August 29, 2016

Govt Justifies International Involvement in Arakan Issue

Amid criticism of former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s appointment to chairman of the new Arakan State Advisory Committee, the deputy-director general of the State Counselor’s Office said the choice was made in response to international pressure.

Deputy director-general U Zaw Htay told reporters at a press conference on the government’s 100-day plan in Naypyidaw on Friday that the decision to include international representatives followed outside pressure, after previous local commissions failed to resolve the Arakan State issue.

The nine-member team includes three international representatives, including Kofi Annan, and six from Burma—including two Buddhist Arakanese members, two Rangoon-based Muslim members and two government representatives. (Courtesy of irrawaddy.com)

The Annan Commission needs to be successful

On Friday, 19 August 2016, the first World Rohingya Day demonstrations took place around the world. Rallies and demonstrations took place in London, UK; Washington DC, Toronto, Canada, New York, Chicago; Stockholm, Sweden; Boston; Los Angeles; and many other places. The speakers demanded end to the ongoing genocide of Rohingya people who are indigenous people of Myanmar (formerly Burma) living in their ancestral lands.

The Rohingyas of Myanmar are a stateless people who are the most persecuted people in our time. They have been facing genocidal campaigns, especially since 2012, which saw a series of ethnic cleansing drives by the Rakhine Buddhists of Arakan – planned and aided by the local and central government and organized and mobilized by racist politicians and bigoted monks. It was a national project put into practice for the elimination of the Rohingya, who differ in ethnicity and religion from the majority Buddhists in this country of 55 million people. As a result, probably thousands were lynched to death, a quarter million lost their homes, tens of thousands were forced to choose exodus from this Buddhist den of intolerance and hatred, and an estimated 140,000 Rohingya internally displaced persons were caged in concentration camps in and around Sittwe (formerly Akyab). (Courtesy of asiantribune.com)

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi faces test at ethnic peace conference

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi faces what could be the toughest test of her leadership yet when she opens a major ethnic peace conference Wednesday aimed at ending wars that have blighted the country since its independence.

The five-day talks will bring hundreds of ethnic minority rebel leaders to the capital, along with military top brass and international delegates such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

The conference is Suu Kyi’s flagship effort to quell the long-running rebellions rumbling across Myanmar’s impoverished frontier states, fueled in part by the illegal drugs, jade and timber trades. (Courtesy of newsinfo.inquirer.net)