Burma’s Muslims bear brunt of prosecutions a year after riots

Muslims villagers flee sectarian violence in Rakhine state in western Burma in June 2012. Pic: AP.

June 18, 2013

Asian Correspondent

Casey Hynes

Last week marked the somber one-year anniversary of the violent sectarian conflict in Rakhine state that broke out last June and enflamed tensions between Buddhists and Muslims there. That set off a long 12 months of disquiet and tragedy for Burma’s Muslim population, and their woes are likely to be exacerbated as they continue to see higher rates of punishment for the unrest.

What began as conflict between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims has spread in the last year to more widespread anti-Muslim violence throughout Burma and increasing instability for thousands upon thousands of people. To date, there are 150,000 displaced Muslims living desperate existences within the confines of overcrowded IDP camps.

A 40-year-old woman named Daw Khin Htwe, a Muslim married to a Rohingya man, told her harrowing story to IRIN News. She and her children witnessed the brutal murder of her mother-in-law and another relative. IRIN quotes her as saying, “We know who did this, but also know nothing will come of it. How can our communities ever reconcile if such crimes go unpunished? Will there be any accountability? Only if the authorities arrest and punish those responsible is there any real prospect for reconciliation. What will happen to us if we return to our homes now? It could happen all over again.”

Daw Khin Htwe raised an important point about crimes going unpunished, as Muslims seem to bear the brunt of the prosecutions that result from these all-too-frequent outbreaks of violence.

“Anti-Muslim discrimination by the state in Myanmar [Burma] runs deep. We can see it in the disproportionate arrests and prosecutions of Muslims in the aftermaths of anti-Muslim violence,” Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights International, said via email.

Smith noted that by the government’s own admission, 75 percent of the arrests made in regard to the June riots have been of Muslims, a staggering number when you consider that many of the outbreaks were due to anti-Muslim sentiment.

A Muslim man was sentenced to 26 years in prison last week, after being accused of lighting a Buddhist woman on fire and setting off two days of anti-Muslim rioting in Lashio. In May, two Muslim men were arrested for their alleged involvement in the deaths of two Buddhists during rioting in Meikhtila in March. The violent, deadly riots were largely targeted at Muslims, with Buddhist monks stirring anti-Muslim sentiment. However, Buddhists have up this point seen less harsh punishment than Muslims. Voice of America reported on May 21 that no Buddhists had been convicted in connection with the riots up to that point.

On May 10, five Buddhists who had been arrested on charges of defaming religion, aggravated burglary, unlawful assembly and vandalism, were released on bail, according to Democratic Voice of Burma.

However, two Buddhists were arrested in early May following an attack on a Muslim-owned shop.

The disproportionate targeting of Muslims for prosecution seems to fall in line with a larger trend of the government seeming to further, rather than alleviate, the tenuous situation.

Human Rights Watch accused the Burmese government of engaging in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya, and condemned its actions and lack thereof when it comes to acting on the rights of this people.

“The situation in Rakhine State is not improving. Instances of violence by state security forces against Rohingya are continuing, entire communities of displaced Muslims still lack adequate aid, and the authorities have made no moves to facilitate the voluntary returns of displaced Muslims,” Smith said. “It has been an entire year of displacement and tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya still lack adequate access to health care. This is not due to a lack of expertise in the country. The problems are the result of persecution.”

Even if more proportionate arrests and punishment are seen, that will not address the underlying causes of the violence. The anti-Muslim sentiment that has spread throughout parts of the country can only serve to further divide the people living in Burma and cause more poverty and hardship for tens of thousands who live there. The government has sanctioned military action against Muslim communities, and as Smith pointed out, done little to improve their living conditions. This kind of institutional discrimination, in addition to the jailings, will only reinforce prejudices against them and pave the way for more violence. A genuine defense of basic human rights is necessary to prevent the need for arrests and jailings in the first place.

International Crisis Group Makes A Mockery Of ‘Peace’ In Burma – OpEd

Burma's Thein Sein meets U.S. President Barack Obama in Yangon, 18 November 2012

April 23, 2013


Asian Correspondent
By Francis Wade
At a glitzy dinner tonight in New York, where the cover charge for a table can reach heady six figure sums, Burma’s President Thein Sein will be honoured with the International Crisis Group’s top peace award. Across the pond he will receive additional applause from the EU in the form of a termination of all sanctions on Burma, except for its arms embargo.
Yet away from the pomp of the ICG awards ceremony, a starkly different picture has been painted. Human Rights Watch released a report Monday that wholly implicates Burma’s government in crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in Arakan state. This isn’t the conclusion of an investigation into the former junta’s rights record, but instead something very current, and for which Thein Sein bears responsibility.
“The Burmese government and security forces are responsible for attacks on the Rohingya [last year] in which crimes against humanity were committed,” said Matthew Smith, a consultant with HRW. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW, said in a statement that the government “engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement”.
The emphasis of the report, which the group put together using extensive testimonies collected on the ground in Arakan state, is official complicity in the displacement of 125,000 Rohingya, and the deaths of hundreds. The intended end result of this campaign of violence, which has involved local politicians, NGOs and security forces, as well as civilians, is the removal of an entire ethnic group, either through death or displacement.
To date, the government has denied any responsibility for the two major waves of violence in June and October last year. It said in response to HRW’s accusations of complicity by security forces that the claims were “unfounded and not true information … [security forces] took security measures day and night without taking sides and without discrimination of race and religion”.
Eyewitnesses in Arakan state tell otherwise – police, army and the NaSaKa border security group were directly involved in razing houses and escorting violent mobs of Arakanese into Rohingya areas. In Yan Thei village in Mrauk U, police “assisted the killings by disarming the Rohingya of their sticks and other rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves,” HRW said. It also details an incident in which a government truck dumped 18 Rohingya bodies outside a Rohingya camp, a practice that is consistent with the campaign of intimidation that is often an ingredient in ethnic cleansing.
Over in Meiktila in central Burma, where entire Muslim quarters were razed by Buddhist mobs last month, footage has just emerged that shows police watching as Muslim-owned properties are destroyed.
In this context then, one struggles to fathom how ICG could honour Burma’s president. To be sure, Thein Sein has overseen positive developments in several spheres, such as media and opposition political participation. Yet this award is about peace, an area in which he has failed disastrously. “International Crisis Group’s goal is as ambitious as it is vital: to mobilise leaders around the globe to prevent and end deadly conflict,” the statement introducing the award says.
But since Thein Sein came to office, civil war has broken out in Kachin state, fierce rioting has erupted in Arakan state, and several waves of deadly anti-Muslim violence have rocked central Burma, while a huge increase in internal displacement of civilians has occurred, as has unprecedented refugee flows from western Burma to other Southeast Asian countries. The list goes on. He has demonstrably failed to respond to evidence that prominent parliamentarians, such as Dr. Aye Maung from the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, have called for the removal of the Rohingya; indeed last year Thein Sein asked the UN to resettle all 800,000 Rohingya. In ICG’s own words, however, the man should be applauded for his “efforts to bring us closer to a world free of conflict”.
The EU’s decision to drop sanctions is also highly contentious, and for similar reasons, yet it has maintained an arms embargo precisely because of substantial ongoing concerns about the military, which has shown no sign that it intends to mend its ways. ICG, which pins the award to positive developments towards an end to armed conflict, appears to refute those concerns.
The award is especially galling for Burma because ICG has backed a war crimes investigation into the Sri Lankan conflict. ICG is undoubtedly aware of what has occurred in Burma in the two years since Thein Sein became president – it follows the developments there closely, but is evidently guilty of sidelining the negatives and myopically homing in on the positives, despite the scales currently tipping in favour of the former.
It’s hard to tell why exactly they’ve chosen such a controversial position on Burma. Burmese academic Maung Zarni has some very useful thoughts here, while past observers have talked of groups like ICG wanting to become part of a “pacted transition” in Burma, with a pro-trade and aid stance that ultimately reaps significant economic benefits for stakeholders, ICG included. This commentary accuses them of being “democracy manipulators” headed by men and women with key ties to the US elite who would have considerable personal interests in a Burma that is open to business. Either way, one would be wise to take the award with more than a pinch of salt – it’s woefully misguided, and carries the potential to induce a dangerous naivety among those not versed in the major pitfalls of this transition.

Rohingya flee as Burma tightens restrictions on Muslims

 Feb 18, 201
Asiancorrespondent
By Francis Wade


Two stark choices now face the Muslim population in western Burma: the first is that they take to the high seas on over-packed boats bereft of navigational equipment and adequate supplies to last them the journey to Malaysia, or Australia, or wherever they hope to find refuge and respite. The voyage is perilous: the UN says that last year, 485 of around 13,000 Rohingya who fled Bangladesh and Burma on boats drowned, equivalent to one in 26 people. The chances of survival are not favourable.
The second is that they stay in Arakan state, which for the non-Buddhist community is increasingly resembling a vast open-air prison. The overwhelming majority of Rohingya are now living in either refugee camps or in towns in northern Arakan state that are strictly off limits to foreigners. Inhabitants of towns like Maungdaw and Buthidaung are starved of outside assistance, in a country that denies them the most basic of social protections.

A boat carrying 73 Rohingya refugees is intercepted by Thai authorities off the sea in Phuket, southern Thailand last month. Pic: AP.

Contrary to the narrative of a country lessening restrictions on its inhabitants, quite the opposite is happening in Arakan state. DVB last week quoted local authorities in the town of Sandoway (Thandwe) who said they had been ordered to block all Muslims from leaving their townships, Kaman included. Previously the restriction had been applied only to Rohingya without ID cards – now it is a blanket ban, and suggests the discriminatory policy that until recently targeted only Rohingya has evolved into something more sinister.
The refugee camps are another story. Many sprung up in the aftermath of the June 2012 rioting and quickly became overcrowded as Rohingya fled urban areas, later to be joined by Kaman as attacks from Arakanese nationalists widened. Close to 120,000 Muslims are thought to be living in camps of varying quality: some are clusters of flimsy wooden frames covered by rags that qualify as the most basic and fragile of shelters, and will not withstand the coming rainy season.
Others, like the newly built huts at Ohne Dawgyi, are much sturdier. They are in dire need, but have been built as if they are there to stay – one may wonder whether the government intends their inhabitants to stay put too. UN special rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana touched on this in a statement last week in which he said that despite government assurances to the contrary, “the information among stakeholders is that this [return of displaced to their villages] won’t take place and the current settlements will become permanent”. Past fears that an apartheid state is developing are given extra strength.

An immigration officer fills out forms during an operation to verify the citizenship of Muslims living in the western Burma village of Sin Thet Maw late last year. Pic: AP.

Quintana added that one camp he visited “felt more like a prison than a camp”, and warned that lack of freedom of movement for inhabitants lessened the chances of “rebuilding trust between communities through interaction”. Outside of the camps, the prison theme gets worse – reports have emerged of children as young as 10 being held in jails in northern Arakan state on charges of inciting the unrest that has plagued the region for eight months.
Most would consider this environment, and the physical and psychological burden it carries, uninhabitable. But the other option is equally dire. The Sri Lankan navy is currently searching for around 100 ‘boatpeople’, in all likelihood Rohingya, adrift at sea. They may have been on the water for up to two months. Each day matters hugely, given how scarce supplies, particularly food and water, often are on these boats.
Now we are well into the annual ‘boat season’, a perversely evocative term for the time of year when thousands of Rohingya set sail, often to their deaths. The timing coincides with an apparent worsening of conditions in Arakan state, so expect the number of drownings to rise.

Reports: Thai authorities sell Rohingya refugees to human traffickers

Rohingya migrants sit in a boat as they are intercepted by
 Thai authorities off the sea in Phuket, southern Thailand on New Year's Day. Pic: AP.

Jan 22, 2013 
Asiancorrespondent
By Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices


Thai authorities have “sold off” ethnic Rohingya migrants who have arrived in Thailand by boat to people smugglers, according to both local and international media.

Last week we reported on the fate of the 74 Rohingya migrants, among them many women and children, that were intercepted by Thai officials on New Year’s Day. They were traveling in a flimsy fishing boat for weeks in the Andaman Sea on their way to Malaysia. Near Phuket, the boat was towed on land by Thai authorities since their boat was deemed unsafe. As per usual procedure, the refugees would be deported back to Burma – back to the country where they are fleeing from targeted violence against them that has killed at least 88 people and displaced over 100,000.

However, they never made it across the border. As previously reported, the refugees were put on other boats and sent out to sea again. This has also been ‘confirmed’ by the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) – in fact, the 74 Rohingya have always been in the hands of ISOC, according to sources.
Then, BBC News reported on Monday:

The BBC found that boats were being intercepted by the Thai navy and police, with deals then made to sell the people on to traffickers who transport them south towards Malaysia. (…)
We spoke to one of the brokers involved in the deal. They said that 1.5 million baht (about $50,000, £31,500) had been transferred from Malaysia and paid to officials in Thailand. That amount was confirmed to us by other members of the Rohingya community in Thailand.
The Thai authorities told us they believe there are just a few corrupt officials. But in the border town of Ranong a Thai official closely linked with the Rohingya issue told us that working with the brokers was now regarded as the “natural” solution.
“Burmese refugees sold on by Thai officials“, by Jonah Fisher, BBC News, January 21, 2013

The BBC also reported on the horrible conditions these refugees have to endure, as this video report shows. Also, be sure to check the local Phuket Wan‘s story on the same topic.
On Sunday, the Bangkok Post also reported the alleged involvement of ISOC officers in the trafficking of Rohingya refugees. In this case, over 800 migrants have been found in army-led raids in the southern province on Songkhla, believed to be held captive in camps of human traffickers (we reported).

A high ranking police source involved in the case said the investigation found the trafficking of Rohingya migrants – mostly from Myanmar’s [Burma] Rakhine state – to Malaysia via Songkhla had been going on for several years and was under the control of some military officers with ranks from major to colonel. (…)
“Sometimes they even used military trucks to transport these Rohingya migrants,” said the police officer. Sometimes local police stopped the trucks to check them. Soon after, they would get a phone call from someone who claimed to be a senior military officer seeking to release the trucks. (…)
Isoc spokesman Ditthaporn Sasisamit said the command has not received information about the issue from police. However it will cooperate with police to take action against the officers. (…) But so far no evidence had emerged to link them to the trafficking.
“Army officers linked to Rohingya smuggling“, Bangkok Post, January 20, 2013

Reportedly, army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha is also aware of the possible incrimination of army officers in people smuggling and has announced his intentions to “eradicate” the “bad army officers”. Whether or not actual consequences will follow his words has yet to be seen.
This follows after the seemingly misplaced remarks of Supreme Commander Tanasak Patimapragorn, who slammed the international community for allegedly “not doing enough” to help the Rohingya migrants:

He said while international organisations stressed the need to help the Rohingya, they did not provide enough direct assistance and Thailand was forced to shoulder the burden of looking after them.
“Tanasak demands global help“, Bangkok Post, January 19, 2013

What Thanasak seems to ignore is that Thailand does not always allow foreign help:

Thailand’s response to arriving Rohingya asylum seekers contrasts sharply with the policy in Malaysia, where the authorities have routinely allowed the UN refugee agency access to arriving Rohingya. Those recognized by the agency as refugees are released from immigration detention. (…)
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution. While Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, under customary international law the Thai government has an obligation of “nonrefoulement” – not to return anyone to a place where their life or freedom would be at risk.
“Thailand: Don’t Deport Rohingya ‘Boat People’“, Human Rights Watch, January 2, 2013

While the UNHCR has been granted access to the 800+ migrants in Songkhla province by the Thai government, no specific date has been set yet.
The media attention on the ethnic Rohingya now shifts from their plight of enduring the weeks at sea to those who have sold them off to the people smugglers.
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About the author:
Saksith Saiyasombut is a Thai blogger and freelance foreign correspondent based in Bangkok, Thailand. He writes about Thai politics and current affairs since 2010 and is also reports for international news media such as Channel NewsAsia. You can follow him on Twitter @Saksith.