Press Releases
Joint Statement on the Official Report of the Rakhine (Arakan) Investigation Commission
Date: May 4, 2013
We the undersigned organizations reject the 186-page official report dated 22 April 2013 of the Arakan Investigation Commission as follows:
- The Rakhine Investigation Commission formed on 17 August 2012 by President Thein Sein included representatives from various religious and political parties and democracy groups except Rohingya representatives, who have been actual and potential victims of deadly violence and genocidal attacks. Haji U Nyunt Maung Shein and U Tin Maung Than, the two prominent Muslim leaders were purged from the Commission seeing that they were most insistent on the truth.
Press Release: Rebuttal to Eleven Media false report
Date: May 6, 2013
Our attention has been drawn to the news item appeared in Eleven Media, Yangon, dated 05/05/2013 under caption, “ Three Rohingya organizations are reportedly masterminding a religious war against Myanmar” accusing that “Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO), and Rohingya National Security Council (RNSC) are reportedly supporting and manipulating the plot. Their members have already collected weapons for the war. The Muslim living in Myanmar, especially hardcore members are campaigning for enlisting for their conspiracy……”
Press Release: STOP ROHINGYA ETHNOCIDE
(28 April 2013)
We condemn the police shooting, on 26 April 2013, of a group of Rohingya children for their peaceful protest chanting “Rohingya, Rohingya” when hostile operational team consisting of immigration, military, NaSaKa, police and village administrators came to Thet Kay Byin village near Ba Du Pha Rohingya displacement camp in Arakan’s capital Sittwe (Akyab), to perform the current operation forcing the Rohingya to register as “Bengali” for the census. A 15 year old boy namely Mohammad Ali S/o Kabir Ahmed of Thet Kay Bin was injured in the shooting and is now taking treatment in a private clinic.
Press Release: UN Intervention and Commission of Inquiry Most Urgent
Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) welcomes the 153-page report of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) dated 22 April 2013 which titled “ ‘All You Can Do is Pray’: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State” .
In its report, HRW has said that crimes against humanity have been committed by the Burmese authorities and Rakhine Buddhist groups in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State.
In This Issue:
- Editorial: Rohingyas are in a geopolitical crossroad: Global Powers and Competing Interests
- Rohingya Resilience in Exile: Rebuilding Lives in Refugee Camps
- Containing Arakan Army: A Security Imperative for Myanmar and Bangladesh
- Ending Digital Violence against Women and Girls
- Myanmar’s Election: Conflict, Exclusion, and a Crisis of Legitimacy
- Rohingya Families in Maungdaw Prepare to Flee Amid Forced Conscription Fears
- Arakan Army Orders Rohingya to Surrender Household Registration Lists
- Fire Tears Through Rohingya Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Injuring Three Children and Destroying Dozens of Shelters
- Rohingya Men and Women Forced to Join Armed Group in Maungdaw
- ARNO Welcomes UN Third Committee Resolution on Rohingya Rights, Demands Accountability for Armed-Group Abuses
Latest News
Myanmar, Kachin in key peace talks
Bangkok Post
Myanmar on Thursday looked to build on a tentative peace deal with Kachin rebels, with talks aimed at ending the country’s last major active civil war.
General Gwan Maw of the Kachin Independence Army speaks during a meeting with Myanmar government officials and a delegation of the rebel Kachin Independence Organization in Myitkyina, in the country’s northern Kachin state on October 8, 2013
Fighting in northern Kachin state has displaced tens of thousands since a 17-year ceasefire crumbled two years ago, with bouts of heavy combat that have undermined the reformist government’s aim of securing countrywide peace.Political prisoners in Myanmar must be released without conditions, UN expert stresses
UN News Centre
9 October 2013 – An independent United Nations human rights expert today welcomed the latest release of political prisoners in Myanmar, while also voicing concern over ongoing arrests of activists and conditions attached to arrests.
A presidential amnesty decree on 8 October resulted in the release of 56 prisoners of conscience in the South-east Asian nation, which has been undergoing a reform process aimed at a more open and broad-based democracy. President Thein Sein has committed to release all political prisoners by the end of this year.Waiting for the dividend
Despite hopes of a nationwide ceasefire agreement, the trust needed for lasting peace remains a long way off.
BY THE Salween river in the city of Hpa-an, on a patch of ground the size of a football pitch, the foundations are being dug out for a posh new hotel. This would not get much attention anywhere else in Myanmar. Scores of new hotels are going up in Yangon and Mandalay, the two biggest cities, to cater for an influx of tourists drawn by the country’s recent opening-up. In Hpa-an, however, it is big news.Are invisible forces orchestrating Myanmar’s anti-Muslim violence?
BY
The military has much to lose from democratic reforms and may be using the bloodshed as a way to reassert control.
Myanmar’s president made his first trip to the violence-hit town of Thandwe last week, days after a 94-year-old Muslim woman was slain by Buddhists in a nearby village. Spurred on by an unrelated argument between a Muslim political leader and a Buddhist taxi driver two days prior, a mob approached her home in a nearby village on October 1. Her daughter managed to escape, but returned to find a charred house and a mother with cuts to her neck, head and stomach.Sexual violence in Burma
By Mark Inkey, Guest Contributor
Burma was not one of the 115 countries to sign up to the UN Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) launched by William Hague at the UN General Assembly on 24 September 2013. Despite Burma’s refusal to sign the initiative the British Government will still pay to train soldiers from the Burmese Army, which is accused of using rape as a weapon and child soldiers. Other countries with even worse records than Burma’s on sexual violence, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone signed up to the initiative.Myanmar poised to grow as country shakes off decades of dictatorship
By Peter O’Neil, Vancouver Sun
Canadian companies willing to take risks have potential to reap rewards, says trade minister
In the mid-20th century a young Canadian traveller, touring Southeast Asia at a time when backpacking around the world was not only unfashionable but high-risk, gave a bleak review of Burma.
“I have seen no country where chaos, bribery, looting, smuggling, insurrection and political assassination have been so prevalent,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau told his mother in a letter unearthed during historian John English’s research for a 2006 biography of the late prime minister.Violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state must end for sake of children – UNICEF
UN News Centre
8 October 2013 – Citing the negative impact of the inter-communal clashes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state on children in the region, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today urged all parties to put an end to the violence.
“In the name of Myanmar’s children, now is the time for this violence to end,” said Bertrand Bainvel, UNICEF Representative in Yangon. “Hate messages and inflammatory propaganda just perpetuate the cycle of violence, and it is children who suffer.”
Rakhine state has been the site of inter-communal violence since June 2012, with clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, which eventually led the Government to declare a state of emergency there. Some 75,000 people were uprooted in the first wave of riots and another 36,000 were displaced by a second wave of unrest in October last year.Myanmar announces release of political prisoners
Myanmar has released dozens of political prisoners, mostly members of ethnic organizations, as peace talks are held with Kachin rebels. The move comes ahead of a high profile regional summit in Brunei.
Of those who were released, some 18 were said to be Kachin rebels, with detainees from other ethnic groups also among those freed. The activist group Former Political Prisoners said some of those released on Tuesday were also believed to be from the eastern Shan state.
“Most of the 56 prisoners released today are members of ethnic organizations,” said Aung Min, a minister from the president’s office.
In a speech made on a trip to Britain in July, President Thein Sein promised that all political detainees would be freed by the end of the year.Critics question Myanmar’s readiness to head ASEAN
By Pitman (AP)
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (AP) — Just a few years ago Myanmar was an isolated dictatorship that embarrassed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with its dismal human rights record. Now it’s poised to take over leadership of the 10-nation bloc for the first time — a move critics say may be premature given conflicts at home that have left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced.
The appointment of Myanmar to ASEAN’s chairmanship is meant to reward the former pariah’s transformation since its military junta turned over power to an elected government two years ago, and some are hopeful that putting the spotlight on Myanmar will serve as further incentive for reform.
But Myanmar still has a long way to go. Last week, smoke and flames rose once again from the twisted wreckage of charred Muslim homes and mosques ransacked by machete-wielding Buddhist mobs, this time in Thandwe in western Rakhine state, where five people were killed — one of them a 94-year-old Muslim woman who was too frail to flee.Reports
Nearly 1,000 Muslim Rohingyas incarcerated in Arakan state
By HANNA HINDSTROM
Nearly 1,000 Muslim Rohingyas, including women and children as young as ten, remain incarcerated in northern Arakan state – accused of inciting sectarian clashes last year – where campaigners say they are subject to “pervasive” abuses and at least 68 people are believed to have died in custody.
New data obtained by DVB shows that torture and violence, including the sexual exploitation of minors, is widespread throughout prisons in northern Arakan state, where at least 966 Rohingyas have been detained since November last year. At least 10 women and 72 children, aged between 10 and 15 years old, are understood to be among the prisoners.Rohingya Library
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