By Human Rights Watch Media Release

UPDATING All Day, Every Day

ABOUT 80 of 137 Rohingya men being held in the Immigration centre at Sadao in Thailand’s southern Songkhla province escaped about 3am today, according to aid sources.

Original Report

PHUKET: Thailand’s government should release ethnic Rohingya from Burma who are detained under inhumane and unsafe conditions, and ensure their protection needs are met, Human Rights Watch said today.

On August 13, 2013, the Thai cabinet considered a plan to transfer 1839 Rohingya who have been held in immigration detention facilities and social welfare shelters across Thailand to refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border.

AFP

Myanmar has strongly denied previous accusations of ethnic cleansing

Myanmar must address anti-Muslim propaganda and stamp out a culture of impunity for religious violence or risk “catastrophic” levels of conflict, a rights group warned Tuesday.

Physicians for Human Rights described attacks on Muslims, that have swept the country since fighting first broke out last year as “widespread and systematic,” in a report examining unrest that has killed around 250 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

The US-based group said that while the situation in the country currently appeared calm, a failure to properly investigate and deal with the causes of the tensions risks further clashes.

PHR reported that “the brazen nature of these crimes and the widespread culture of impunity in which these massacres occur form deeply troubling preconditions that make such crimes very likely to continue.”

By Nopparat Chaichalearmmongkol and Wilawan Watcharasakwet

BANGKOK – Thai officials continue the search of dozens of Rohingya asylum-seekers, who broke out of an immigration detention center in southern Thailand before dawn on Tuesday.

Of the 87 Rohingya migrants who initially fled, 29 had been apprehended by Tuesday evening, said  Maj. Gen. Suwit Chernsiri, police commander of the southern province of Songkhla.

More than 1,800 Muslim Rohingya people, an ethnic minority group from western Myanmar, are being detained across Thailand, according to the country’s Internal Security Operations Command.

The Rohingyas, who number around 800,000, comprise less than 1% of Myanmar’s total population, but around a fifth of the people in Rakhine state, where tensions with local Buddhists run deep.

The World Outline

It has been over a year since the renowned Burmese political activist Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to the Burmese parliament signalling a groundbreaking change in the country’s government. It has also been over a year since the first story emerged about the plight of the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority in Burma, leaving nothing but a slight murmur on the global conscience.

In this time, Burma’s international relations have markedly improved, with visits to the United States as well as the removal of economic sanctions. Even prominent global corporations have travelled to the country to set up shop. Behind this veil of prosperity and change lies the persecution of the biggest population of stateless people in the world.

By Iris C. Gonzales

How do you solve a problem like Burma’s Arakan (Rakhine) State, where violence is almost a daily fare for the men, women and children in the impoverished area?

The solution is not a simple one, but the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Burmese government must acknowledge that the problem is affecting the whole region, and act swiftly.

Riots erupted last year between the Rohingya Muslims and the ethnic Rakhine people at the Rakhine State of Burma, killing about 170 people and displacing roughly 140,000 mostly Rohingyans, according to the United Nations.