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.

Kabita Chakraborty
The world has watched for decades, hoping for political reform that would bring freedoms to Burma. While the past two years have brought remarkable political and cultural changes, the hope of freedoms quickly gave way to ethnic conflict and communal violence targeting Muslims.

“The New Burma? Religion, Democracy and the Rohingya” panel will explore the changes and challenges facing the new Burma, focusing particularly on the plight of the Rohingya Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 4pm at 280A York Lanes, Keele campus.
The three panellists, Anwar S. Arkani, Kabita Chakraborty and Antoine Nouvet, bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the panel, says Professor Alicia Turner of York’s Department of Humanities who organized the event.

Over one hundred Rohingya Muslims fleeing the onging violence in Myanmar have been found adrift off Indonesia’s coast.

The wooden boat was discovered by fishermen about 25 kilometers (16 miles) north off the coast Aceh Province on Wednesday.

A doctor at a hospital in the city of Lhokseumawe said the 121 passengers, including six women and two children under the age of five, are weak from hunger and dehydration.

The passengers said that the boat had experienced engine trouble but there are no reports regarding the group’s destination.

    Recently, another boat was found off Sri Lanka’s coast, with 33 dehydrated Rohingya refugees and additional 97 dead. The surviving passengers said Thai military took the boat’s engine and left them to float at sea for 25 days without water and food before being rescued.