Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO)
Press release
11/10/2016

Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) expresses its serious concern on the ongoing police and military crackdowns on innocent Rohingya civilians in Maungdaw Township following attacks by unidentified assailants on three separate police outposts in northern Arakan on Sunday 9 October. 

 29/08/2016

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation cautiously welcomes the formation of a nine-member Advisory Commission chaired by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to find out lasting solutions to the issues in the Arakan/Rakhine State.

“The situation of Rohingya people in Myanmar represents a global challenge for the entire international community”. It is encouraging that the Government of Myanmar, for the first time, appreciates the importance of efforts by international dignitaries like Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan and two other diplomats in resolving the long standing Rohingya problem of ethnic, religious and political persecution.  

The problem in Arakan is not an immigration issue, but systematic, deliberate and often brute forced removal of ethnic Rohingya from their ancestral homeland by organized use of intimidation, terror, rape, murder, destruction and other inhuman acts, under intolerant state policies, with a view to transforming the region into a close-knit homogenous Buddhist Rakhine territory. Decades of Rohingyas’ victimization in Myanmar, including the organized deadly violence occurred and reoccurred against them in Arakan from 2012, have not yet been properly and truthfully investigated. We hope the Annan Commission will leave no stone unturned in looking for an objective assessment.

ARAKAN ROHINGYA NATIONAL ORGANISATION

ARAKAN

(25 August 2016)

1.The Panglong Agreement signed on February 12, 1947 between the independence hero late Gen. Aung San and leaders of the several ethnic groups in Panglong, Shan State, was an epoch-making event in the history of Burma to build the Union of Burma together. The history of Burma/Myanmar would have developed differently if there was no Panglong Treaty.

2.But the true spirit of the Panglong — ‘unity in diversity’– has never been realized since Burma’s independence on January 4, 1948. The agreed upon principles of federal democracy, equal rights, autonomy and self-determination of the ethnic nationalities have been largely ignored which developed resentment giving rise to long civil war continuing till today.

16 May 2016

We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations express our serious concern that the security, honour and dignity of the Rohingya population continue to be at stake due to growing anti-Rohingya sentiment at the behest of the powerful and influential groups in the Myanmar.

We are worrying that the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) government seems to have inclined to yield to the demand of the extremists calling for “Rohingya ethnocide”. Following a protest in late May in Yangon by about 300 ultra-nationalists, including Buddhist monks, publicly denouncing the United States of America for using the word Rohingya, the Myanmar Foreign Ministry, headed by State Counselor-com-Foreign Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, had surprisingly advised foreign embassies in Myanmar avoid using “Rohingya”, although the Rohingya people have the right to self-identify.

Press release, March 18, 2016

Our attention has been drawn to the statement of the Commander-in-Chief of the Burma’s armed forces, Snr. Gen Min Aung Hlaing at the 13^th ASEAN Chiefs of Defence Forces Informal meeting held on Monday (14/3/2016) in Vientiane, Laos where he “called for closer cooperation between the member states of the ASEAN to address the problem of the Rohingya migration” and “stressed the need to work together to combat “terrorism” related to the “Bengali” [Rohingya] issue.” Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) strongly condemns these lies and rebuts as follows:

1. 1.The international community is well aware that the Burmese/Myanmar military dictatorship is persistently denying the Rohingya people a ‘peaceful living’ in their own homeland on grounds of their ethnicity, religion and South Asian appearance in contrast to Southeast Asian.
   

(Press release, 30 October 2015)
 
Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) reiterates its call on the United Nations to establish independent investigation into genocide against Rohingya people in Myanmar.

ARNO welcomes and endorses the just released documentary film titled “Al Jazeera Investigates -Genocide Agenda”, legal analysis prepared for Fortify Rights by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School titled  “Persecution of the Rohingya Muslims: Is Genocide Occurring in Myanmar’s Rakhine State?”, and   the report “Count Down to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar “of the International State Crime Initiative at the School of Law, Queen Mary University,   all of which clearly established the facts that Thein Sein government has committed ‘atrocity crimes’ with intent to destroy the ethnic Rohingya from their ancestral homeland of Arakan/Rakhine State.

ARNO has once again stressed with highest appreciation the previous report, “Slow-Burning Genocide of the Myanmar’s Rohingya” by Burmese academic Dr. Maung Zani and Alice Cowley, published in Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, June 2014, of the University of Washington.

European Rohingya organizations call on international community to pressure Myanmar government to stop excruciating and forcing the Rohingya community into accepting a new ID known as ‘green card’, valid for just two years, for national verification with Bengali identity. It is an ethnocide aims at making the Rohingya aliens and people of Bangladesh origin.

The Rohingya people have rejected the so-called ‘green card’ as the ID is not related to their historicity, ethnic identity and national status. On top of that, being indigenous to Arakan, they are natural born citizens of Burma/Myanmar.

Without a green card or ID now the Rohingya are barred from going to bazaars and village to village, visiting doctors and relatives, and attending congregational prayers even within the same localities and are subjected to increased criminal atrocities.

The second European Rohingya Conference was held between 1-2 August 2015 in Esbjerg, Denmark. It was participated by Rohingya leaders, representatives from Rohingya organisations and communities from all over Europe. The conference discussed issues relating to Rohingya people, their refugees and current deteriorating situation.

The conference:

• Condemned the ruling Burmese/Myanmar government for its policies of ‘Rohingya ethnocide and extermination’ and practice of genocide and other ‘atrocity crimes’ against the Rohingya minority’ with manifest intention to destroy the entire Rohingya people from their ancestral homeland of Arakan/Burma.
• Condemned the ongoing conspiracy to deprive the Rohingya people of their time honoured rights to vote and to hold public offices after they were excluded from the UN sponsored 2014 general census held in March 2014 for identifying themselves as “Rohingya”.
• Condemned the government and extremist non-state actors for obstructing humanitarian aids to Rohingya and Muslim victims of recent devastating cyclone and flood in Arakan and other parts of Burma.
  

(14th May 2015)

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) calls for immediate help of the regional countries and international community to rescue and save the lives of thousands of abandoned Rohingya and Bangladeshi boat people floating off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.