Police Extort Money from Rohingya for Keeping Suu Kyi’s Photo in Phone

Buthidaung, Arakan State (Rohingya Vision) – The Myanmar Police threatened a Rohingya and extorted money from him in Buthidaung Township last Friday for keeping the picture of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in his phone, according to reliable sources.

Around 2:30PM on November 20, a team of five police officers from ‘Regional Security Department’ from the Police Station stopped the Rohingya passers-by and checked out their hand-phone sets. Upon searching their phones, the police found the picture of Daw Aung San Suu Kyin saved in the photo of a person named U Aziz Nazir Hussein.

The police said “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is not a leader of the nation but a puppet of the Western Nations. Why do you keep her photos in your phone?

Doing so is an insult to the President of the nation.”

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Myanmar Woman Held with Heroin in Mizoram

A 43-year-old Myanmarese woman was arrested with 109 grams of heroin worth around Rs 3.5 lakh in the local market, Mizoram Excise and Narcotics Department said on Thursday.

The contraband was seized from one Sangneihi hailing from Khawpuar village in Myanmar onb Wednesday night. She had come to Melbuk in Champhai district in Mizoram, spokesman of the department Peter Zohmingthanga said.

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Microsoft seals Myanmar deal

IT giant Microsoft has signed an agreement of cooperation with Myanmar’s notorious Shwe Taung Group.

In September, Microsoft also went into a partnership with the Kanbawza Group which has businesses ranging from precious minerals to banking.

Greeting the news of the second-largest venture signed by Microsoft in Myanmar, the Financial Times carried the headline: “Microsoft enters minefield of Myanmar business with IT deal.”

Both Shwe Taung and Kanbawza have long been under fire domestically and internationally for cronyism with Shwe Taung’s controlling shareholder Aik Htun suspected by the US Treasury of narcotics connections.

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Suu Kyi says Myanmar cabinet to include ethnic groups, other parties

Myanmar's new cabinet will include members of other political parties and representatives of ethnic minorities, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday, stressing the need for national reconciliation.

The NLD won a majority in both houses of Myanmar's parliament and also faired better than expected against ethnic political parties in regional legislatures.

But Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has emphasised that the first democratically elected government in more than 50 years will seek to reconcile the country's many disparate political groups.

"Our party has won an overwhelming majority of the seats but we won't take them all," Suu Kyi said, referring to cabinet seats in an interview with Radio Free Asia's Myanmar language service broadcast on Thursday.

"As I said earlier, we will cooperate with others with the spirit of sharing our success with them based on building national reconciliation. Of course the NLD will lead. It is the mandate the people have given to us at our request.

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Myanmar's Suu Kyi blames lack of safety regulations for deadly landslide

Nov 26 A disregard for the rule of law in the jade mining industry in Myanmar had made accidents such as the landslide that killed more than 100 people at the weekend a common occurrence, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday.

Authorities called off search efforts late on Wednesday in Hpakant, with as many as 100 people estimated still missing after a huge slag heap of mining debris gave way on Saturday and buried a makeshift settlement of migrant workers as they slept.

"As far as we understand, it was the fifth similar incident this year," Suu Kyi told Radio Free Asia's Myanmar language service during an interview broadcast on Thursday.

"This sort of accident is common just because there is no rule of law. It also reflects lack of due consideration for the safety of people's life and property."
They were Suu Kyi's first comments on the disaster in Hpakant, where rescue workers recovered 114 bodies before giving up the search.

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Unearthing buried stories

Photography exhibition UNEARTH, on display at Myanmar Deitta until December 19, showcases the work of six photographers, local and international, who spent two months documenting Myanmar’s diverse and highly lucrative extractive industries sector, from mining to pipelining.

“We followed stories throughout the country, including the illicit jade trade in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State, the aftermath of government crackdowns on protests against the controversial Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing Region and the tapping of onshore oil reserves along the banks of the Irrawaddy River,” said director of Myanmar Deitta Matt Grace, whose work features in the exhibition.

The six stories featured in the exhibition, which comprises 30 photographs from across the country, were commissioned and supported by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) with the aim of informing officials, industry professionals and the wider public about some of the issues faced in the extractive industries sector and the communities affected.

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Rohingya Refugee and Migrant Women Shadowed by Sexual and Gender-based Violence

Refugee and migrant women are known to be at heightened risk of being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence. Their vulnerability as women is compounded by the violence they risk suffering both while traveling insecure routes when leaving their homeland or when staying in places that lack basic security, such as overcrowded camps without adequate lighting or separated spaces for women.

Rohingya refugee and migrant women are no exception. Indeed, given their status as women, stateless and part of an ethno-religious minority, Rohingya women (and girls) are particularly vulnerable to a wide range of sexual and gender-based violence that can affect not only their physical and psychological development but may also restrict the socio-economic opportunities available to them both within Myanmar and their new country of residence.

The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. The country’s military-drafted 1982 Citizenship Act excluded them from Myanmar’s 135 recognized ethnic groups, effectively making them stateless. Then, after decades of discrimination and disenfranchisement, roughly 140,000 Rohingya fled their homes in northwestern Rakhine state in 2012 when sectarian violence reached deadly heights. The majority ended up in government-designated camps for internally displaced persons near the state capital, Sittwe (where many still live in fragile structures today). Fresh rounds of violence have flared since, seeing thousands of Rohingya departing by sea, aiming to reach Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia, and contributing to the tragic “boat people” humanitarian crisis that made headlines around the world earlier this year.

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Japan pledges $10.6 bln for climate policies in developing nations

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday pledged to give $10.6 bln more to developing nations in 2020 to help them implement policies against global warming, ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris next week.

The decision to offer 1.3-trillion yen ($10.6 billion) came after Japan gave a roughly combined 2.0 trillion yen for the same purpose in 2013 and 2014.

Japanese officials said the money will go toward a 2009 pledge among developed countries to commit $100 billion by 2020 to address the needs of developing nations - agreed at the COP15 climate meeting in Copenhagen.

“We attach great importance to the notion that all nations will participate in agreeing to a new international framework,” Abe said in a meeting on global warming with members of his cabinet.

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Rohingya Re-arrested in Myanmar over Facebook Calendar

YANGON (AFP) – Five Myanmar men fined for publishing a calendar that described the country’s persecuted Muslim Rohingya as a recognized ethnic minority have been rearrested and jailed on fresh charges, police said Wednesday.

The men were initially taken into custody over the weekend in Yangon and fined $800 each on Monday after pleading guilty to a publishing law offence. But they have now been rearrested and jailed on separate charges of inciting alarm or panic, a charge that carries up to two years jail.

“We arrested five persons yesterday under the warrant by the court. They were sent to Insein prison,” said Khin Maung Latt, police chief of Pazundaung township.

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Ethnic minorities in Myanmar denied vote as Aung San Suu Kyi claims power

Shwe Maung is one of just three Rohingya Muslim parliamentarians in the Buddhist-majority country. But in August, as the western media celebrated Myanmar’s transition to democracy, Shwe Maung - a serving member of the government since 2010 - was told that, because his parents weren’t citizens at the time of his birth, he would not be given a vote in the election.

In a country where the Rohingya, an ethnic minority community in western Myanmar, have faced abuses for decades and are denied equal access to citizenship, Shwe Maung’s story is not unique.

Myanmar’s Union Election commission (UEC), led by former army general Tin Aye and supported by the United States and European Union, was tasked with ensuring the elections were free and fair.

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Thai summit to spotlight Myanmar, Bangladesh over migrant crisis

BANGKOK: Myanmar and Bangladesh face renewed pressure to tackle “the root causes” of an annual migration crisis after Thailand on Thursday announced a regional summit ahead of the new sailing season.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled western Myanmar in recent years, joined increasingly by Bangladeshis escaping poverty, on dangerous and often fatal sea journeys through the Bay of Bengal towards Malaysia.

Boats crammed with migrants traditionally depart following the end of the monsoon season expected in November.

Tainting image: Bangladesh PM calls migrants ‘mentally sick’

It is not clear whether migrants will take to the seas in the same numbers this year after Thailand launched a crackdown on major human trafficking rings in May.

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Polling complaint sent to Arakan State Election Commission

During the national election only one complaint has been officially lodged from recent polling in Arakan State, according to U Thurein Htut, an officer with the Arakan State election sub-commission office. The Ramree Township election sub-commission submitted a complaint against U Kyaw Shwe, the winning Lower House candidate from Arakan National Party (ANP).

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