What Happen Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims?

SITTWE, 25 June 2012 (IRIN) - An uneasy calm prevails in Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State, following weeks of communal violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims.

"We’re still shocked. We worry whether such unrest could happen again,” Myat Hla, 46, told IRIN, sitting on the concrete floor of Sutaung Pyae monastery outside the city, where close to 2,000 displaced Rakhine residents are living.

She and other Buddhist

Resettle Rohingya refugees To Ageret 24 Premminster groundswell has begun in earnest

Today We are Hav I’ve been following the issue of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority from Myanmar (formerly Burma) since January 2008. If you scroll all the way back through our entire Rohingya Reports category to the beginning you will find this post in which I wrote about how Time magazine and the Hudson Institute both linked Rohingya “refugees” to Islamic radicalism. Now over two years later the drumbeat to resettle the Rohingya is reaching a crescendo. This is how it works, there is a deliberate media campaign that we have chronicled throughout 90 posts on the subject. Now the pressure is really building. Just in the last couple of days I see that Change.org is telling its activists to lobby the UN and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to resettle the Rohingya: Demand action from the UNHCR and the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement* to prioritize the resettlement of the Rohingya refugees and offer them the protection they deserve. * They should be lobbying the US State Department, but I am sure ORR will be happy to forward their demands to the federal department that makes the decisions on who gets into the US (with direction from the UN of course!). I have just learned that American Muslim activist groups are pushing Rohingya resettlement too. Here we have a report in which, surprise-surprise, they are also criticizing Muslim Bangladesh about its treatment of the Rohingya flowing into that country. But, of course reading down the article the idea of resettling Rohingya to the wide open spaces of North America is presented. Last week, the American Muslim Taskforce (AMT), an umbrella organization that includes the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), amongst other Muslim organizations in the USA, hosted a press conference in the National Press Club, Washington D.C. to discuss human rights abuses in Bangladesh. In his inaugural statement, Mr. Wright Mahdi Bray of the AMT brought up the squalid living conditions of the Rohingya refugees inside Bangladesh. In the last few years we have raised the Rohingya issue a few times with Bangladesh government, but have failed to improve the deplorable condition. [.....] Should the refugees choose to leave Bangladesh for a third country the government should not hinder that process either. It must also make all diplomatic efforts to find shelters for these stranded refugees in sparsely populated and prosperous countries of Europe and North America, and the Gulf states. This is the second time in recent weeks I have seen this reference to “sparsely populated” North America. I wonder if Change.org ever has any conflicts between its environmental activists who want to preserve American vistas and open space (not to mention, wanting clean air and water) and the activists pushing for higher populations through immigration. I hate to break it to you, but you can’t have both especially with such high birth rates among Muslim immigrants. Also, I’ve told you several times recently about how Rohingya refugees who have gone to Saudi Arabia have been imprisoned there, well this article from the Asian Tribune tells us more of the details of how that happened. So much for Muslim charity! To round out the troika this morning. I see that Christiane Amanpour has posted a CNN report entitled, “The forgotten people: Rohingya refugees.” I didn’t watch it, but I’m sure its the same old drumbeat. We are already resettling Rohingya Quietly and with no fanfare the US State Department has already begun resettling Rohingya Muslims to your cities, so has Canada and many European countries including the UK and Ireland. Tensions between Burmese Karen Christians, another persecuted minority from Burma, and the Muslim Burmese Rohingya continue to mount in resettlment cities although this goes unreported by the mainstream media that is still stuck in the American melting pot myth. If I lived in a resettlement city, especially one with a large Burmese population, I would be asking the resettlement agencies if more Rohingya are on the way. Those agencies have a tendency to gloss over concerns and play up the Burmese Christian refugee angle.

Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds.”

Food Minister Abdur Razzaque yesterday said Bangladesh is not mistreating Rohingya refugees as is being published in some international media.

“Despite being a poor country, Bangladesh has been providing shelter and other assistance to Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds.”

“There was no crackdown on Rohingyas in Bangladesh, but an international media used such objectionable word,” said the minister when UNHCR Country Representative Craig Sanders met him at his office.

Replying to Sanders' request to register the unregistered Rohingyas, Razzaque said any initiative to register them encourages them to enter Bangladesh, as they think international organisations will help them or resettle them in some developed countries.

There are around 24,000 Rohingya refugees in Kutupalong and Nayapara in Cox's Bazar while estimated four lakh unregistered Rohingyas spread all over the region.

Denied citizenship and persecuted in Myanmar, some two lakh Rohingyas infiltrated the borders of Bangladesh. Many of them were repatriated, but many more later infiltrated.

There were talks several times between Myanmar and Bangladesh on repatriation without any significant development on the issue.

Stating that repatriation of the refugees to their own country is the permanent solution to the problem, Razzaque said they are creating socio-economic burden on Cox's Bazar.

UNHRC has to take an initiative on emergency basis for their repatriation, he added.

The minister said as long as Rohingyas are here, UNHCR has to increase assistance and take effective measures to repatriate them.

Agreeing to the fact that international media's information that Rohingyas in Bangladesh are ill-treated is not right, the UNHCR envoy said Rohingya problem has spread to the Southeast Asian region, including Thailand and Malaysia.

He appreciated the refugee camp management in Cox's Bazar camps and assured the government of increased assistance from UNHCR

UNHCR Urged To Expedite Relocation Of Rohingya Refugees ::

Oregenal News From
By Mohd Haikal Mohd Isa KULAIJAYA, Feb 27 (Bernama) -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is urged to expedite the relocation process for about 15,000 Rohingya refugees in Malaysia to third countries.Community Rohingya Islam Pro-Democracy Organisation (CRIPDO) president, Mustafa Kamal Abu Basir said, the long-standing problem of resettlement for the refugees had persisted for years without a solution."We (Rohingya refugees) don't want to stay in Malaysia much longer. We have agreed to be relocated to other third countries willing to accept us."We ask that the UNHCR office in Kuala Lumpur find an immediate solution to our problem so that we and our children can start a new life," he told Bernama in an interview today.CRIPDO is one of several organisations formed by Rohingya refugees in Malaysia to care for the welfare of these refugees from Myanmar.According to Mustafa, the official number of Muslim Rohingya refugees in Malaysia was 15,000, but the real figure might exceed 21,000, including new arrivals in the country.He said the number of Rohingya refugees in the country was small compared to about two million in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, 150,000 in Thailand and hundreds of thousands in India and other middle-east countries.Although he was thankful for the concern shown by the Malaysian government, Mustafa said the refugees continued to experience various pressure while in this country."Rohingya refugees in Malaysia are not allowed to work and our children aren't allowed to go to school. How can we bear the costs of living if we don't work," he said.He said because of this, some of the refugees got involved in criminal and immoral activities to support their family.Their situation had become worse, he said, because the refugee card issued by the UNHCR office in Kuala Lumpur was not recognised by local authorities in Malaysia.Mustafa claimed that this had resulted in many of the Rohingya refugees to be detained by the authorities in illegal immigrants detention centres before being deported."We are refugees, not illegal immigrants. If we are sent back home we will be killed (by Myanmar military). Have pity on us," he said, adding that he had been arrested 18 times by Malaysian authorities during his 25 years in the country.He said the Rohingyas were an ethnic minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. Home for them was a part of the Arakan state in the western reaches of the military-ruled Myanmar.Having been denied the rights as a Myanmar citizen, the Rohingya people in Arakan faced oppression and hardship including killings by the country's military regime, claimed Mustafa."This has caused thousands of Rohingyas in Arakan to flee by boat to Ranong or Mae Sot in Thailand, before starting their mainland journey to the Malaysian border," he said.-- BERNAMA