Rohingya

A four-year-long state of emergency has been lifted in Arakan State the day before Burma’s new government took power, leading to calls for restrictions on ethnic Rohingya to also be lifted. On 29 March 2016, the last day of President U Thein Sein’s administration, emergency rule was lifted from Arakan State which had been the site of inter-communal violence between…

Six men have been charged over printing a 2016 calendar which used the term Rohingya, leading to condemnation from a prominent human rights organisation. The calendar, printed in November of this year, referred to Rohingya as an ethnic group of Burma, and was printed in three languages – Burmese, English and Arabic. In all several hundred copies of the calendar…

Burma’s government is under pressure to establish an independent inquiry into the treatment of ethnic Rohingya with a new report highlighting widespread human rights abuses that, “could constitute genocide.” A report conducted by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School on behalf of the human rights organisation Fortify Rights called for a United Nations inquiry…

Media reports estimate that the Indonesian navy and fishing boats rescued as many as 1,000 asylum seekers off its coast near Aceh, on Friday 15th May. An Indonesian military spokesperson, Major General Fuad Basya, said in a interview with the ABC, Australian’s national broadcaster, that the 200 asylum seekers rescued by the Indonesian’s navy were spotted earlier that morning by…

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees released a media statement on Thursday 13 May, voicing its concerns about the alleged treatment of Rohinhyan refugees by both the Malaysian and Indonesian governments this week. The UNHCR said it was “extremely alarmed at reports suggesting that Indonesia and Malaysia may have pushed back boats carrying vulnerable people from Myanmar and Bangladesh.”…

Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia’s policy of pushing boats of asylum seekers from Burma is‘cold-hearted,’ Human Rights Watch said in a statement released to the media. The International Organization for Migration estimates that as many as 8,000 Rohingya asylum seekers and Bangladeshi migrants are in desperate need of aid and are believed to be stranded in the Andaman Ocean and Malacca…

The Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK released a media statement on Wednesday 13 May, requestin,g “ASEAN member states to launch an urgent rescue operation for thousands of Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshis stranded in boats off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.” The Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK called on ASEAN to “address the root causes of the crisis by pressuring the…

Fortify Rights, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya said in a media statement released on Wednesday 13 May that, “Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia should immediately coordinate search and rescue operations for Rohingya asylum seekers and possible survivors of trafficking from Myanmar and Bangladesh who are stranded at sea.” Fortify Rights urged the…

The New York based Human Rights Watch called on the Burmese government to amend citizenship law, claiming it “fuels repression” and denies basic human rights to the country’s ethnic Rohingya minority. Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director, said the law entrenched discrimination and must be changed. “Burma’s discriminatory citizenship law not only deprives Rohingya of citizenship, but for decades has encouraged…

An international human rights organisation has warned that a draft plan by the Burma government to tackle violence in Rakhine State would entrench discrimination and be counterproductive to peace. Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the government’s draft plan failed to recognise the term ‘Rohingya,’ instead referring to ‘Bengalis.’ HRW said that this was “an inaccurate and derogatory…