forcibly displaced families under 'a Governmet Program' at the northern most part of the village.

"What we are seeing is they have just allotted a 40ft×30ft lot to bulid a housing camp on for each of the 76 families. And they will be fenced with barbed wire. That's more like internment camps" said an elderly villager. 

The total area of land allotted by the Governmentt on Tuesday (Sept 18)  is a ground area of just16 burnt houses. Now, the Government is said to be planning to squeeze 76 households with small internment-camps-like housing into that small area of land. The camps will be guarded, controlled and confined by the Myanmar Security Forces.

"The lot that the government is alloting is just for 76 families out of 200 families whose houses were burnt down last year. They haven't talked anything about over remaning 100 households who have also lost their homes. If we are forced to live in these internment camps like housing permanently, then we don't think we have any other ways left but to flee from the country." said a villager in a worrisome tone.

3pm 28/8/2017: #GutaPyin #Rohingya village in #Buthidaung has been set ablaze by #Myanmar military & #Rakhine extremists. https://t.co/p9jZHSwT2J

— M. (@YoursRohingya) August 28, 2017

He added "first, they have burnt down our homes, made us homeless and displaced. Now, they are acting as if they are helping us by building houses for us. And they are treating us as though we have committed crimes for our homes were burnt down. For we have lost our homes in arson attacks which they carried out, they are building tiny houses for us on a tiny peice of land and coaxing and pushing us into the permanent internment camps.

"Then, they will confiscate our large home grounds, gardens and farmlands. Displaced people confined in internment camps get no freedom in life. If they give them food, they will eat. If not, they will starve. No self-sufficiency or right to do anything."

[Reported by MYARF; Edited by M.S. Anwar]
Please email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and feedback.

By Dr. Maung Zarni

September 20, 2018

NGOs destroy civil society, said a top sociologist at Columbia.

He is absolutely correct.

If Rohingyas do NOT hang together they will be hang separately.

I see the disaster or humanitarian colonialism being repeated in Rohingya situation. There is an immediate need to forge and expand intra-Rohingya solidarity and collaboration.

I define INGOs as neo-COLONIAL, that do not identify with Rohingya resistance to repatriation under duress, or have organic ties to Rohingya's struggles (meaning groups that impose their agendas & priorities).

Mine is not an original insight, but drawn from David Korten's: the only western or external NGO that is NOT colonial is the type that is connected with and support the oppressed's resistance and movements.

If I were a Rohingya refugee, or a member of the diaspora, I would work with any NGO that comes in with $, has political connections, and a voice.

However, I would NOT have any expectation or illusions that humanitarian INGOs (and politicians) will have pure moral desire or political will to respect, listen to or appreciate Rohingyas' wishes

and needs.

Generally, or typically, INGO-recipient relations will necessarily be INSTRUMENTALIST. That is, they come because it's their job, income generator, career, or professional or personal interests. There are of course NGO individuals who care, genuinely. But in the INGO politics it is organizational interests and logic that in the final instance drive what these entities officially say and do. Human rights INGOs are not immune from this cancer.

Rohingyas deal with them because there are no better choices - accept their money, medicine, work as fixers, field "researchers", informants or informers, whatever the case, etc.

That's the reality: the crucial thing is to know this instrumentalist nature - they use the refugees and refugees use them - of these interactions.

The last thing Rohingyas need is be swayed by these INGOs and their slanted, trendy advocacy campaigns - that never ask for what Rohingya really need, that is, protected homeland where they can live in peace and safety as normal human community, like everyone else.

To be able to maintain a healthier power equation between the INGOs and the refugees - nearly 1 million now - Rohingya refugees and the diaspora must forge ties that go beyond little family circles , or that cling to petty little organizations where they are "Chairmen" or "Chairwomen" "President" or whatever.

So far I have not seen Rohingya elites in diaspora building this absolutely necessary intra-Rohingya solidarity, respect and organizational collaboration.

The absence of this broad-based solidarity amongst the victims, both the diaspora and in sub-human camps, is deeply troubling, both from moral and strategic perspectives.

If Rohingyas do NOT hang together they will be hang separately.

I have seen this NGOs as disease in the context of the armed Karen revolution. The result is ugly: capable potential revolutionaries are snatched out of the movement and into program manager positions, from where they sing the NGO tunes.

With absolutely nothing - beyond the presence of 1 million bodies in the sub-human camps in Bangladesh - Rohingyas are far more vulnerable to this politics and exploitation by the NGOs and politicians than the Karens have ever been.

Media Release From Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK

3rd September 2018

Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK: Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo Must Be Freed

Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK strongly condemns the sentencing of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.

They were sentenced to seven years in jail today after being convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Evidence that came out during the trial showed that they were framed by the police. The police force in Burma is under the control of the military.

“These journalists were simply doing their jobs, exposing massacres of Rohingya villagers which the United Nations has now concluded constitutes genocide,” said Tun Khin, President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. “We admire the bravery of these journalists, working to uncover massacres of Rohingya villages.”

Since its founding Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK has campaigned for freedom of expression and for the release of all political prisoners in Burma. It saddens us that this is still necessary under a government controlled by the National League for Democracy.

“The international community now needs to apply real pressure to the government of Burma to free these journalists and all political prisoners,” said Tun Khin. “Political, technical and financial support should only go to the government once it starts to respect human rights, including media freedom.”

For more information, please contact Tun Khin +44 7888714866.

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

Anadolu Agency

August 29, 2018

LONDON -- The atrocities targeting Myanmar’s Rohingya minority are similar to those committed by Nazi Germany, according to a prominent Buddhist human rights activist.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency in Kent, the UK, Maung Zarni, a coordinator at the Free Rohingya Coalition, said the international community should act against his country of origin.

Zarni’s remarks come after the UN released a report earlier this week documenting mass gang rapes, killings -- including of infants and young children -- brutal beatings and disappearances committed by Myanmar state forces. In its report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.

“We have a situation wherein a UN member state run by a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her partners in power, Burmese military generals…is found by the [most] credible and highest body of human rights authorities in the world to be like Nazi Germany,” Zarni said.

“Genocide is what the Nazis did. Genocide is what happened in Rwanda, in Cambodia, or to the Bosnian Muslims.”

Zarni underlined that when a case is determined to be “genocidal”, the responsibility for dealing with it lies with all UN member states.

“The highest political and moral obligation rests with the [UN] Security Council,” he added.

He said setting up an international criminal court as was done for Rwanda or Bosnia would not be enough; the Rohingya minority needs “a protected region where they can live safely and as normal, decent human beings”.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar has called on Myanmar’s top military officials, including army commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, to be tried at the International Criminal Court for genocide committed against Rohingya Muslims.

“My expectation, in an ideal world…[is that] the UN Security Council will authorize some form of intervention so that the atrocities can be stopped and the Rohingya can be given their land back and allowed to live in dignity and in safety,” Zarni said.

- Sanctions

Zarni said there are now more Rohingya living outside Myanmar than those who are left in the country following decades of violence but especially after a full-scale attack was launched against them in August last year.

Underlining that the international community should impose sanctions on Myanmar’s government and army, Zarni pointed out that the exclusion policy against the Rohingya must end.

Rohingya Muslims “are being purged,” and the ultimate goal in introducing sanctions against Myanmar should be “to fundamentally change the Burmese state’s policies and change the structures [which] have been mobilized by the Burmese military and public opinion makers to repress and persecute and essentially annihilate this population,” Zarni added.

The ultimate goal of multiple sanctions should be providing Rohingya “international protection” and creating “an autonomous region where the Burmese military would not be allowed to continue the atrocities,” he said. 

- Solution

Zarni said Myanmar has four major pillars: the military, the Buddhist order, political parties, and the public.

“All four of these major institutions…have categorically rejected the Rohingya. We are telling them they don’t belong to Burma, we don’t want them in Burma.”

Zarni said the solution to the problem does not lie in the country but has to be formulated internationally and within the UN institutions.

- Call for Turkey's assistance

Zarni added that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government “have been extremely vocal and supportive of the Rohingya people”.

“This is the time for Turkey to show serious moral and political leadership,” he said.

Pointing out that the UN Security Council is in a “coma” and “paralyzed” as it cannot resolve the problems, Zarni emphasized that Turkey can really help in Myanmar’s case by “leading to form a coalition of Muslim and non-Muslim governments that accept that this is genocide and [say] we must not be bystanders to genocide”.

He said there are more than 500,000 Rohingya trapped in Myanmar and they can be driven out any time, adding it is the time to act and to form a coalition.

“My appeal is not to the Burmese people. My appeal is to the Islamic world as well as non-Islamic communities to help the Rohingya.

“Because this is not just about Muslim people. They are human beings. But we, Burmese, in my country treat them like [they are] less than animals.”

On Aug. 25, 2017, Myanmar launched a major military crackdown on the Muslim ethnic minority, killing almost 24,000 civilians and forcing 750,000 others, including women and children, to flee to Bangladesh, according to the Ontario International Development Agency.

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

Buddhist Nationalism in Burma

Institutionalized racism against the Rohingya Muslims led Burma to genocide

By Maung Zarni

SPRING 2013

Rohingya are categorically darker-skinned people—sometimes called by the slur “Bengali kalar.” Indeed, the lighter-skinned Buddhists of Burma are not alone in their fear of dark-skinned people and belief that the paler the skin, the more desirable, respectable, and protected one is.

Read more: https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhist-nationalism-burma/

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The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya

By Zarni, Maung; Cowley, Alice

Since 2012, the Rohingya have been subject to renewed waves of hate campaigns and accompanying violence, killings and ostracization that aim both to destroy the Rohingya and to permanently remove them from their ancestral homes in Rakhine State. Findings from the authors’ three-year research on the plight of the Rohingya lead us to conclude that Rohingya have been subject to a process of slow-burning genocide over the past thirty-five years. The destruction of the Rohingya is carried out both by civilian populations backed by the state and perpetrated directly by state actors and state institutions. Both the State in Burma and the local community have committed four out of five acts of genocide as spelled out by the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. Despite growing evidence of genocide, the international community has so far avoided calling this large scale human suffering genocide because no powerful member states of the UN Security Council have any appetite to forego their commercial and strategic interests in Burma to address the slow-burning Rohingya genocide.

Read more: http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/handle/1773.1/1377

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THE SYSTEMATIC REPRESSION OF THE ROHINGYA MINORITY CONTINUES

By Maung Zarni 

March 14, 2017

The 1.33 million Rohingya Muslims may be “too many to kill,” but that has not stopped the state security forces or the local ultra-nationalist Rakhine from carrying out waves of pogroms against the Rohingya. The state's racist draconian policies make life so unbearable that the Rohingya would rather risk their lives on voyages across the high seas than wait like sitting ducks to be slaughtered in their ghettos or “open-air prisons,” as the BBC put it. 

Read more: https://www.dissidentblog.org/en/articles/systematic-repression-rohingya-minority-continues

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An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide

By Alice Cowley and Maung Zarni 

April 20, 2017

“Send us as many birth control pills as you can. They (Myanmar troops) are gang-raping our women. They are arresting and killing all our men. There is nothing else you can do. Just pray to Allah and to wish us speedy deaths! This is just simply unbearable,” said a Rohingya woman talking from her mobile phone from Myanmar’s predominantly Rohingya region of Northern Rakhine State bordering Bangladesh.

Read more: http://www.mei.edu/content/evolution-rohingya-persecution-myanmar-strategic-embrace-genocide

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Waves of Genocidal Terror against Rohingyas by Myanmar and the Resultant Exodus Since 1978

By Maung Zarni and Natalie Brinham

November 14, 2017

International lawyers, U.N. officials and world leaders may and do debate as to whether Myanmar’s mass atrocities constitute the crime of all crimes, a genocide. But over one million Rohingya refugees, displaced in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, India and other countries and the smaller number that are being trapped inside Northern Rakhine State between the unwelcoming world and the hateful Burmese society do not have the luxury of deciding what to call the crimes they have been subjected to for nearly 40 years. 

Read more: http://www.mei.edu/content/map/waves-genocidal-terror-against-rohingyas-myanmar-and-resultant-exodus-1978

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Maung Zarni -- Myanmar's Slow-Burning Genocide of the Rohingya People

Watch a short video: https://watson.brown.edu/events/2017/maung-zarni-myanmars-slow-burning-genocide-rohingya-people

Joint Statement 

August 28, 2018

UN Investigators Confirm ‘Myanmar Genocide of Rohingya’, UNSC must support ICC referral and Urgent International Protection for the Rohingya 

We, the undersigned Rohingya Organisations worldwide welcome the report released yesterday (27 August 2017) by the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFM) calling on the international community to take action against Myanmar for its genocide against the Rohingya people.

The FFM, consisting of three human rights experts, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2017, called on Myanmar’s top military generals, including Commander-in-Chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, to be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine State, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States. It also points out that the civilian authorities, including State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are implicit in the genocide against Rohingya for contributing to the commission of atrocity crimes through their acts and omissions. 

The report states that the gross human rights violations and abuses committed against Rohingya population for decades “undoubtedly amount to the grave crimes under international law” that establish the genocidal intent. They include the crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment; enforced disappearance; torture; rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence; persecution and enslavement, extermination and deportation. 

The Mission reminds that the justice has remained elusive for the victims in Myanmar for decades, and “the impetus for accountability must come from the international community.” But, the international actors are standing idly by the side-lines, failing to act, while genocide is unfolding in Myanmar. How much more evidence the UN and the international community need to act? According to the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide”, they are under obligation to “prevent and punish” Rohingya genocide right now. 

The report released by the FFM yesterday is a summary version of the full report, which is expected to be presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2018.

The FFM’s calls add to a global chorus of voices urging members of the UNSC to refer the situation to the ICC. Since Myanmar is not a party to the Rome Statute, only the UNSC can trigger a comprehensive investigation by the ICC. Justice is crucial to ensuring that the authorities in Myanmar do not feel emboldened to repeat the same crimes again.

Members of the UNSC must act now and immediately refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC and future of the Rohingya as a people depend on it. In this regard, we are anxiously looking forward to seeing a comprehensive resolution at the UNSC meeting today.

Meanwhile, we urge upon the international community to provide international protection to approximately half a million Rohingya population trapped inside Rakhine State, and to empower Genocide survivors taking refuge in Bangladesh. 

Signatories

1. Arakan Rohingya Development Association – Australia (ARDA)

2. Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO)

3. British Rohingya Community in UK

4. Burmese Rohingya Association in Queensland-Australia (BRAQA)

5. Burmese Rohingya Association Japan (BRAJ)

6. Burmese Rohingya Community Australia (BRCA)

7. Burmese Rohingya Community in Denmark

8. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK)

9. Canadian Burmese Rohingya Organisation

10. Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative

11. European Rohingya Council (ERC)

12. Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation in Malaysia (MERHROM)

13. Rohingya Advocacy Network in Japan

14. Rohingya American Society

15. Rohingya Arakanese Refugee Committee

16. Rohingya Association of Canada

17. Rohingya Community in Finland

18. Rohingya Community in Germany

19. Rohingya Community in Norway (RCN)

20. Rohingya Community in Sweden

21. Rohingya Community in Switzerland

22. Rohingya Community Ireland (RCI)

23. Rohingya Organisation Norway

24. Rohingya Society Malaysia (RSM)

25. Rohingya Society Netherlands

26. Swedish Rohingya Association (SRA)

For more information, please contact: 

Tun Khin (Mobile): +44 78 887 14866 

Nay San Lwin (Mobile): +49 69 260 22349 

Ko Ko Linn (Mobile): +880 172 606 8413