Daniel Rook
KHAO LAK, Thailand (AFP) – Homeless, hungry and nine months pregnant, Nuru boarded a rickety boat filled with Rohingya asylum seekers fleeing a wave of deadly sectarian violence in western Myanmar.

Six days later she gave birth at sea, far from any hospitals or doctors.

Since Buddhist-Muslim tensions exploded last June in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, thousands of Rohingya boat people – including a growing number of women and children – have joined an exodus from the former junta-ruled country.
Nuru, 24, with her one month old baby, Muhammad Ayik, at a Thai government shelter in Khao lak, southern Thailand. Homeless, hungry and nine months pregnant, Nuru boarded a rickety boat filled with Rohingya asylum seekers fleeing a wave of deadly sectarian violence in western Myanmar

Those who arrived in neighbouring Thailand have been “helped on” by the Thai navy towards Malaysia further south or detained as illegal immigrants.

Hundreds are feared to have drowned along the way while others were rescued as far away as Sri Lanka.

By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison

News Analysis

PHUKET: No sign has been found of 14 Rohingya said to have landed on Phuket in a small group of boatpeople 10 days ago, among many now turning up around the entire Indian Ocean region.

Eight of the Rohingya were apprehended quickly on February 22 and are believed to be being held in the Phuket Immigration centre in Phuket City.

Of the other 14 who were reported to have been travelling with them, there has been no sign.

Another riddle concerns the location of the boat in which they are said to have arrived off Phuket’s popular Surin beach about 4am that day.

Jose Ramos-Horta and Prof. Muhammad Yunus
One of the fundamental challenges of a democracy is how to ensure the voice of the majority does not trample the essential rights of the minority. In the founding of the United States this was addressed by the Bill of Rights, some form of which is integrated into most democracies today.

Even as we applaud and rejoice in the new freedoms enjoyed by the Myanmar people, the country’s newly elected government must face this challenge as they evolve from autocratic rule into a democratic state. The tragedy of the Rohingya people, continuing to unfold in Rakhine State in the country’s western corner, on the border of Bangladesh, will be its proving ground.

The minority Muslim Rohingya continue to suffer unspeakable persecution, with more than 1,000 killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes just in recent months, apparently with the complicity and protection of security forces.

Susan Metcalfe
The recently reported deaths at sea of nearly 100 Rohingya asylum seekers from Myanmar is the starkest reminder that Australia needs to step up its efforts to improve regional protection for asylum seekers and refugees. Without cohesive regional strategies to address the needs of fleeing asylum seekers, the body count will continue to grow, and we must all take some of the blame.

When more than 30 survivors were rescued from the sinking vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka, reportedly en route to Malaysia and Australia, stories emerged of bodies thrown overboard as people died from dehydration and starvation during weeks at sea.

When the Sri Lankan navy rescued another 138 people earlier this month, one person was found dead on board. In recent days, 121 Rohingya asylum seekers were rescued from a boat found drifting off the coast of Indonesia.

By Nora Rowley
Physician and Human Rights Activist — USA
“We want peace,” were the Rohingya’s sentiments expressed to me again, as I recently revisited the Rakhine State in Myanmar/Burma, where a population of Muslims has been living for centuries.

Once again, I was immersed into widespread Rohingya individual and communal resilience, strength of character, and wholesome peace-loving-and-seeking outlook on life. Much hasn’t changed, i.e. the kindness, playful children following and calling me Feri, fathers carrying around their small children, and women worrying where my husband and children were.

Associated Press

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia –  A wooden boat carrying 121 hungry, weak Rohingya has been found adrift off Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh.

A doctor at a hospital in Lhokseumawe says the boat had engine trouble and was discovered by fishermen about 25 kilometers (16 miles) off the coast.

The doctor, Herry Luthfi, said Wednesday that the group includes six women and two children under 5 years old. He says they are weak from hunger and dehydration.

The group’s destination was unclear.

Emanuel Stoakes
The international community has been shamefully unresponsive to this crisis

The news last week that around a hundred refugees from Burma had slowly starved to death after 25 days at sea may have shocked those unfamiliar with the current state of affairs in Asia’s newest ostensible democracy. The harrowing  reports more recently of mass rapes, involving torture, in the country’s western Rakhine state will likely have had a similar impact.

But to those who have been keeping up with the daily reports of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at ethnic minorities in Burma news of these latest horrors was heartbreaking, but unsurprising.

It was likewise grimly un-startling to read that in both cases the victims were from the most vulnerable of all ethnic groups in the country, the imperiled and desperate Rohingya minority.

By Meghna Guhathakurta
 “We Rohingyas are like orchids,” an 18-year-old Rohingya man called Shamsul once told me. “We are not able to grow any roots in the ground so we are left with only one way to stay alive and that is to cling on to others.”
–    Emma Larkin, in the foreword to Exiled to Nowhere

For nearly half a century after 1962, Burma was ruled by a military dictatorship with one of the world’s worst records of human rights abuses. In that oppressive society, where the Burmese army fought numerous ethnic insurgencies, the Rohingya – Muslim settlers of the northern part of Rakhine State (formerly Arakan State), who prefer to call themselves Arakanese Muslims – have been among the most persecuted.