Hearing from Rohingya refugees the description of torture they suffered at the hands of Myanmar army, three foreign envoys in Bangladesh yesterday stressed the need for stronger international initiative for reinstatement of their citizenship and their safe return to homeland.
The Rohingyas, who had fled to Bangladesh in the face of persecution in Myanmar, narrated their harrowing experience when the high commissioners of the UK, Canada and Australia paid a two-day visit to Cox's Bazar from Wednesday.
Alison Blake of the UK, Benoît-Pierre Laramée of Canada and Julia Niblett of Australia visited an official Rohingya refugee camp and a makeshift settlement at Kutupalong in Ukhia upazila during the trip jointly arranged by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and World Food Programme (WFP). (Courtesy of thedailystar.net)
February 10, 2017
Protests greet Malaysia aid ship for Myanmar's Rohingya
Anti-Rohingya protesters gathered at a Yangon port on Thursday (Feb 9) to meet a Malaysian ship carrying aid for thousands of refugees from the persecuted Muslim minority fleeing a bloody military crackdown.
Dozens of Buddhist monks and demonstrators waving national flags and signs reading "No Rohingya" congregated at the Thilawa port waiting for the ship to dock.
Hundreds of Rohingya are thought to have been killed in a brutal four-month campaign by security forces that the UN says may amount to ethnic cleansing. Tens of thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh bringing harrowing tales of murder and rape. (Courtesy of channelnewsasia.com)
Dozens of Buddhist monks and demonstrators waving national flags and signs reading "No Rohingya" congregated at the Thilawa port waiting for the ship to dock.
Hundreds of Rohingya are thought to have been killed in a brutal four-month campaign by security forces that the UN says may amount to ethnic cleansing. Tens of thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh bringing harrowing tales of murder and rape. (Courtesy of channelnewsasia.com)
More than 1,000 Rohingya feared killed in Myanmar crackdown, say UN officials
More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims might have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, according to two senior United Nations officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence, suggesting the death toll is far greater than previously reported.
The officials, from two separate UN agencies working in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months, said they were concerned the outside world had not fully grasped the severity of the crisis unfolding in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
“The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation – we could be looking at thousands,” said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both officials, in separate interviews, cited the weight of testimony gathered by their agencies from refugees over the past four months in concluding the death toll was likely to have exceeded 1,000. (Courtesy of theguardian.com)
The officials, from two separate UN agencies working in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months, said they were concerned the outside world had not fully grasped the severity of the crisis unfolding in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
“The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation – we could be looking at thousands,” said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both officials, in separate interviews, cited the weight of testimony gathered by their agencies from refugees over the past four months in concluding the death toll was likely to have exceeded 1,000. (Courtesy of theguardian.com)
How a Muslim Immigrant from Bangladesh Became America’s Master Builder
If the United States has a national architectural form, it is the skyscraper. The notion of building a tower to the heavens is as old as Genesis, but it took some brash 19th century Americans to develop that fanciful idea into tangible, profitable buildings. Although we dressed up our early skyscrapers in Old World styles (the Met Life Tower as an Italian campanile, the Woolworth Building as a French Gothic cathedral), most foreigners agreed that the skyscraper suited only our misfit nation. For decades, Americans were alone in building them. Even those European modernists who dreamed of gleaming towers along Friedrichstraße and Boulevard de Sébastopol had to cross the Atlantic for a chance to act on their ambitions. By the start of World War II, 147 of the 150 tallest habitable buildings on the planet were located in the United States.
No building style better represented America’s industriousness, monomaniacal greed, disregard of tradition, and eagerness to attempt feats that more established cultures considered obscene. And while those indelicate traits prompted Americans to develop the skyscraper, it was our openness and multiculturalism that brought us our greatest skyscraper builder: a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant named Fazlur Rahman Khan.
Khan was born on April 3rd, 1929 in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Dacca, British India at the time). His father, a mathematics instructor, cultivated young Fazlur’s interest in technical subjects and encouraged him to pursue a degree at Calcutta’s Bengal Engineering College. He excelled in his studies there and, after graduating, won a Fulbright Scholarship that brought him to the University of Illinois. In the United States, Khan studied structural engineering and engineering mechanics, earning two master’s degrees and a PhD in just three years. After a detour in Pakistan, Khan returned to the United States and was hired as an engineer in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), one of the most prominent architecture and engineering firms in the world. (Courtesy of hackaday.com)
No building style better represented America’s industriousness, monomaniacal greed, disregard of tradition, and eagerness to attempt feats that more established cultures considered obscene. And while those indelicate traits prompted Americans to develop the skyscraper, it was our openness and multiculturalism that brought us our greatest skyscraper builder: a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant named Fazlur Rahman Khan.
Khan was born on April 3rd, 1929 in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Dacca, British India at the time). His father, a mathematics instructor, cultivated young Fazlur’s interest in technical subjects and encouraged him to pursue a degree at Calcutta’s Bengal Engineering College. He excelled in his studies there and, after graduating, won a Fulbright Scholarship that brought him to the University of Illinois. In the United States, Khan studied structural engineering and engineering mechanics, earning two master’s degrees and a PhD in just three years. After a detour in Pakistan, Khan returned to the United States and was hired as an engineer in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), one of the most prominent architecture and engineering firms in the world. (Courtesy of hackaday.com)
Chilling developments in Rohingya crisis put Suu Kyi in hot seat
Before dawn on Oct. 9, several hundred Muslim men gathered in northern Rakhine State to wage attacks on police posts near the border with Bangladesh. Armed with crude weapons and about 30 aging firearms, they raided three posts and made off with about 62 guns and considerable ammunition. Nine policemen and eight attackers were killed; two were captured.
The long-planned operation was launched prematurely, when the group's leaders realized that authorities had been tipped off, according to a detailed investigation by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. It was the first known operation of the group, which called itself Harakah al-Yaqin, or "Faith Movement," in YouTube videos posted afterward. It was also the first concrete sign of organized armed resistance by a Rohingya group in decades.
The group is thought to number 400 to 600 men. Led by Rohingya veterans from Saudi Arabia, the operation was expertly planned, showing a high degree of discipline and coordination. More important, it signaled a new phase in the troubled history of Rakhine State and official oppression of the Rohingya, who are regarded as interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh, even though many have resided in Myanmar for generations. (Courtesy of asia.nikkei.com)
The long-planned operation was launched prematurely, when the group's leaders realized that authorities had been tipped off, according to a detailed investigation by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. It was the first known operation of the group, which called itself Harakah al-Yaqin, or "Faith Movement," in YouTube videos posted afterward. It was also the first concrete sign of organized armed resistance by a Rohingya group in decades.
The group is thought to number 400 to 600 men. Led by Rohingya veterans from Saudi Arabia, the operation was expertly planned, showing a high degree of discipline and coordination. More important, it signaled a new phase in the troubled history of Rakhine State and official oppression of the Rohingya, who are regarded as interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh, even though many have resided in Myanmar for generations. (Courtesy of asia.nikkei.com)
February 9, 2017
Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims: Victims of crimes against humanity
A report, released recently by the office of the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, documents testimony from 204 Rohingya Muslim men and women who are part of 66,000 who have fled from Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state to Bangladesh.
Linnea Arvidsson, leader of a four-member team of UN human rights investigators, said in the report: “For me, personally, I have not ever encountered a situation in which you have interviewed so many people in such a short period of time, who have undergone such serious violations.”
Speaking to Voice of America, Arvidsson said that she was on the verge of breaking down on the first day after having interviewed an endless stream of women who recounted horrific tales. “Mothers who would say, ‘I was raped and my baby was crying and they slit the throat of my baby while I was being raped.’ I mean, it was horrendous. Frankly, it was absolutely unbearable to do the interviews,” Arvidsson said. “I cannot imagine what they went through having lived through that.” Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported they had been raped or suffered other forms of sexual violence at the hands of Myanmar security forces. (Courtesy of saudigazette.com.sa)
Linnea Arvidsson, leader of a four-member team of UN human rights investigators, said in the report: “For me, personally, I have not ever encountered a situation in which you have interviewed so many people in such a short period of time, who have undergone such serious violations.”
Speaking to Voice of America, Arvidsson said that she was on the verge of breaking down on the first day after having interviewed an endless stream of women who recounted horrific tales. “Mothers who would say, ‘I was raped and my baby was crying and they slit the throat of my baby while I was being raped.’ I mean, it was horrendous. Frankly, it was absolutely unbearable to do the interviews,” Arvidsson said. “I cannot imagine what they went through having lived through that.” Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported they had been raped or suffered other forms of sexual violence at the hands of Myanmar security forces. (Courtesy of saudigazette.com.sa)
Bangladesh: Reject Rohingya Refugee Relocation Plan
The Bangladeshi government should immediately drop its plan to transfer Rohingya refugees to an uninhabited, undeveloped coastal island, Human Rights Watch said today. Relocating the refugees from the Cox’s Bazar area to Thengar Char island would deprive them of their rights to freedom of movement, livelihood, food and education, in violation of Bangladesh’s obligations under international human rights law.
Between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, most of them unregistered by the authorities, are in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Burma dating back to the 1990s. Since October 2016, nearly 69,000 Rohingya from Rakhine State in Burma have entered Bangladesh to escape attacks by Burmese security forces, including unlawful killings, sexual violence and wholesale destruction of villages. (Courtesy of hrw.org)
Between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, most of them unregistered by the authorities, are in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Burma dating back to the 1990s. Since October 2016, nearly 69,000 Rohingya from Rakhine State in Burma have entered Bangladesh to escape attacks by Burmese security forces, including unlawful killings, sexual violence and wholesale destruction of villages. (Courtesy of hrw.org)
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