Tag Archives: Rohingya

Inaction in the International Community: The Plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya

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By Vani Sathisan*

Rohingya protestersIn February, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a report condemning the widespread human rights violations against the Rohingya population, a minority Muslim community, in Myanmar. The report states that a “calculated policy of terror” indicates the “very likely commission of crimes against humanity,” a view echoed by the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee. Following the 34th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva in March, The UN Human Rights Council approved a resolution to “dispatch urgently” an international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations by military and security forces against the Rohingya community. The Myanmar government, however, has rejected the UN probe for “inflaming” existent tensions, stating instead that the allegations are an “internal matter.”

Since deadly violence erupted in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2012, an estimated 140,000 people, mainly Rohingya and small groups of Rakhine Buddhists, have been internally displaced. Persecution by Rakhine Buddhists and the national government, which is controlled by the Bamar majority ethnic group, have forced even more Rohingya to flee Myanmar for neighboring countries, like Bangladesh. Myanmar’s lack of genuine commitment to the rule of law and to protecting the rights of the Rohingya further entrench exclusion, discrimination and marginalization, and violate a number of international human rights laws and norms. Continue reading →

Myanmar: UN Report Condemns Human Rights Violations against Muslim Minority

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Rohingya Village

Rohingya Village in Myanmar

On Friday, a new UN report has accused Myanmar’s security forces of waging a brutal campaign of murder, rape and torture in the Rakhine State against Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority not recognized by Myanmar.

The report, compiled after interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, also cites consistent testimony indicating that hundreds of Rohingya houses, schools, markets, shops, madrasas and mosques were burned by the army, police and sometimes civilian mobs.

Witnesses also described the destruction of food and food sources, including paddy fields, and the confiscation of livestock.

While discrimination against the Rohingyas has been endemic for decades in the Rakhine State, the recent level of violence is unprecedented, says the report.

The testimonies, gathered by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, indicate that the attacks against the Rohingya villages make it impossible for them to live in their villages, thereby creating a coercive environment amounting to forced displacement.

The information also demonstrates that the victims were targeted based on their belonging to a particular ethnicity and religion.

Many victims mentioned that soldiers and officers taunted them by saying that Islam is not the religion of Myanmar; that Rohingyas are Muslim Bengalis; and that Rohingyas would be eliminated from Myanmar.

The report says that the attacks against the Rohingya population in the area seem to have been widespread as well as systematic, indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.

An estimated 65,000 members of the Muslim minority community have fled to Bangladesh since violence broke out in Myanmar last October.

Investigation Reveals ‘Strong Evidence’ of Genocide against Rohingya

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FILE - In this June 13, 2012 file photo, a Rohingya Muslim man who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape religious violence, cries as he pleads from a boat after he and others were intercepted by Bangladeshi border authorities in Taknaf, Bangladesh. She is known as the voice of Myanmar's downtrodden but there is one oppressed group that Aung San Suu Kyi does not want to discuss. For weeks, Suu Kyi has dodged questions on the plight of a Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, prompting rare criticism of the woman whose struggle for democracy and human rights in Myanmar have earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, and adoration worldwide. (AP Photo/Anurup Titu, File)

Rohingya People who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape violence (AP Photo/Anurup Titu)

According to a news article by Al Jazeera of Tuesday the 27th of October, there is ‘strong evidence’ that a genocide against the Rohingya people at the hands of the Myanmar government is, and has been, taking place.

The Lowenstein Clinic of Yale Law School, a clinic that undertakes a wide variety of projects involving students of Yale Law School and which is working on behalf of human rights organisations and individual victims of human rights abuses, spent eight months assessing evidence from Myanmar.

The clinic concluded that it was hard to avoid a conclusion that intent to commit genocide is present, given the scale of the atrocities and the way politicians in Myanmar talk about the Rohingya muslim minority of the country.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit and the advocacy group Fortify Rights provided documents and testimonies to the study. According to this evidence, “the government has been triggering communal violence for political gain by inciting anti-Muslim riots, using hate speech to stoke fear among the Myanmarese about Muslims, and offering money to hardline Buddhist groups who threw their support behind the leadership.”

Al Jazeera has also published a new documentary, Genocide Agenda, which consults legal and diplomatic experts on whether the government‘s campaign amounts to systematic extermination. Continue reading →