Why Myanmar's Rohingya are forced to say they are Bengali

Ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar who are being held in squalid camps and even beaten have been told there's one way out: identify themselves as Bengali.

 June 2, 2013

CSM

Jared Ferrie

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An internally displaced Rohingya woman holds her newborn baby surrounded by children in the foreground of makeshift tents at a camp for Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Myanmar in May 2013.

Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP

 Nga Pon Gyee Village, Myanmar

It was just after 3 a.m. when the police kicked in Zia Ul Haq's door, then handcuffed and dragged him to the nearby railway tracks. Then the beatings began.

Police with batons struck him and nine other Rohingya Muslims in handcuffs on the head and back, says Zia Ul Haq and three witnesses, some of whom also claim to have been beaten. "If you say you are Rohingya we will beat you," the officer told him. "You have to say you are a Bengali."
To do so would be to deny what Zia Ul Haq and hundreds of thousands of other Muslims in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State consider to be their ethnic identity. Instead of "Rohingya," the government and state authorities refer to them as "Bengali," a term suggesting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The May 6 raid by dozens of police and soldiers represents the dark side of Myanmar's celebrated transition to democracy: The government continues to take a heavy-handed approach to resolving longstanding tensions between ethnic groups, a situation that's worsened with looser controls over online speech.
The United Nations says close to 140,000 Rohingya remain displaced after clashes with the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population drove them from their homes last year. The government has elected to keep them living in apartheid-like conditions, segregated from the Rakhines, in camps they are not allowed to leave for their own security. The government's plan for eventual resettlement requires a registration process under which Rohingya are designated as "Bengali." But many Rohingya are refusing to be registered even if it means they might be resettled from the squalid temporary camps where they now live.
"The Myanmar government's response to Rohingya displacement has been guided by segregationist policies that perpetuate inter-communal tensions,” said Melanie Teff of Refugees international in a May 30 statement to launch a critical report on the government’s treatment of Rohingya.

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Most Rohingya, even those whose families have been in Myanmar – also known as Burma – for generations, are denied citizenship under a 1982 law that renders them stateless. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of failing to prevent – and in some cases participating in – atrocities against Rohingya during clashes last year with the state's ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population.

Violence last June and October left at least 192 people dead, mostly Rohingya. Sittwe’s former population of about 73,000 Rohingya has now dwindled to 5,000 people confined in one neighborhood, guarded by security forces. The vast majority of displaced Rohingya are still living in temporary camps.

Three stage plan

The Rohingya men arrested May 6 were apparently detained in connection to a protest over a government registration program that required them to state their identities as Bengali.
Zia Ul Haq and the nine others were released just before dawn. But four more villagers were shackled and driven an hour to the Rakhine capital Sittwe, where they were detained at a police station without charge for 10 days in abject conditions.
"I got only water, no food," says Fazil Ahmad.
Officers at the police station and the district police headquarters denied all knowledge of the arrests. But another officer, who refused to provide his name, said the villagers had been brought in for questioning about an April 26 demonstration at a camp for displaced Rohingya during which a soldier was injured.
The Rohingya were protesting a registration process which the government was carrying before implementing a resettlement program.
Building temporary shelters is part of a three-step plan to resettle the displaced, says Hla Han, the state minister for development affairs. Afterwards, it will create jobs in industries like fishing and agriculture, then permanently resettle the displaced in locations to be determined in talks between ethnic leaders, government officials, and aid groups.
Hla Han declined to offer a timeline for the plan.
“We need to take time, we can’t say exactly,” he says. “Even the first stage is not settled yet.”

Denial of identity

As part of the government’s resettlement plan, officials were to go to camps to compile a list of displaced people and where they were from. But the list required Rohingyas to identify themselves as “Bengali." When officials tried to survey displaced people in camps around Theak Kae Pyin village, protests broke out with women and children chanting, “We are Rohingya.”
Hla Han says a soldier suffered a concussion after being hit in the head by a stick. A border police officer and a civilian official suffered bruises, he says.
Aung Kyaw Win, an administrator elected to represent several villages including Nga Pon Gyee and Nga Pon Shay, says the police told him they conducted the raid after hearing that protest organizers were hiding there.
But Fious Ahmad says he was never questioned about the protests while being held in jail without food, a bed, or even a blanket to sleep on.

"I don’t know why the police seized me," he says in an interview outside Nga Pon Shay's mosque a day after his release. "The police said to me, 'Say you're Bengali.' I told them, ‘Yes, I'm Bengali.' But the police beat me anyway."

Buddhist mobs attack Muslim homes for second day in Myanmar; one dead

Firefighters extinguish a fire during a riot between Buddhist and Muslims in Lashio township May 29, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun

May 29, 2013

Reuters

Jared Ferrie 

Lashio, Myanmar - Buddhist mobs armed with sticks and machetes burned Muslim homes on Wednesday for a second day in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio, contradicting claims in state media that soldiers and police had restored calm.

A Reuters reporter saw scores of young men and boys on motorbikes and on foot marauding through the city of 130,000 people in a mountainous region about 700 km (430 miles) from the commercial capital Yangon.

One person was killed and four were wounded in fighting that began at about 2 p.m., Ye Htut, spokesman for President Thein Sein, said in a Facebook post. Police fired their guns to disperse the crowd, he said.

By early evening, Muslims shops and homes were still burning in one quarter, underlining the difficulty the president faces in containing mounting religious violence in an era of historic reforms since military rule ended in March 2011.

"I don't know where the Muslims are. They all ran away," said Kyaw Soe Win, a Buddhist resident of a mixed neighbourhood where motorbikes and household possessions lay burning in the streets. Nearby, a man with a sword and a stick combed through the remains of one burned-out shop.

State television said a mosque, a Muslim religious school and a number of shops were gutted by fires started on Tuesday by Buddhists who rampaged after hearing reports of a Muslim man setting a Buddhist woman on fire and badly wounding her. State media said calm had returned by Wednesday.

Myanmar has struggled with religious unrest since June last year when fighting between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya erupted in western Rakhine State.

That was followed by organised Rakhine attacks on Rohingya communities in October that New York-based Human Rights Watch said amounted to ethnic cleansing. The government calls the stateless Rohingya illegal "Bengali" immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

"KILL ALL BENGALIS"

British tourist Stephen Barker, 46, told Reuters he saw a group of about 100 machete and stick-carrying youths rallying around his hotel in the early afternoon, including four or five monks. Police and military moved them on and arrested half a dozen people.

"I got a light for my cigarette from one and he told me to kill all Bengalis while waving this 18-inch blade around."

Muslims appeared to have fled a mixed Lashio neighbourhood known as Quarter Number 17.

Tuesday's unrest in Lashio was sparked by a quarrel between two people, named by state media as Aye Aye Win, 24, a Buddhist woman who sold petrol, and Ne Win, a Muslim man aged 48.

MRTV television said Ne Win poured petrol over Aye Aye Win and set her on fire. She was in hospital, it said.

After police detained Ne Win, Buddhists surrounded the police station and demanded he be handed over. When they refused, the crowd went on the rampage, attacking Myoma Mosque near Lashio market, residents said.

The authorities attempted to restore order late on Tuesday by banning unlawful assembly under a state of emergency in the city, which is about 190 km (120 miles) from the Chinese border.

In March, at least 44 people, most of them Muslims, died in the central city of Meikhtila after a rampage by Buddhist mobs incensed by the killing of a monk by Muslims, shortly after a violent row between a Buddhist couple and Muslim shop owners.

Muslims make up about 5 percent of Myanmar's 60 million people.

(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon; Writing by Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep, Robert Birsel and Ron Popeski)

Muslim victims of Myanmar unrest face uncertain future

Hla Hla May, a Rohingya Muslim woman displaced by violence, holds her one year old daughter Roshan at a former rubber factory that now serves as their shelter, near Sittwe April 29, 2013.
Credit: REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

April 30, 2013

Reuters

Jared Ferrie

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar - In Myanmar's central heartlands, justice and security is elusive for thousands of Muslims who lost their homes in a deadly rampage by Buddhist mobs in March. 

Many are detained in prison-like camps, unable to return to neighborhoods and businesses razed in four days of violence in Meikhtila that killed at least 43 people, most of them Muslims, displaced nearly 13,000, and touched off a wave of anti-Muslim unrest fuelled by radical Buddhist monks.

"It's for their own security," said a police officer at a camp inside a sports stadium on Meikhtila's outskirts. The camp holds more than 1,600 people guarded by police with orders not to let them leave, said the officer, who declined to give his name.

A dawn-to-dusk curfew has been in force in Meikhtila since the government declared martial law on March 22. Skeletal walls and piles of rubble are all that remain of Muslim homes and businesses that once covered several blocks at the heart of the town of 100,000 people in the center of Myanmar.

Trials have begun, but so far only Muslims stand accused, raising fears that courts will further aggravate religious tension by ignoring the Buddhist ringleaders of the violence.

The unrest and the combustible sectarian relations behind it are one of the biggest tests of Myanmar's reform-minded government, which took power in March 2011 after almost half a century of hardline military rule.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslim. They face a growing campaign of anti-Islamic sentiment led by radical Buddhist monks.

An independent commission released a report on Monday saying Myanmar must urgently address the plight of Muslims displaced by sectarian bloodshed in western Rakhine State. It came in response to violence last June and October that killed at least 192 people and left 140,000 homeless, mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims in an area dominated by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The trial of seven Muslim men accused of murdering a monk, believed to be the first killing in the March unrest in Meikhtila, is expected to conclude this week. Those on trial say they are innocent.

The sound of hammers ring across the city as workers dismantle what is left of the Muslim neighborhood, stone by stone. There are no signs of Muslims on the streets.

More than 8,000 Muslims are being held in seven official camps that are off-limits to journalists. Thousands more have crowded into unofficial camps in villages near Meikhtila, where police also restrict their movements and prevented them from speaking with Reuters.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said detaining internally displaced people (IDP) is a violation of their rights.

"Locking people up in an IDP camp is not a substitute for providing basic security and ensuring communal peace," he said. "Even if the authorities' intent is good, they are clearly going about this the wrong way."

Spokesmen for the president's office did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the office's spokesmen, Ye Htut, has previously stressed that the monks involved in the Meikhtila violence make up only a fraction of the 500,000-strong monkhood. "All perpetrators of violence will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," said President Thein Sein in a nationally televised speech on March 28.

Victims in relief camps "live freely and happily", reported the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper on April 5.

"STUDENTS ATTACKED"

The government has promised to help Muslims rebuild their homes, but reconstruction has yet to begin. Building more than 1,500 houses burned down or damaged would cost $7 million, it said.

Some Buddhist residents said returning Muslims were unwelcome.

"I can't accept living with them again, because they insulted Buddhism and a monk's blood was spilled on the ground," said Than Htun, as he waited outside a prison to see his son who was arrested for looting money from a Muslim home during the rioting.

Such hostility could influence the outcome of the ongoing murder trial, suggested Thein Than Oo, a lawyer for three of the seven Muslim accused, who believed the judge is under pressure from Buddhists to deliver a guilty verdict.

"He has to satisfy the people," he said.

He pointed to the case of the Muslim owner of a gold shop, his wife and an employee who on April 11 received 14 years without parole for theft and assault. The charges stemmed from an argument with a Buddhist customer, which sparked the first bout of rioting earlier on the day the monk was killed.

The court imposed harsh sentences due to the violence that erupted afterwards, said Thein Than Oo.

Most victims of the rioting were Muslim but no Buddhists have appeared in court. The district judge said they would be tried after the current trial ends.

Neither the judge nor the district police could say if any monks would be charged. Monks led many of the mobs, according to dozens of witnesses interviewed by Reuters.

New York-based Physicians for Human Rights called for an independent investigation into a report of a massacre at an Islamic school on March 21. The group said 32 students and four teachers were missing.

One student, Soe Min Oo, 18, said he fled with other students and teachers when the school was attacked, taking refuge with other Muslims in a nearby compound.

Soe Min Oo said the mob tossed petrol bombs into the compound until police arrived and offered to bring the nearly 200 Muslims to safety. But the few dozen officers could only protect some of them, said Soe Min Oo, pausing frequently to fight back tears.

He said the Buddhist mob hit them and threw stones as they left the compound, and those who came out last were beaten to death. He saw three friends killed.

"I've never faced anything like this situation before," said Soe Min Oo. "I feel very sad."

Soe Min Oo spoke to Reuters in a tiny Muslim village about half an hour outside Meikhtila where he was staying with family. During the interview, an official who wouldn't say who he worked for arrived on a motorcycle and demanded names and contact numbers from journalists.

Mandalay chief minister Ye Myint denied a Reuters request to visit official camps in his region, which includes Meikhtila. Immigration and police officers banned access to an unofficial camp in Yindaw, a village about a 45-minute drive from Meikhtila.

(Editing by Andrew R.C. Marshall and Robert Birsel)

Fear stalks Yangon’s Muslims after Buddhist-led killings

April 11, 2013

The News PK

Jared Ferrie

An ultra-nationalist Buddhist creed is becoming more visible in Myanmar’s commercial capital, Yangon, after monks from the apartheid-like movement helped stoke a wave of anti-Muslim violence in the central heartlands.

Many Muslims in the city say they are living in fear after dozens of members of their faith were killed in March by Buddhist mobs whipped up by monks from the “969” movement, a name that refers to attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood. 

Calm has been restored in Meikhtila and other volatile central areas after authorities imposed martial law and dispatched troops. A Reuters examination of the violence showed it was well-organised, abetted at times by police turning a blind eye. 

But concerns linger among Muslims in Yangon, a city of about 4 million people undergoing rapid change during Myanmar’s transition from 49 years of oppressive military rule that ended in March 2011.

Fears simmer after 13 boys died in a fire in an Islamic school on April 2. Officials blamed faulty electrical equipment but many Muslims believe the fire was started deliberately. 

“At night-time nobody sleeps,” said Mohamed Irshad on his way home from midday prayers at a mosque in Mingalar Taung Nyunt, a mostly Muslim neighbourhood. “We have a guard, because some time they might come to attack.”

Another worshipper, Ruhla Min, said the imam warned his congregation not to be provoked into violence, but to be patient and stay calm. “We prayed for peace,” Ruhla Min said. 

Some of the radical “969” monks have spoken in Yangon in recent weeks and recordings of their speeches are widely available.

Among the best selling speakers is Wirathu, who was jailed for inciting anti-Muslim riots in 2003 and released last year when the government freed hundreds of political prisoners. 

Kyi Lwin, who sells DVDs in central Yangon, said the movement was not anti-Muslim but meant to “build a fence” around Buddhism and discourage Buddhists from interacting with Muslims who may try to convert them. The speeches convinced him not to buy goods from Muslims or eat at their restaurants, he said.

Ma Than Htwe said she had put a “969” sticker on her juice stall because some people thought she looked Muslim and that was losing her business.

Muslims account for 5 percent of Myanmar’s 60 million people but have a much greater representation than their numbers would suggest among the wealthier merchant class, feeding resentment among some of those who remain impoverished despite the political and economic transformation under way. 

“If you talk to people about their economic life, it hasn’t really changed. They are still struggling to survive,” said Aye Chan Naing, executive director of Democratic Voice of Burma, a media group. “Monks openly preach about taking businesses back into Buddhist hands. That appeals to a lot of people.”

A Muslim, he worries about the spread of prejudice and the failure of the government to educate people about the danger. But he also warns against tarring all monks with the same brush.

“There were lots of Buddhist monks not condoning this violence, but preaching peace and reconciliation. Even in Meikhtila, there were quite a lot of Buddhist monks and locals helping the Muslims,” he said.

Ye Htut, a presidential spokesman and deputy minister of information, noted that Myanmar has more than 500,000 monks.

“Only the handful had some extremist idea. The majority of Myanmar people and monks are against these actions,” he said in an email to Reuters. “There are many cases in which monks and the community save the lives of Muslims.” Even so, some people worry that violence could derail reforms. An easing of rules on freedom of speech, for instance, has allowed political debate but also unleashed anti-Muslim sentiment.

In a televised speech on March 28, President Thein Sein warned “political opportunists and religious extremists” not to instigate violence and said he would not hesitate to use force to protect lives and property.

At least 110 people were killed in attacks on Rohingya Muslims in two bouts of violence in Rakhine State in the west in 2012, according to the government. Tens of thousands of Rohingya, who are denied citizenship by Myanmar and are stateless, are now effectively segregated in camps.

Hostility against the Rohingyas is longstanding, especially in Rakhine State where an estimated 800,000 of them live. In contrast, Yangon is a diverse city dotted with Buddhist pagodas, Islamic mosques, Christian churches and Hindu temples. 

On one bustling street corner, Zaw Min, a Buddhist book vendor, sat next to his friend of 10 years, a Muslim who sells TV remote controls. 

The men spend most of their days side by side on plastic stools, but their complicated friendship is emblematic of the uneasy relationship between the two communities. 

Zaw Min said they often defend each other when a customer starts an argument. But prominently displayed on his sign is a “969” sticker and he says he wouldn’t buy anything from a Muslim unless there was really no alternative. When asked to comment, his Muslim friend simply shook his head without looking up. 

Zaw Min said Buddhists should support Buddhist businesses that will use their money to make donations to monks and contribute to the construction of monasteries. “If there is a fight between religions, I will fight for the Buddhist religion,” he said.

Source:Here