Bangladesh Border Shutdown of Rohingya Could Fuel Militancy: Observers

Bangladesh’s decision to seal its southeastern border to refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar could create a domestic backlash fueling militancy and sympathy for a new group of Rohingya Muslim insurgents, observers told BenarNews.

More than 30,000 Rohingya have crossed into Cox’s Bazar district from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state since early October, according to international relief agencies, but Dhaka’s policy of pushing back refugees at the border has led to at least one conservative Bangladeshi Muslim group exploiting the situation and potentially fomenting radicalism in a country already threatened by militancy, according to one expert.

His comments came in light of a research paper published last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), which reported about a new anti-Myanmar rebel group made up of Rohingya emigres with links to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan as well as Bangladesh. (Courtesy of benarnews.org)

Criticism Taints Myanmar's Media Access to Rakhine Crisis Zone

Almost three months after insurgents killed nine border guard police officers in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, the government loosened its grip on the area this week by inviting a group of journalists and photographers on a three-day tour of places affected by the violence.

Diplomats, rights groups and the press have been calling for media access to Maungdaw and surrounding townships in northern Rakhine since the October 9 attacks, which were claimed by a new insurgent group drawn from the ranks of the country’s oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority.

The military operation to retrieve weapons and arrest suspects has resulted in mass displacement, the deaths of dozens of people, and allegations of widespread human rights abuses, including rape and the systematic torching of villages. The government maintains the stories are fabricated despite mounting evidence to the contrary, including satellite imagery and numerous testimonies. (Courtesy of voanews.com)

Timeline: A Short History of Myanmar’s Rohingya Minority

Thousands of men, women and children from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have fled the country over what the army is calling a crackdown on insurgents.
A Wall Street Journal article examines the intensification of a long-simmering conflict between Yangon and the Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship in the predominantly Buddhist Southeast Asian state.
Here is a short history of the Rohingya people.
8th Century: The Rohingya, a people of South Asian origin, dwelled in an independent kingdom in Arakan, now known as Rakhine state in modern-day Myanmar.
9th to 14th Century: The Rohingya came into contact with Islam through Arab traders. Close ties were forged between Arakan and Bengal.
1784: The Burman King Bodawpaya conquered Arakan and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Bengal. (Courtesy of blogs.wsj.com)

Rohingya Find Help, Sympathy in Bangladesh

On the shores of the Naf River in southern Bangladesh, fishermen aren’t the only ones taking to the waters.

In the last two months, hundreds of boats loaded with Rohingya Muslims fleeing across the river from Myanmar have arrived near this border town.

Most residents in the predominately Muslim country are sympathetic to the plight of the ethnic Rohingya, who are trying to escape persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

While some arrivals have been pushed back by Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), many have received food and aid from local Muslims such as Rohingyan fisherman Shamsul Alam. (Courtesy of voanews.com)

Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are suffering. The world mustn’t look away

Two sets of high-definition images of Myanmar taken from outer space: both are shot in the morning, both show the same villages populated by Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state. The first set, collected from 2014, displays a small collection of homes where the virtually stateless minority has settled. The buildings, lying between trees and set back from dirt roads, number more than 100. In the second set of images, taken in the past two months, the homes have vanished, and all that remains is square patches of burnt earth.

Provided by Human Rights Watch, the images reveal 430 buildings that have been destroyed in three different villages, and support the claim from a United Nations official that Myanmar is seeking the “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya” from its territory.

After nine border officers were killed on 9 October, the region’s Muslim minority – already excluded, impoverished and persecuted – has once again fallen victim to a sharp increase in targeted violent attacks. Over the past two months, around 10,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh and, according to Amnesty International, eyewitness accounts from those refugees suggest that “Myanmar’s security forces, led by the military”, are “torching hundreds of homes”. (Courtesy of theguardian.com)

After Rohingya man shot dead in Duchiridan, conflicting stories emerge

While Aung San Suu Kyi sweet talked the nine other Asaen foreign ministers about her government’s military operations in Rakhine State on Monday morning, a photo (graphic) of the bloodied body of a man killed in southern Maungdaw Township began circulating on social media.

Rohingya groups said the killing in village of Duchiridan, locally known as Kilaidaung, was unlawful. Rohingya Vision TV reported that Myanmar Border Guard Police shot the man after their search for methamphetamine tablets in his home came up empty-handed.

“The group of the BGP didn’t find out any illegal materials at the residence of U Hamid (55). Yet the BGP commander simply dragged him out and shot him at his back at a point-blank range”, an eyewitness told Rohingya Vision TV on the condition of anonymity. (Courtesy of yangon.coconuts.co)

Is This the Real Aung San Suu Kyi?

In early November, Zaw Lay and his family were hiding in the basement of a friend’s house in Yekhatchchaung GwaSone village, near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Two Burmese military helicopters circled overhead, firing indiscriminately at the terrified villagers huddled below. “The helicopters [didn’t] see us but they are firing continuously,” he recently told me over the phone, from a forest enclave in Bangladesh where he now lives. “We don’t [dare] go outside the home, if the helicopter men see us they will kill us.” Once the helicopters stopped their strafing, Burmese soldiers on the ground began burning the village to the ground. There was chaos when Zaw Lay fled, and he learned only later that his elderly mother had been trapped inside a burning building. “My mom’s dead,” he told me.

Rohingya Muslims like Zaw Lay are a small minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. They are becoming smaller still, thanks to a brutal campaign initiated in mid-October by the Burmese military. The spark for the violence came on October 9, when a Rohingya militia attacked a police outpost in northern Rakhine province, killing nine officers and seizing weapons and equipment. The military’s harsh reprisal campaign, designed to retrieve every gun stolen during the initial raid, is believed to have killed hundreds of Rohingya, and sent around 25,000 more fleeing into Bangladesh in what Amnesty International has termed “collective punishment.” (Courtesy of newrepublic.com)