“We want to participate in drafting a media law,” said Nai Kasauh Mon, editor in chief of the Independent Mon News Agency. “The new media law will be weak if we cannot participate because the Press Council may not understand the feelings of ethnic people when they write the law. This is what we are worried about.

“We want to suggest they include specialists in ethnic media issues and draft a section specifically dealing with ethnic media’s role in society.”

The heads of ethnic minority media outlets, speaking at a press conference on April 27, said it was important to let ethnic media publications publish in their native languages in-line with international standards of press freedom.

[…]

Despite almost half of Burma’s estimated 60 million people being from ethnic minorities, no newspapers or radio stations produced news in ethnic languages until 2010. Even now, the state has a monopoly on ethnic-language radio, which is broadcast from Naypyidaw.

Under the military regime that ruled Burma since 1962, ethnic-language media was banned.

Many ethnic minority people cannot speak or read Burmese, which has adverse effects on levels of education in ethnic areas of the country as information about the outside world is limited.

androphilia:

The “Boat People” Deserve to Live: Rohingya | OnIslam.net

Humanitarian Issues

By Ramzy Baroud
Columnist and Editor of Palestine Chronicle

March 4, 2013

One fails to understand the unperturbed attitude with which regional and international leaders and organizations are treating the unrelenting onslaught against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, formally known as Burma.

Numbers speak of atrocities where every violent act is prelude to greater violence and ethnic cleansing. Yet, western governments’ normalization with the Myanmar regime continues unabated, regional leaders are as gutless as ever and even human rights organizations seem compelled by habitual urges to issue statements lacking meaningful, decisive and coordinated calls for action.

Meanwhile the ‘boat people’ remain on their own.

On February 26, fishermen discovered a rickety wooden boat floating randomly at sea, nearly 25 kilometers (16 miles) off the coast of Indonesia’s Northern Province of Aceh. The Associated Press and other media reported there were 121 people on board including children who were extremely weak, dehydrated and nearly starved.

They were Rohingya refugees who preferred to take their chances at sea rather than stay in Myanmar. To understand the decision of a parent to risk his child’s life in a tumultuous sea would require understanding the greater risks awaiting them at home.

Endless Pains…

Reporting for Voice of America from Jakarta, Kate Lamb cited a moderate estimate of the outcome of communal violence in the Arakan state, which left hundreds of Rohingya Muslims dead, thousands of homes burnt and nearly 115,000 displaced.

The number is likely to be higher at all fronts. Many fleeing Rohingya perished at sea or disappeared to never be seen again. Harrowing stories are told and reported of families separating and boats sunk. There are documented events in which various regional navies and border police sent back refugees after they successfully braved the deadly journey to other countries - Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and elsewhere.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported that nearly 13,000 Rohingya refugees attempted to leave Myanmar on smugglers’ boats in the Bay of Bengal in 2012. At least five hundred drowned.

But who are the Rohingya people?

Myanmar officials and media wish to simply see the Rohingyas as ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’, a credulous reading of history at best.

The intentions of this inaccurate classification, however, are truly sinister for it is meant to provide a legal clearance to forcefully deport the Rohingya population. Myanmar President Then Sein had in fact made an ‘offer’ to the UN last year that he was willing to send the Rohingya people “to any other country willing to accept them.” The UN declined.

Rohingya Muslims, however, are native to the state of “Rohang”, officially known as Rakhine or Arakan. If one is to seek historical accuracy, not only are the Rohingya people native to Myanmar, it was in fact Burma that occupied Rakhine in the 1700’s. Over the years, especially in the first half of the 20th century, the original inhabitants of Arakan were joined by cheap or forced labor from Bengal and India, who permanently settled there.

For decades, tension brewed between Buddhists and Muslims in the region. Naturally, a majority backed by a military junta is likely to prevail over a minority without any serious regional or international backers. Without much balance of power to be mentioned, the Rohingya population of Arakan, estimated at nearly 800,000, subsisted between the nightmare of having no legal status (as they are still denied citizenship), little or no rights and the occasional ethnic purges carried out by their Buddhist neighbors with the support of their government, army and police.

The worst of such violence in recent years took place between June and October of last year. Buddhists also paid a heavy price for the clashes, but the stateless Rohingyas, being isolated and defenseless, were the ones to carry the heaviest death toll and destruction.

And just when ‘calm’ is reported – as in returning to the status quo of utter discrimination and political alienation of the Rohingyas – violence erupts once more, and every time the diameters of the conflict grow bigger. In late February, an angry Buddhist mob attacked non-Rohingya Muslim schools, shops and homes in the capital Rangoon, regional and international media reported. The cause of the violence was a rumor that the Muslim community is planning to build a mosque.

Spreading Danger

What is taking place in Arakan is most dangerous, not only because of the magnitude of the atrocities and the perpetual suffering of the Rohingya people, which are often described as the world’s most persecuted people.

Other layers of danger also exist that threatens to widen the parameters of the conflict throughout the Southeast Asia region, bringing instability to already unstable border areas, and, of course, as was the case recently, take the conflict from an ethnic one to a purely religious one.

In a region of a unique mix of ethnicities and religions, the plight of the Rohingyas could become the trigger that would set already fractious parts of the region ablaze.

Although the plight of the Rohingya people have in recent months crossed the line from the terrible, but hidden tragedy into a recurring media topic, it is still facing many hurdles that must be overcome in order for some action to be taken.

While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been making major economic leaps forward, it remains politically ineffective, with little interest in issues pertaining to human rights.

Under the guise of its commitment to ‘non-interference’ and disproportionate attention to the festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea, ASEAN seems unaware that the Rohingya people even exist.

Worst, ASEAN leaders were reportedly in agreement that Myanmar should chair their 2014 summit, as a reward for superficial reforms undertaken by Rangoon to ease its political isolation and open up its market beyond China and few other countries.

Meanwhile, western countries, led by the United States are clamoring to divide the large Myanmar economic cake amongst themselves, and are saying next to nothing about the current human rights records of Rangoon. The minor democratic reforms in Myanmar seem, after all, a pretext to allow the country back to western arms. And the race to Rangoon has indeed begun, unhindered by the continued persecution of the Rohingya people.

On February 26, Myanmar’s President Sein met in Oslo with Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in a ‘landmark’ visit. They spoke economy, of course, for Myanmar has plenty to offer. And regarding the conflict in Arakan, Jens Stoltenberg unambiguously declared it to be an internal Burmese affair, reducing it to most belittling statements. In regards to ‘disagreements’ over citizenship, he said, “we have encouraged dialogue, but we will not demand that Burma’s government give citizenship to the Rohingyas.”

Moreover, to reward Sein for his supposedly bold democratic reforms, Norway took the lead by waving off nearly have of its debt and other countries followed suit, including Japan which dropped $3 billion last year.

While one is used to official hypocrisy, whether by ASEAN or western governments, many are still scratching their heads over the unforgivable silence of democracy advocate and Noble Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.

Luckily, others are speaking out. Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, along with former Timor-Leste president Ramos-Horta had both recently spoke with decisive terms in support of the persecuted Rohingya people.

“The minority Muslim Rohingya continue to suffer unspeakable persecution, with more than 1,000 killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes just in recent months, apparently with the complicity and protection of security forces,” the Nobel laureates wrote in the Huffington Post on February 20.

They criticized the prejudicial Citizenship Law of 1982 and called for granting the Rohingya people full citizenship.

The perpetual suffering of the Rohingya people must end. They are deserving of rights and dignity. They are weary of crossing unforgiving seas and walking harsh terrains seeking mere survival.

More voices must join those who are speaking out in support of their rights. ASEAN must break away from its silence and tediously guarded policies and western countries must be confronted by their own civil societies: no normalization with Rangoon when innocent men, women and children are being burned alive in their own homes.

This injustice needs to be known to the world and serious, organized and determined efforts must follow to bring the persecution of the Rohingya people to an end.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com. Baroud’s website can be visited here: www.ramzybaroud.net.

See also:

Rohingya Muslims…An Open Wound
Suu Kyi and the Rohingya: a Heroine No More
Petition to Support Rohingya Muslims
Burma’s Rohingya Muslims: We Want Peace

Copyright © 2013 OnIslam.net.

Workers from the Myue & Soe Garment factory stand during a protest for a salary increase in front of the Mayangone Township labor office in Rangoon on Sept. 7, 2012. (Photo: Reuters / Soe Zeya Tun)

RANGOON — Rohingya leaders have reacted angrily to the findings of the official investigation into a wave of brutal violence that hit Arakan State in 2012, slamming the report findings as selective and slanted.

To summarize— the Burmese government refuses to acknowledge their identity as Rohingya and instead calls them “Bengali” because they consider all Rohingya/Bengali as having illegally immigrated despite proof that the Rohingya have been living in the country for centuries. Th term Rohungia itself is a word that was coined by Rohingya scholars because, in part,  they wanted something to call themselves that wasn’t a racial slur— denying the use of that name is discrimination.

The other issue is the government’s insistence to provide “family planning” which is lovely except it isn’t “planning” as much as “population control” since they, in their Bamar supremacist racism believe the Rohingya (and all desis, frankly speaking) to be a “threat” and would like to have them completely erased from existence. This is genocide. Not human rights. And the Rohingya are rightly angry.

Hundreds of people took to the streets to protest against a [corrupt and destructive] copper mine project in northwest Burma on Monday, following demonstrations against the project last week and exactly five months after a crackdown on protesters near the mine left dozens injured in November.

[…]

In a public announcement released over the weekend, the Sagaing Division Police said they would charge six members of the Rangoon People’s Support Network—including Aung Soe, Ba Htoo, Thar Gyi, Ko Latt, Thaw Zin and Ko Thu — as well as activists Han Win Aung from the Political Prisoners Families’ Beneficial Network and Thaung Htike Oo of the Rangoon Institute of Technology’s student union.

The police warned local residents in the announcement that harboring these suspects or failing to provide information on their whereabouts would constitute a criminal offense.

“Photos of them have been posted on every corner in the village,” Win Tin said of the eight activists, adding that he feared for their safety as security in villages around the mine had been tightened.

The Asian Human Rights Commission criticized the police announcement, saying it was “clearly intended as a direct threat to the local population.”

“The announcement by the Sagaing [Division] police is just the latest illustration of how far authorities are prepared to stray from the supposedly democratic path that they claim to be treading, in order to protect the interests of crony businesses and ensure continued impunity for the police in their handling of the Letpadaung mine affair,” the rights group said in a statement on Monday.

Meanwhile, dozens people gathered in downtown Rangoon on Monday to lend their support to the Letpadaung protesters.

High profile individuals from various fields have criticized the government’s plan to take actions against the rioters behind a new wave of protest at the China-backed copper mine area in central Myanmar.

Clashes between the villagers and the police had erupted on Wednesday after the local villagers tried to build tents and cultivate their farms inside the project area. The violence left three villagers and 15 police injured. Two locals and one activist have been detained, according to reports.

Critics blame the government for attempting to take action against the detained rioters and others who were involved in the riot and added that the authorities had neglected to take action against parties that had use force and phosphorus during the crackdown against the monks who were peacefully demonstrating against the copper mine project in November.

bijunn:

Boys of the Shan undergo the ritual “Poi Sang Long”, aiming to mimic the young Prince Siddhartha before he became Lord Buddha.

Ken Bamberg

DIMAPUR, April 23 – The Nagas of Myanmar have strongly rejected the statement made by the Myanmar Deputy Minister for Immigration and Population in Parliament whereby he had clubbed the Nagas as one of the 53 minority tribes of the Chin ethnic group.

Deputy Minister U Win Myint, replying to a question raised by MP U Aung Thein on the 135 tribes in the country during the first session of Parliament recently, had included the Nagas among the 53 tribes of Chin ethnic group, said a joint statement issued by the Myanmar Naga organisations.

The statement strongly pointed out that Naga people are an indigenous group of people in Myanmar and India having their own dialect, culture, customs, long history and distinctive identity. It, moreover, pointed out that the region in which the Nagas are residing in Myanmar has been recognised as the Naga Self-Administered Zone in the 2008 Constitution of the Union of Myanmar according to their culturally distinct identities, geographical territory and population ratio.