Mr. Chair, Honorable Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to thank you for inviting me before this commission. Having worked with ethnic people from Burma and, more specifically with the Rohingya minority for the last 7 years, I am honored to offer a testimony today.

Arakan State of Burma is by far the most tense and explosive region of the country. The refugee outflows to Bangladesh in 1978 and again in 1991/92, each of about 250,000 Rohingya, did not result from counter-insurgency strategies as it is the case along the Thai-Burma border, but is the direct outcome of policies of discrimination, oppression and exclusion against the Rohingya population.