Shudeepto Ariquzzaman
The United Nations has raised concerns on Saturday that the unrest in Arakan could derail the entire reform process in Myanmar.

“Rakhine (Arakan) State is going through a profound crisis that threatens to spread to other parts of the country and has the potential to undermine the entire reform process in Myanmar”, said Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN Special RapporteuronHuman Rights in Burma. The envoy was speaking to reporters at the Yangon airport following his five day visit to Myanmar. This happens to be Quintana’s seventh visit to the country since he was appointed to this position in March 2008.

By Jason Motlagh / Sittwe
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.

BALIK PULAU: Some 140 Rohingya refugees starved for three days, before 35 of them, including children, were arrested in the jungle of the Penang National Park today.

 
Aged between a year old to 70s, they were arrested about 3pm after they were found loitering around the Teluk Kampi beach, and are believed to have entered the country’s waters by using a barge 13 days ago.
 
When met, one of the refugees, Mohamad Rovic, 26, said they had to get off the boat and wander around for shelter, with some having run away into the woods.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur to Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, says that the use of excessive force by Myanmar’s government forces against local communities and ethnic groups was worrying to the UN.
Speaking at a press conference at Yangon International Airport before leaving the country on Saturday, Quintana said nearly 120,000 people are now living in camps in Rakhine State with a lack of adequate healthcare, and noted that conditions were worse in camps sheltering Rohingyas and other Muslims.

By Francis Wade
Two stark choices now face the Muslim population in western Burma: the first is that they take to the high seas on over-packed boats bereft of navigational equipment and adequate supplies to last them the journey to Malaysia, or Australia, or wherever they hope to find refuge and respite. The voyage is perilous: the UN says that last year, 485 of around 13,000 Rohingya who fled Bangladesh and Burma on boats drowned, equivalent to one in 26 people. The chances of survival are not favourable.

UN rights envoy arrives in Rakhine
Authorities in Rakhine state have extended a night-time curfew in Muslim minority Rohingya areas, citing ongoing safety concerns after sectarian violence erupted in June and October last year.

Residents of Maungdaw, one of three predominantly Rohingya areas close to the Bangladesh border, said the announcement was made on Monday.

The area has stabilized after violence between Rohingyas and Buddhists led to the deaths of about 200 people and the displacement of 100,000 as homes were burned to the ground in tit-for-tat attacks last year.

(Reuters) – Myanmar nationals rescued from a sinking ship by the Sri Lankan Navy have told of throwing 98 people overboard after they died of starvation and dehydration, Sri Lanka’s police said on Monday.

Sailors rescued 31 adult males and a boy on February 16 when their damaged wooden ship began to sink about 250 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southeastern coast, Sri Lanka’s navy said on its website (www.navy.lk).

“They said they had carried food and water for only one month and they had been in the sea for two months after the ship engine stalled,” police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody told Reuters. “Their captain and 97 others have died due to dehydration and starvation. They also said they had thrown the dead bodies into the sea.”

By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison
PHUKET: Two boys have absconded from a welfare centre for Rohingya women and children north of Phuket, bringing to four the number who have vanished without trace.

Four people at the centre are also being treated for malaria, although conditions at the Phang Nga Home for Family and Children in Khukkhak, a short drive from Phuket, are said to be good.

Bangkok – 14 February 2013 – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) this week began delivering footballs and other play and recreation supplies to eight Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS) shelters caring for Rohingya children in southern Thailand.

Approximately 270 Rohingya children, many of whom have been separated from their fathers or who came to Thailand unaccompanied by adults, are being cared for at nine MSDHS shelters in eight provinces across the South.