In Burma, Apartheid Tactics against Minority Muslims

[Zomi for Federalization and Democratization of Bur]

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The Brutal Bamar Buddhist Fascist Terrorist Rapist (BBBFMTR) USDP
Government speaks correct words but their words are not accompanied by
corresponding concrete actions. That is called lying. Thein Sein, who
had been the Adjutant General of the fascist Army, Member of the the
ruthless SPDC, Secretary-2 of the oppressive SPDC, Secretary-1 of the
brutal SPDC, Prime Minister under the serial-lying SPDC regime,
Chairman of the anti-democratic USDP, Union President of the unitary
(anti-union, anti-federal) Burma, has been well accustomed to lying,
torture, rape, discrimination (racial, religious, economic),
segregation (apartheid).
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In Burma, Apartheid Tactics against Minority Muslims

By JASON SZEP / REUTERS WRITER| Wednesday, May 15, 2013 |


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Photo:
5.-RE-150513-Burma.jpg

Waadulae, a 16-year-old Rohingya Muslim boy with severe symptoms of
rabies, is comforted by family members at a local clinic at a camp for
people displaced by violence near Sittwe, Arakan State. (Photo:
Reuters)
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SITTWE — A 16-year-old Muslim boy lay dying on a thin metal table.
Bitten by a rabid dog a month ago, he convulsed and drooled as his
parents wedged a stick between his teeth to stop him from biting off
his tongue.

Swift treatment might have saved Waadulae. But there are no doctors,
painkillers or vaccines in this primitive hospital near Sittwe,
capital of Arakan State in western Burma. It is a lonely medical
outpost that serves about 85,300 displaced people, almost all of them
Muslims who lost their homes in fighting with Buddhist mobs last year.

“All we can give him is sedatives,” said Maung Maung Hla, a former
health ministry official who, despite lacking a medical degree, treats
about 150 patients a day. The two doctors who once worked there
haven’t been seen in a month. Medical supplies stopped when they left,
said Maung Maung Hla, a Muslim.

These trash-strewn camps represent the dark side of Burma’s celebrated
transition to democracy: apartheid-like policies segregating minority
Muslims from the Buddhist majority. As communal violence spreads,
nowhere are these practices more brutally enforced than around Sittwe.

In an echo of what happened in the Balkans after the fall of communist
Yugoslavia, the loosening of authoritarian control in Burma is giving
freer rein to ethnic hatred.

President Thein Sein, a former general, said in a May 6 televised
speech his government was committed to creating “a peaceful and
harmonious society in Rakhine [Arakan] State.”

But the sand dunes and barren paddy fields outside Sittwe hold a
different story. Here, emergency shelters set up for Rohingya Muslims
last year have become permanent, prison-like ghettos. Muslims are
stopped from leaving at gunpoint. Aid workers are threatened. Camps
seethe with anger and disease.

In central Sittwe, ethnic Arakanese Buddhists and local officials
exult in what they regard as a hard-won triumph: streets almost devoid
of Muslims. Before last year’s violence, the city’s Muslims numbered
about 73,000, nearly half its population. Today, there are fewer than
5,000 left.

Burma’s transformation from global pariah to budding democracy once
seemed remarkably smooth. After nearly half a century of military
dictatorship, the quasi-civilian government that took power in March
2011 astonished the world by releasing dissidents, relaxing censorship
and re-engaging with the West.

Then came the worst sectarian violence for decades. Clashes between
Arakanese Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims in June and October
2012 killed at least 192 people and displaced 140,000. Most of the
dead and homeless were Muslims.

“Rakhine State is going through a profound crisis” that “has the
potential to undermine the entire reform process,” said Tomás Ojea
Quintana, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma.

Life here, he said, resembles junta-era Burma, with rampant human-
rights abuses and a pervasive security apparatus. “What is happening
in Rakhine State is following the pattern of what has happened in
[Burma] during the military government,” he said in an interview.

The crisis poses the biggest domestic challenge yet for the reformist
leaders of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse countries. Muslims
make up about 5 percent of its 60 million people. Minorities, such as
the Kachin and the Shan, are watching closely after enduring
persecution under the former junta.

As the first powerful storm of the monsoon season approached this
week, the government and UN agencies began a chaotic evacuation from
the camps, with a plan to move as many as 38,000 people to safer
areas.

Many are resisting, fearing they would lose all they had left: their
tarpaulin tents and makeshift huts. The UN relief agency said these
would not withstand heavy rains or winds. More than 50 drowned in a
botched government evacuation by sea, authorities said.


‘‘They All Tell Lies”

Sittwe’s last remaining Muslim-dominated quarter, Aung Mingalar, is
locked down by police and soldiers who patrol all streets leading in
and out. Muslims can’t leave without written permission from Buddhist
local authorities, which Muslims say is almost impossible to secure.

Metal barricades, topped with razor wire, are opened only for
Arakanese Buddhists. Despite a ban against foreign journalists,
Reuters was able to enter Aung Mingalar. Near-deserted streets were
flanked by shuttered shops. Some Muslims peered from doors or windows.

On the other side of the barricades, ethnic Arakanese revel in the
segregation.

“I don’t trust them. They are not honest,” said Khin Mya, 63, who owns
a general store on Sittwe’s main street. “Muslims are hot-headed; they
like to fight, either with us or among themselves.”

Ei Mon Kyaw, 19, who sells betel nut and chewing tobacco, said Muslims
are “really dirty. It is better we live apart.”

State spokesman Win Myaing, a Buddhist, explained why Aung Mingalar’s
besieged Muslims were forbidden from speaking to the media. “It’s
because they all tell lies,” he said. He also denied the government
had engaged in ethnic cleansing, a charge leveled most recently by New
York-based Human Rights Watch in an April 22 report.

“How can it be ethnic cleansing? They are not an ethnic group,” he
said from an office on Sittwe’s main street, overlooking an empty
mosque guarded by soldiers and police.

His comments reflect a historic dispute over the origins of the
country’s estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, who claim a centuries-
old lineage in Arakan State.

The government says they are Muslim migrants from northern neighbor
Bangladesh who arrived during British rule from 1824. After
independence in 1948, Burma’s new rulers tried to limit citizenship to
those whose roots in the country predated British rule. A 1982
Citizenship Act excluded Rohingya from the country’s 135 recognized
ethnic groups, denying them citizenship and rendering them stateless.
Bangladesh also disowns them and has refused to grant them refugee
status since 1992.

The United Nations calls them “virtually friendless” and among the
world’s most persecuted people.


Boat People Exodus

The state government has shelved any plan to return the Rohingya
Muslims to their villages on a technicality: for defying a state
requirement that they identify themselves as “Bengali,” a term that
suggests they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

All these factors are accelerating an exodus of Rohingya boat people
emigrating in rickety fishing vessels to other Southeast Asian
countries.

From October to March, between the monsoons, about 25,000 Rohingya
left Burma on boats, according to new data from Arakan Project, a
Rohingya advocacy group. That was double the previous year, turning a
problem affecting Arakan State into a region-wide one.

The cost of the one-way ticket is steep for an impoverished people—
usually about 200,000 kyat, or $220, often paid for by remittances
from family members who have already left.

Many who survive the perilous journeys wind up in majority-Muslim
Malaysia. Some end up in UN camps, where they are denied permanent
asylum. Others find illegal work on construction sites or other
subsistence jobs. Tens of thousands are held in camps in Thailand.
Growing numbers have been detained in Indonesia.


Mob Violence

Arakan State, one of the poorest regions of Southeast Asia’s poorest
country, had high hopes for the reform era.

In Sittwe’s harbor, India is funding a $214 million port, river and
road network that will carve a trade route into India’s landlocked
northeast. From Kyaukphyu, a city 104 km (65 miles) southeast of
Sittwe, gas and oil pipelines stretch to China’s energy-hungry
northwest. Both projects capitalize on Burma’s growing importance at
Asia’s crossroads.

That promise has been interrupted by communal tensions that flared
into the open after the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by Muslim
men in May last year. Six days later, in retribution, a Buddhist mob
beat 10 Muslims to death. Violence then swept Maungdaw, one of the
three Rohingya-majority districts bordering Bangladesh, on June 8.
Rohingya mobs destroyed homes and killed an unknown number of ethnic
Arakanese Buddhists.

The clashes spread to Sittwe. More than 2,500 homes and buildings went
up in flames, as Rohingya and Arakanese mobs rampaged. When the smoke
cleared, both suffered losses, though the official death toll for
Rohingya—57—was nearly double that for Arakanese Buddhists. Entire
Muslim districts were razed.

October saw more violence. This time, Buddhist mobs attacked Muslim
villages across the state over five days, led in some cases by
Arakanese nationalists tied to a powerful political party, incited by
Buddhist monks and abetted at times by local security forces.

US President Barack Obama, on a groundbreaking visit in November,
urged reconciliation. “The Rohingya … hold within themselves the same
dignity as you do, and I do,” he said. The week he visited, Thein Sein
vowed to forge ethnic unity in a letter to the United Nations.

But the violence kept spreading. Anti-Muslim unrest, whipped up by
Buddhist monks, killed at least 44 people in the central city of
Meikhtila in March. In April and May, Buddhist mobs destroyed mosques
and hundreds of Muslim homes just a few hours’ drive from Rangoon, the
country’s largest city.

Thein Sein responded by sending troops to volatile areas and setting
up an independent commission into the Arakan violence. Its
recommendations, released on April 27, urged meetings of Muslim and
Buddhist leaders to foster tolerance, Muslims to be moved to safer
ground ahead of the storm season, and the continued segregation of the
two communities “until the overt emotions subside.”

It sent a strong message, calling the Rohingya “Bengalis,” a term that
suggests they belong in Bangladesh, and backing the 1982 citizenship
law that rendered stateless even those Rohingya who had lived in Burma
for generations.

The Rohingyas’ rapid population growth had fueled the clashes with
Buddhists, it said, recommending voluntary family-planning education
programs for them. It suggested doubling the number of soldiers and
police in the region.

Rohingya responded angrily. “We completely reject this report,” said
Fukan Ahmed, 54, a Rohingya elder who lost his home in Sittwe.

Local government officials, however, were already moving to impose
policies in line with the report.


The Hated List

On the morning of April 26, a group of state officials entered the
Theak Kae Pyin refugee camp. With them were three policemen and
several Border Administration Force officers, known as the Nasaka, a
word derived from the initials of its Burmese name. Unique to the
region, the Nasaka consists of officers from the police, military,
customs and immigration. They control every aspect of Rohingya life,
and are much feared.

Documented human-rights abuses blamed on the Nasaka include rape,
forced labor and extortion. Rohingya cannot travel or marry without
the Nasaka’s permission, which is never secured without paying bribes,
activists allege.

State spokesman Win Myaing said the Nasaka’s mission was to compile a
list identifying where people had lived before the violence, a
precondition for resettlement. They wanted to know who was from Sittwe
and who was from more remote townships such as Pauktaw and Kyaukphyu,
areas that saw a near-total expulsion of Muslims in October.

Many fled for what Win Myaing said were unregistered camps outside
Sittwe, often in flood-prone areas. “We would like to move them back
to where they came from in the next two months,” said Win Myaing. The
list was the first step towards doing that.

The list, however, also required Muslims to identify themselves as
Bengali. For Fukan Ahmed and other Rohingya leaders, it sent a
chilling message: If they want to be resettled, they must deny their
identity.

Agitated crowds gathered as the officials tried to compile the list,
witnesses said. Women and children chanted “Rohingya! Rohingya!” As
the police officers were leaving, one tumbled to the ground, struck by
a stone to his head, according to Win Myaing. Rohingya witnesses said
the officer tripped. Seven Rohingya were arrested and charged with
causing grievous hurt to a public servant, criminal intimidation and
rioting.

Compiling the list is on hold, said Win Myaing. So, too, is
resettlement.

“If they trust us, then [resettlement] can happen immediately. If you
won’t even accept us making a list, then how can we try and do other
things?” he asked. The crisis could be defused if Rohingya accepted
the 1982 Citizenship Law, he said.

But doing so would effectively confirm their statelessness. Official
discrimination and lack of documentation meant many Rohingya have no
hope of fulfilling the requirements.

Boshi Raman, 40, said he and other Rohingya would never sign a
document calling themselves Bengali. “We would rather die,” he said.

Win Myaing blamed the Rohingya for their misfortune. “If you look back
at the events that occurred, it wasn’t because the Rakhines were
extreme. The problems were all started by them,” the Muslims, he said.


Scorched Earth

In Theak Kae Pyin camp, a sea of tarpaulin tents and fragile huts
built of straw from the last rice harvest, there is an air of growing
permanence. More than 11,000 live in this camp alone, according to UN
data. Naked children bathe in a murky-brown pond and play on sewage-
lined pathways.

A year ago, before the unrest, Haleda Somisian lived in Narzi, a
Sittwe district of more than 10,000 people. Today, it is rubble and
scorched earth. Somisian, 20, wants to return and rebuild. Her
husband, she says, has started to beat her. In Narzi, he worked. Now
he is jobless, restless and despondent.

“I want to leave this place,” she said.

Some of those confined to the camps are Kaman Muslims, who are
recognized as one of Burma’s 135 official ethnic groups; they usually
hold citizenship and can be hard to tell apart from Arakanese
Buddhists. They fled after October’s violence when their homes were
destroyed by Arakanese mobs in remote townships such as Kyaukphyu.
They, too, are prevented from leaving.

Beyond Sittwe, another 50,000 people, mostly Rohingya, live in similar
camps in other parts of the state destroyed in last year’s sectarian
violence.

Across the state, the UN relief agency has provided about 4,000 tents
and built about 300 bamboo homes, each of which can hold eight
families. Another 500 bamboo homes are planned by year-end. None are
designed to be permanent, said agency spokeswoman Vivian Tan. Tents
can last six months to a year; bamboo homes about two years.

The agency wants to provide the temporary shelter that is badly
needed. “But we don’t want in any way to create permanent shelters and
to condone any kind of segregation,” Tan said.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders has accused hardline nationalists of
threatening its staff, impairing its ability to deliver care. Mobile
clinics have appeared in some camps, but a UN report describes most as
“insufficient.”

Waadulae, suffering from rabies, was treated at Dar Paing hospital,
whose lone worker, Maung Maung Hla, was overwhelmed. “We have run out
of antibiotics,” he said. “There is no malaria medicine. There’s no
medicine for tuberculosis or diabetes. No vaccines. There’s no
equipment to check peoples’ condition. There are no drips for people
suffering from acute diarrhea.”

State spokesman Win Myaing said Arakanese doctors feared entering the
camps. “It’s reached a stage where they say they’d quit their jobs
before they would go to these places,” he said.

The treatment of the Rohingya contrasts with that of some 4,080
displaced ethnic Arakanese Buddhists in central Sittwe. They can leave
their camps freely, work in the city, move in with relatives in nearby
villages and rebuild, helped by an outpouring of aid from Burmese
business leaders.

Hset Hlaing, 33, who survives on handouts from aid agencies at Thae
Chaung camp, recalls how he earned 10,000 kyat ($11 a day) from a
general-goods stall in Sittwe before his business and home went up in
flames last June. Like other Muslims, he refuses to accept the term
Bengali.

“I don’t want to go to another country. I was born here,” he says,
sipping tea in a bamboo shack. “But if the government won’t accept us,
we will leave. We’ll go by boat. We’ll go to a country that can accept
us.”

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4 Responses to In Burma, Apartheid Tactics against Minority Muslims

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Violet Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 11:07 am

What’s the problem with irrawaddy news? Immigration, police, etc
have to carry out their works for illegal immigrants in every country
all over the world. Go and observe other country’s immigration forces
how they are controlling illegal immigrants. Fed up of this kind of
creative stories which is just to start the fire for our native
people. The President sent the clear message to the world already that
those illegal immigrants will be arranged to send to any country which
can feed these illegal population explosion. These people cannot stand
on their own, cannot feed themselves and cannot feed their children.
They are only making babies and give the world problem. Who can stop
this restless baby production and illegal movement from Bangladesh
originally? The earth has limited space and food, etc are also
limited.
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Reply
German Traveller Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 3:38 pm

Mr. Jason Szep,
Again: You do not understand the fundamental problem in Rakhine
State with the “Rohingya”.They are Bengali and function as spearhead
of (political-religious) Islamization in West Myanmar. All border
areas to Bangladesh are populated with 94 % Moslems and only 6 %
Buddhists. These figures outline clearly what happens there: Expansion
of Islam and rolling back of the Buddhist natives who naturally are
provoked to a counter reaction. It spoils nothing to say that the
Buddhists have reacted in SELF DEFENCE. A natural reaction to a
gradual Islamic expansion (starting from overpopulated neighbour
country Bangladesh) and clearly to be seen in the context of political-
religious strategies. The real wrongdoers are ambitious Islamic
leaders in the background who misguide pitiful cohorts of their
religious affiliation.
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Reply
Sai Lin Kan Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 9:28 pm

“President Thein Sein, a former general, said in a May 6 televised
speech his government was committed to creating “a peaceful and
harmonious society in Rakhine [Arakan] State.”

Dear Jason, there is no question about Government is trying to
negotiate between Buddhist community and Muslim community for peaceful
living side by side two community.
However, it does not mean some of illegal Bengali migrants will be
resettle permanent with local Buddhist Rakhine peoples because their
immigration status and local Buddhist Rakhine peoples wish. If you
resettle those illegal Bengali migrants near the local Rakhine peoples
and then there will be another communal riot in Rakhine state.

You can not compare Balkan with Rakhine state. In Balkan region,
the Muslims are local peoples who were forcefully converted to Muslim
by Ottoman emperor in 15 or 16 century. In Rakhine state, those
illegal Bengali Migrants are from Bangladesh and they illegal entered
and settle in Rakhine state recently.

Last week, 8 Bengali men from Bangladesh who disguised as Buddhist
monk were caught in Ann Township in Rakhine. They have paid 1.5
millions Kyat to human trafficker to go to Rangoon. Bengali Muslims
from Bangladesh have been trying entering into Burma everyday via
border with Bangladesh and India. Also Bengali Muslims using Burma as
transit for many decades. Some Bengalis were illegally settled in
Rakhine state and some Bengalis were gone to Thailand and Malaysia.

If you believe Rohingya and Rohingya language is exist and then
you should go to visit Chittagong. Rohingya language is in fact
Chittagonian Bengali Language. It’s Chittagong dialect of Bengali
language.

The group of Bengali in overseas and inside Burma is inventing
Rohingya story for many decades. First they said Rohingya ethnic is
descendent of shipwreck Arab Merchants who were saved by local Rakhine
peoples in unknown century and local Rakhine women. They have changed
another story as Rohingya ethnic settled in Rakhine before Rakhine
peoples arrived in Raklhine after first one was shot down by
historians.

You may want to know why illegal Bengali Migrants in Burma is
inventing Rohingya story.

Basic qualify for automatic (indigenous ethnic) Citizenship in
both Union Citizenship ACT1948 and National Citizenship Law 1982 are
same it said { “any of the indigenous races of Burma” shall mean the
Arakanese, Burmese, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Mon or Shan race and
such racial group as has settled in any of the territories included
within the Union as their permanent home from a period anterior to
1823 A. D. (1185 B.E.). }

That’s why illegal Bengali migrants are trying to prove they are
indigenous of Burma by inventing difference Rohingya story.

They can be one of indigenous ethnics of Burma. It means
Bangladeshi Government needs to give back Chittagong and Chittagong
Hill Tracts to original owner Rakhine peoples of Burma.

That is only situation can change illegal Bengali migrants to
becoming one of indigenous ethnics of Burma.

Sittagong (in Burmese) or Chittagong (in Bengali) was built by
Buddhist Lama in 5 century in Rakhine Kingdom. Muslim started trading
with Sittagong in 9 century and they invaded in 15 century. However,
Sittagong was changing hands between Muslim and Rakhine King until
first Anglo – Burmese war in 19 century. Burmese king had successful
defeated over British invasion in Assam state and Manipur state. Great
Burmese General Maha Bandoola defeated Anglo – Indian Army in Panwa,
Sittagong and British pulled back it army to Calcutta. In the end,
Burma lost all three Wars to British because of we do not have modern
weapons.

British had colonized Burma but it does not mean British Colony
Government has power to given away sovereignty land of Burma to India
and today Bangladesh.

Dear Jason, it’s my personal feeling as Burmese ethnic about lost
of their sovereign land to other country. Rakhine peoples have strong
feeling than I have because those lands are historically belonging to
them.

So illegal Bengali migrants ‘invasion into Rakhine is not easy to
ignore for them.

If you want to write about Rakhine and then you should write
fairly and learn about Rakhine and Burmese history.

Illegal Bengali Migrants issue is nothing to do with racist or
oppression on minority ethnic group.

I personally believe second generation of descendents of illegal
Bengali Migrants should be given naturalized Burmese citizenship if
they do not have committed any crimes in the past. To given all
illegal Bengali migrants to citizenship is impossible in any country
on the earth. However, to recognize Bengali ethnic as Rohingya new
indigenous ethnic in Burma will not be happened in any Burmese
Government. So President U Thein Sein Government will decide who is
eligible and who is not eligible for naturalized citizenship on 1982
Burma Nationality Law.

By the way, Burmese peoples and Burmese Government will not be
tolerated for bully by OIC, HRW and Medias.

Burmese is sovereignty country and it has Immigration Law.
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Reply
Angry Man Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 10:30 pm

It is not just to the Bengali people, the Burmese junta has been
practicing apartheid to ethnics. Maybe even worse. Ethnic cleansing
happens to the Karens and to the Kachins for the last 60 years. They
demanded for democracy and federal system but they got death from the
Burmese junta. The Union of Burma was formed for Federal System but
the Burmese cheated and they ruled the Union with unitary system. The
current regime is closely watched where it is leading the Union. So
far, it is going nowhere near to federal Union which members of the
Union, ethnics want to see.
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Reply
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