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Latest Updates: Burma RSS

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  johnpi 9:34 pm on October 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bangladesh (42), Burma, Myanmar (4), Rohingyas (3)

  Burmese, Bangladesh officials meet to defuse tensions.

  Officials from Burma and Bangladesh met in Maungdaw, in Burma’s northern Arakan State, on Wednesday in a bid to defuse border tensions, according to sources in the region.

  The sources said the two sides, in their second meeting this month, discussed illegal drug and arms trading across the border, troop movements, the Rohingya issue—and the controversial fence Burma is building along sections of the frontier. Bangladesh says the fence violates international law.

  As officials from both sides met, tensions continued to rise, with a number of Bangladeshi fishermen alleging that Burmese troops confiscated their fishing boats on Monday while they were fishing in Bangladesh waters.

  Bangladesh and Burmese warships are patrolling disputed waters of the Bay of Bengal and troop buildups by both sides have been reported in the border region.

   

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  johnpi 8:46 pm on October 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bangladesh (42), Burma, Myanmar (4), rohingya (12), Rohingyas (3)

  Bangladesh Expels Rohingyas.

  Bangladeshi authorities have increasingly cracked down on Rohingya refugees living illegally in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar District in Bangladesh and pushed them back across the Burmese border, according to border sources.

  Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, said, “At least 1,200 people have been deported to Burma since January, according to our research, and 190 people were deported in two weeks alone this month.”
  ….

  Lewa believes Bangladesh authorities will push back all Rohingya refugees who are not registered with the UNHCR before Burma finishes erecting the wire fence on its border.

  In August, five people were charged with crossing the border illegally under the Immigration Act and were sentenced to five years in prison at Buthidaung Township in Arakan State after they were arrested by Nasaka, the Burmese border security force, Lewa said.

   
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  thabet 12:40 pm on October 12, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, immigrants (16), prison (12), Rohingyas (3), saudi arabia (135), stateless people

  3,000 Rohingya families await deportation after release from prison:

  They have been described as some of the world’s most persecuted refugees, and among the most forgotten, too. During my imprisonment in Jeddah I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma.

  Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan – often called Rohingyas – were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.

  There are about 3,000 families of Burmese Muslims in Mecca and Jeddah prisons awaiting deportation. Women and children are held in separate prisons nearby. The only contact the men have with their wives and children is through mobile phones.

   
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  thabet 5:42 am on August 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, energy (32), geopolitics (119), international relations (189), oil watch (33), resources (25)

  The (Natural) Gas Lobby.

   
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  johnpi 8:27 pm on August 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bangladesh (42), Burma, Muslim Refugees (9), Myanmar (4), refugees (17), rohingya (12)

  Bangladesh complains of Myanmar refugee ‘burden.’

  Bangladesh on Monday said hundreds of thousands of persecuted Muslim Rohingyas who have illegally crossed the border from Myanmar have caused major social, economic and environmental damage.

  Foreign minister Dipu Moni said the refugees put a “heavy burden” on Bangladesh, and called on Myanmar’s military junta to stop the Rohingyas from fleeing from their homeland.

   
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  razib, murtad fitri 6:02 pm on June 22, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, ethnicity (30), rohingya (12)

  i had some further thoughts today on the persecution of the rohingya in burma. clearly there’s a plain out & out racist element here insofar as the dark-skinned “bengali” rohingya are different from most of the other ethnicities of burma, aside naturally from the indian minority which arrived during the british raj (most of whom left, but of those who remain many have switched their identity from hindu to buddhist in the surveys i’ve seen).

  my thoughts were triggered by the fact that the rohingya do not use bengali script, but traditionally used arabic modified scripts (like urdu, ‘hanafi,’ etc.), and more recently have used burmese or roman script. the rohingya are also uniformly muslim. the burmese, in particular the dominant ethnic bamar, do not view them as a national minority because they are perceived to be recent immigrants from bengal. the rohingya themselves don’t seem to agree with this, and many claim arab or non-bengali antecedents. the latter is not totally atypical for south asian muslims, who wish to suggest exogenous origins so as to identify with the ‘ashraf’ elite muslims. but with the rohingya there are i think more details in their specific circumstance, most especially because there have long been muslims in burma, and many burmese muslims are not rohingya, and these muslims do not suffer the same degree of persecution as the rohingya.
  (More …)

   
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  lfeeney 11:12 am on April 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, china (83), Cuba, Egypt (94), iran (366), journalism (44), media (408), saudi arabia (135), Syria (25), Tunisia (2), Turkmenistan (2), Vietnam (3)

  The Committee to Protect Journalists names the 10 Worst Countries to be a blogger — Middle Eastern and Asian countries top the list.

   
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  thabet 1:56 am on February 9, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, human rights (381), liberal interventionism (49), rohingya (12), united states (578)

  The US has called on Burma to stop persecuting its Rohingya Muslim minority, who have fled the country in their hundreds of thousands.

  No case for liberal interventionism with bombs and guns?

   
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  aziz 8:02 am on May 6, 2008 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Burma, Bush (29)

  The cyclone death toll in Burma is now at 22,000. The ruling military junta is actually asking for foreign aid, and the world is responding.

  Laura Bush, without a trace of irony, critiqued the junta’s response to the storm as “inept“.