Although the term “Rohingya” is subject to various interpretations, it has been used in recent times primarily to cover the ethnic Muslim minority found in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Rohingya have sadly been in the news because of the violence, discrimination, dispossession and marginalisation to which they have been subjected. The depth of their tragedy cries out for a robust helping hand from their state of origin and the international community.

M.S. Anwar Special to Salem-News.com
If the vulnerable situation of Rohingyas and Kamans continue, it will not take long for the humanity to see exterminations of more ethnic communities in the modern time, why?
(KUALA LAMPUR) – The world has been witnessing the well-planned Genocide of Rohingyas and Kamans in Arakan, Burma for more than eight months now. Consequently, Rohingyas and Kamans are now without foods, any access to medical treatments and their other ways to livelihoods are blocked. They are being arbitrary arrested, tortured and killed. Their properties are being looted and women being raped. Religious buildings are locked down and so and so atrocities have been being carried out against them under the so-called international radar. Not surprisingly though, the heinous crimes Rohingyas and Kamans are successfully being covered up. Their outcries are falling into deaf ears. Less attention and (less) importance are given to their dying plights. No effective steps to prevent the continuing Genocide of them have been taken yet. Nor does it seem it will be taken in the future.

by Jason Motlagh
A large chunk of Abdul Rahman’s home is gone, and so is his oldest son, Shakur. The ethnic Rohingya farmer tore down nearly half his home for scrap needed to secure his son’s passage on a boat bound for Malaysia.

In the wake of bloody sectarian violence last year that left hundreds dead and forced tens of thousands of minority Muslim Rohingya into camps outside the coastal city of Sittwe, Rahman, 52, insists his people are being “strangled” by a Burmese government that does not want them. While foreign donors have supplied basic food rations, checkpoints manned by armed guards prevent the displaced from returning to the paddies and markets their livelihoods depend on. “Even animals can move more freely,” says Rahman.

Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, supported by former Timor-Leste president Ramos-Horta, has pitched in strongly for the persecuted Rohingyas of Myanmar.
“There is evidence that the Rohingya have been in present-day Myanmar since the 8th century,” the two wrote in Huffington Post. “It is incontrovertible that Muslim communities have existed in [Rakhine] State since the 15th century, added to by descendants of Bengalis migrating to Arakan [Rakhine] during colonial times.”
“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,” the two Nobel laureates wrote.

Editor: Wang Yuanyuan

YANGON/GENEVA: Myanmar boat survivors rescued by Sri Lanka’s navy last week say they floated for 25 days at sea and 97 people died of starvation after Thailand’s navy intercepted and forcibly removed their boat’s engines.

Thirty-two men and a boy now detained at an immigration detention centre near Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, were rescued last Saturday when their dilapidated wooden vessel began sinking while making a perilous journey to Malaysia. The Thai navy has denied the allegation.

The survivors are Rohingya Muslims regarded as illegal immigrants into Myanmar from Bangladesh, and say they do not want to return to Myanmar.

The survivors were suffering from severe dehydration when they were rescued about 250 miles off Sri Lanaka’s east coast.’

Meanwhile, the UN’s refugee agency on Friday raised the alarm over the rising number of boat people perishing in the Indian Ocean, including Rohingya Muslims fleeing communal strife in Myanmar.

By Emily Alpert
By the time their rickety boat was rescued last week off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, nearly a hundred of the weakened passengers had lost their lives – roughly three times as many as survived.

The starving people had endured nearly two months at sea, trying to flee the western state of Myanmar where hundreds were slain last year, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. The Rohingya Muslims say they undertook the arduous journey out of fear for their lives.

The outpouring of Rohingya from western Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps has made the Indian Ocean “one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said Friday. It estimated that last year, nearly 500 out of 13,000 people fleeing by boat in the Bay of Bengal perished. Reports of the dead are still being tallied.