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Indigenous no-state people

How Thai forces killing minorities: the story of Billy and a Karen village

Billy, Muenoor and their child
An oil barrel discovered at the bottom of a reservoir in a nature reserve in Thailand in April 2019 has cast a light on a story some would rather stayed hidden. It is a tale of powerful men and the lengths they will allegedly go to keep their crimes covered up. But it is also the story of one woman’s determination to get justice for the man she loved and the community he was fighting for.

Pinnapa “Muenoor” Prueksapan remembers the words that her husband told her back in 2014 as if it happened yesterday.

“He told me: ‘The people involved in this aren’t happy with me. They say that if they find me they’ll kill me. If I do disappear, don’t come looking for me. Don’t wonder where I’ve gone. They’ll probably have killed me’.

“So I said to him: ‘If you know you’re in danger like this, why can’t you stop helping your grandfather and the village?’.

“And he said to me: ‘When you’re doing the right thing, you have to keep fighting, even if it means you may lose your life.’.

“And after he said that, I couldn’t ask him to stop,” she recalls.

When Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen left for work on 15 April that same year, Muenoor didn’t ask any questions. He left just like any other day, grabbing the overnight bag his wife packed for him and walking out the door without saying goodbye.

He told Muenoor that he was going to meet with people in his role as a locally elected official – but that wasn’t the whole truth. In fact, Billy had gone to meet his grandfather and members of his village to collect evidence to take to lawyers in Bangkok – evidence he hoped would prove once and for all local authorities in this remote part of southern Thailand were illegally evicting indigenous communities.

Three days later, Muenoor got a phone call from Billy’s brother asking if he had arrived home safely. But he still wasn’t home. Suddenly she remembered Billy’s words.

Perhaps that phone call would never had happened had it not been for another tragedy three years earlier.

Billy came from a forest on the Thai-Myanmar border
In July 2011, three military helicopters crashed in a remote part of Kaeng Krachan National Park, near Thailand’s southern border with Myanmar. They went down one after the other in a series of accidents blamed on bad weather.

The tragedy was further compounded by the fact the last two helicopters had been sent to collect the remains of the first.

Seventeen people lost their lives in the three accidents: 16 soldiers and one member of Bangkok’s press.

The crashes drew the attention of the country’s media. Soon journalists from all over Thailand were descending on the area, which meant, for the first time, all eyes were focused on this quiet, rural region – and the dark secrets it hid.

In the end, a tip-off led the journalists to a remote location, far into the dense green jungle of the country’s biggest national park, and to the very secret the soldiers had seemingly died trying to protect.

Because there, deep in the forest, were the charred remains of a village.

The village had once been home to a small indigenous community, made up of about 100 families from the Karen minority. They were farmers, living a simple life, in balance with their surroundings.

It was where Billy had grown up with his grandfather, Karen spiritual leader Ko-ee Mimee.

Their existence, in some ways, sounded idyllic. But the 352,000 Karen people who live in Thailand are seen as outsiders. The majority of the world’s five million Karen people live in neighbouring Myanmar.

But decades of persecution and a long-running civil war with the government in Myanmar have forced thousands of Karen civilians to cross the border, where the Thai authorities have labelled them a foreign threat, said to be associated with drug smuggling and militant insurgencies.

And that is apparently why locals say national park rangers turned up, evacuated the village and burnt everything to the ground weeks before the doomed helicopter flights.

The military helicopter is understood to have been on its way to the village to ensure it had been completely and utterly destroyed.

Park rangers arrived in May 2011, villagers say
Billy wasn’t there the night the park rangers arrived in 2011. He had married Muenoor and moved away to a village nearer her family.

But his grandfather, a spiritual leader and a well-respected member of the village, was at home, and allowed the rangers to stay the night in his hut.

“On that day, there were three helicopters flying above the village,” a Karen man, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the BBC.

“That first day there were 15 park rangers. They went into Billy’s grandfather’s house. They spoke to him and asked to stay for the night.”

Image copyright HANDOUT A hut begins to burn
Image caption The village was evacuated, and the rangers set light to the homes
Ko-ee Mimee had no idea what was about to happen.

“The park rangers didn’t say or do anything that felt threatening, except for the fact they came with guns. The following day, at 9am, the helicopters returned. The village chief told Billy’s grandfather to pack his clothes and walk with the park rangers to the helicopters,” the Karen man recalls.

Even when the villagers were told to get into the helicopters, there was no panicking: they still didn’t understand what was happening.

It was only as they rose up above the trees that the enormity of what was taking place finally became clear.

“As we took off I started to see smoke and I could hear the crackling of the wood from the fire,” the villager tells the BBC. “When the helicopter was high above the village I looked down and saw my whole house in flames.

“Everything inside Billy’s grandfather’s house was burned. All he had was one bag with his hat and a shirt inside. The rest of the villagers weren’t able to bring any of their possessions.

“Everything we had ever owned was burned down along with our homes.”

The farmer who fought back

Chaiwat Limlikidacsorn, then the national park chief, would later tell journalists the families were invaders, and that the village was used as a transit point for Karen drug smugglers coming over the border from Myanmar.

Under Thai law, he would argue, permanent structures could not be built inside protected national parks, and that year Chaiwat’s team of rangers were applying for Kaeng Krachan to become a Unesco World Heritage site.

Billy’s community denied the allegations. They said military maps dating from 1912 even showed their village had existed in the same location for at least a hundred years, and long before the forest became a national park in 1981.

“The way we lived and farmed was in harmony with the forest,” Abisit “Jawree” Charoensuk, a local Karen from the village, tells the BBC. “We Karens respect nature as our God. We worship a water God, a forest God and every living thing in the forest. Our farming technique is environmentally friendly. And we grow things we can consume all year round.

“We catch fish in the river, we catch small animals in the forest and we grow rotation crops. We grow rice to sell and the women weave clothes to sell.”

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But after the village was burned, when park authorities moved the community to the outskirts of Kaeng Krachan, things were very different.

“There is no rice for us to harvest because there is no land for us to grow rice on. The land they moved us onto is all rock,” Billy told journalists in 2011. “Since we cannot make a living, we don’t know how to survive. Some of us don’t have Thai citizenship so we can’t look for jobs in the city.

“Many are afraid if they leave the area they’ll be arrested by the police. We can’t make a living down here; we need to go back to where we were.”

The destruction of his village was a turning point for Billy, transforming the young farmer into a human rights activist. He and his grandfather got in contact with lawyers in the capital, Bangkok, some two and a half hours drive away.

A map showing the national park
But it was the helicopter crash which finally gave their plight the attention it needed.

Billy became more and more passionate about getting justice. He organised seminars about Karen community rights, and travelled the country explaining what had happened to his village. He spearheaded attempts to sue the park rangers for compensation.

“Billy acted as an assistant to the lawyer representing the villagers,” Muenoor explains. “He collected evidence for them, spoke to the villagers and found out what happened and what exactly they lost. He took his grandfather to the administrative court so he could sue the national park rangers who burned down their village.”

The disappearance

The last time Billy was seen alive, he was being arrested for taking wild honey out of the forest.

The arrest itself was not unusual: it is illegal to take anything from the forest, but most people pay a fine and are let go.

But Billy had more than just wild honey on him that day. He also had the evidence from the Karen villagers and his grandfather – the same documents he hoped to use in court to sue the park rangers.

When Muenoor tried to report her husband’s disappearance to local police, she says they dismissed her concerns. But she knew in her heart what had happened.

“I thought he was dead because if he was still alive or in hiding he would have found a way to contact me or his family because that’s what he was like – he was a smart guy. He would have found a way to contact me that first day he went missing.”

Billy had been, as the saying goes in Thailand, “carried away”. Human rights groups say thousands of activists have disappeared like this over the decades, although the United Nations puts the number at just 82. Many families are too afraid to go to the police to report their loved ones are missing.

Muenoor, however, was not scared. In the months and years that followed, with the help of lawyers in Bangkok, she launched repeated requests for a judicial investigation into Billy’s unlawful detention.

But time and time again they were rejected on the grounds of a lack of evidence – even though police couldn’t find any record of Billy’s release from custody.

Muenoor was forced to dedicate herself to finding out what happened to her husband
And although traces of human blood were found in a vehicle belonging to the park office, it wasn’t possible to verify if the blood belonged to Billy because the vehicle was cleaned before forensic experts could examine it.

But then again, without a body, there was not much anyone could do: no one has ever been brought to justice for making someone disappear, for carrying them away. In fact, the crime of enforced disappearance doesn’t exist in Thailand.

Muenoor’s fight for justice suffered a further blow when Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI), which looks into high profile cases like those involving government officials, said they wouldn’t be taking up Billy’s case.

Meanwhile, Chaiwat, the national park chief, was promoted and moved out of the area.

The oil drum and the reservoir

But then, in an unexpected development, the DSI, under pressure from international human rights groups, suddenly announced they would start investigating Billy’s disappearance in June 2018.

Less than a year later, Muenoor received a strange phone call: investigating officers asked her to go to the reservoir in Kaeng Krachan National Park. They told her to bring incense, the smoke of which Karen people believe connects this world to the next.

When she arrived, they asked Muenoor to pray next to the water.

“Billy, if you are here under the bridge, please reveal yourself or show me a sign so that I and everyone here trying to help can bring you justice and find evidence,” she prayed. “Then we can take your case to the next step to reveal the truth about what really happened.”

With the help of an underwater robot, a team of divers set about searching the reservoir.

Image copyright GETTY IMAGES A bridge going over a reservoir in the national park
Image caption Eventually, police brought her back to the park, and to a resevoir
What they found was a rusty, 200-litre oil drum. Inside were burnt fragments of bone. That in itself was unsurprising: oil drums have been used since World War Two to torture and burn alive those who defy the government. They have become symbolic of a culture of impunity.

A DNA test indicated it was Billy inside the drum.

Afterwards, officials sent Muenoor a picture of a skull fragment – burnt, cracked and shrunken after being exposed to heat as high as 300 degrees Celsius. Whoever did this, it seemed, had tried to conceal the crime.

“What kind of person could do something like this to another person?” Muenoor asks. “It’s not human. I was devastated that he had to go through something like that. Whoever did this never thought about Billy’s family or how this would affect us. If this had happened to the killer’s family, how would he have felt?”

The game changer

In November 2019, the DSI issued an arrest warrant. It was for Kaeng Krachan National Park’s former chief, Chaiwat Limlikidacsorn, and three other park rangers. They deny any wrongdoing.

The arrest came as a shock for many in Thailand. It is unusual for someone in a senior role working for the state to be arrested on such serious charges.

And Chaiwat has made his feelings clear.

“Ever since it happened, the DSI and the media have depicted me in a negative way,” Chaiwat has complained to reporters. “It’s ruined my simple life as a government official, along with my three junior colleagues. They’ve also destroyed my family.

“Instead of being an honest government official and protecting the forest I am forced to stand in front of all of you here today. I’ve devoted my entire life, strength and energy to help this nation.”

Chaiwat and the three park rangers are charged with six offences, including premeditated murder, unlawful detention and the concealment of Billy’s body.

Enforced disappearance is not one of them.

Even so, if Chaiwat and the other park rangers are found guilty of Billy’s murder, it will be the first time one of the so-called disappeared gets justice.

Muenoor and a photo of her family
Image caption Muenoor says it has turned her world upside down
People like prominent human rights lawyer Surapong Kongchantuk believe enough pressure will be generated to force the Thai government to pass an enforced disappearance law.

“Patterns have emerged in these disappearance cases,” Mr Surapong tells the BBC. “In most cases, people disappear in broad daylight. And a lot of people are around as witnesses. But the bodies are never found, so they can’t prosecute.

“If we can find justice for Billy, this will be a game changer for Thailand.”

But while Billy’s death may change Thai law, the reason he is said to have lost his life – the fight for his village – has not been won. Even though the Karen villagers won the case against the Department of National Parks and got compensation of 50,000 baht ($1,600; £1,200) for each family, they haven’t been allowed back.

And years of struggle have taken their toll on Muenoor as well. She admits it’s been hard for the whole family to lose Billy, especially the children.

“His case was on the news so much that one day they asked me how come the person who did this to our dad isn’t in jail? What did dad do to him? Why did he have to kill dad?” Muenoor says.

“It’s been difficult. I’ve had to stay strong. I have to take care of everything at home. I have to work to earn a living, and on top of that I’m still trying to get justice for Billy. When he was still here, he supported me.

“My life has turned upside down, from day into night.                                                   —-  

Human Rights

Myanmar Rohingya: Suu Kyi accused of ‘silence’ in genocide trial

The Gambia has denounced Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s “silence” over alleged atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

The Muslim-majority African country has accused Myanmar of genocide in a case at the UN’s top court.

Lawyers said Ms Suu Kyi had ignored widespread allegations of mass murder, rape and forced deportation.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has defended her country, calling the case “incomplete and incorrect”.

In her closing remarks at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday, she said the genocide case could “undermine reconciliation”.

What did The Gambia say?

Lawyers for The Gambia hit out at arguments from Ms Suu Kyi that a 2017 military crackdown in Rakhine state was a “clearance operation” targeting militants.

Thousands of Rohingya were killed and more than 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during the crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. There were widespread allegations of sexual violence and rape.

“Madame Agent, your silence says far more than your words,” lawyer Philippe Sands said, referring to Ms Suu Kyi’s position as Myanmar’s agent in the case.

“The word ‘rape’ did not once pass the lips of the agent,” he added.

“What is most striking is what Myanmar has not denied,” said another lawyer for The Gambia, Paul Reichler, according to AFP news agency.

The Gambia brought the case on behalf of dozens of other Muslim countries, calling on Myanmar to “stop this genocide of its own people”.

How has Suu Kyi responded to the allegations?

Ms Suu Kyi – once celebrated internationally as a champion of democracy – has been de facto leader of Myanmar since April 2016, before the alleged genocide began. She does not have control over the army, but has been accused by the UN investigator of “complicity” in the military clearances.

Myanmar has always insisted it was tackling an extremist threat in Rakhine, and Ms Suu Kyi has maintained that stance at the ICJ, describing the violence as an “internal armed conflict” triggered by Rohingya militant attacks on government security posts.

Media captionHow did this peace icon end up at a genocide trial?

Conceding that Myanmar’s military might have used disproportionate force at times, she told the court that if soldiers had committed war crimes they would be prosecuted.

In her closing remarks on Thursday, she said it was “important to avoid any reignition of the 2016-17 internal armed conflict”.

“I pray that the decision you make with the wisdom and vision of justice will help us to create unity out of diversity,” she told judges.

“Steps that generate suspicions, sow doubts or create resentments between communities who have just begin to build the fragile foundation of trust could undermine reconciliation.”

What has the reaction been?

Hasina Begum, a 22-year-old refugee who travelled from Bangladesh to be in the court for the trial, told the BBC that she wanted justice. She says 10 members of her family were killed by Myanmar’s military.

“We have come here with courage to say this: if your forces didn’t do these acts, why would we have left the country and why have our relatives disappeared?”

Hasina Begum speaks to the BBC

“We don’t like to see her face, we don’t support her. She is not supporting her people, she is supporting her military,” she said.

Supporters of Myanmar’s leader have gathered outside the court during the three-day trial, holding signs saying: “We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi.”

What is the background?

At the start of 2017, there were a million Rohingya in Myanmar, most living in Rakhine state.

But Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country, considers them illegal immigrants and denies them citizenship.

The Rohingya have long complained of persecution, and in 2017 the military – the Tatmadaw – launched a massive military operation in Rakhine.

According to The Gambia’s submission to the ICJ, the clearances were “intended to destroy the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part”, via mass murder, rape and setting fire to their buildings “often with inhabitants locked inside”.

A UN fact-finding mission which investigated the allegations found such compelling evidence that it said the Burmese army must be investigated for genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine.

In August, a report accused Myanmar soldiers of “routinely and systematically employing rape, gang rape and other violent and forced sexual acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people”.

In May, seven Myanmar soldiers jailed for killing 10 Rohingya men and boys were released early from prison. Myanmar says its military operations targeted Rohingya militants, and the military has previously cleared itself of wrongdoing.

What is the likely outcome of this case?

For now, The Gambia is just asking the court to impose “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya in Myanmar and elsewhere from further threats or violence. These will be legally binding.

To rule that Myanmar has committed genocide, the court will have to determine that the state acted “with intent to destroy in whole or in part” the Rohingya minority.

Media captionJonathan Head visits the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp, which is built on the site of two demolished Rohingya villages

Even then the ICJ has no way of enforcing the outcome – and neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor the generals would automatically be arrested and put on trial.

But a guilty ruling could lead to sanctions, and would cause significant reputational and economic damage to Myanmar.

What is the current situation for the Rohingya?

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar since the military operations began.

As of 30 September, there were 915,000 Rohingya refugees in camps in Bangladesh. Almost 80% arrived between August and December 2017, and in March this year, Bangladesh said it would accept no more.

In August, Bangladesh set up a voluntary return scheme – but not a single Rohingya person chose to go.

Bangladesh plans to relocate 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, a small island in the Bay of Bengal, but some 39 aid agencies and human rights groups have opposed the idea.

In September, the BBC’s Jonathan Head reported that police barracks, government buildings and refugee relocation camps had been built on the sites of former Rohingya villages in Myanmar.

Human Rights

Aung Suu Kyi to contest Rohingya genocide charges at the Hague

Radical Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu reading a TIME magazine article about himself.A column in “The Myanmar Times” asked readers to guess the author of a xenophobic comment: Donald Trump or Ashin Wirathu, the man known as “The Buddhist Bin Laden,” pictured above reading a “TIME” magazine article about himself. Photo by Lily and Maung Thin

YANGON,  (Reuters) — Aung San Suu Kyi will appear before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to contest a case filed by Gambia accusing Myanmar of genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority, her government said on Wednesday.

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel peace prize while under house arrest in 1991, when she was an opposition figure in Myanmar. The Nobel committee cited her work to “establish a democraic society in which the country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony,” according to its website.
After being freed, her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a historic majority in 2015, which brought in the country’s first civilian government in decades.
But critics say her reputation as democracy icon was sullied by her failure to speak out about mass killings and displacement of the Rohingya.
In 2017, she claimed during a phone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that a “huge iceberg of misinformation” about the Rohingya crisis was being distributed to benefit “terrorists.”
According to a readout of the call, she said her government was fighting to ensure “terrorism” didn’t spread over the whole of Rakhine state.

More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since a 2017 crackdown by Myanmar’s military, which U.N. investigators say was carried out with “genocidal intent.” Buddhist majority Myanmar denies accusations of genocide.

Gambia, a tiny, mainly Muslim West African state, lodged its lawsuit after winning the support of the 57-nation Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Only a state can file a case against another state at the ICJ.

“Myanmar has retained prominent international lawyers to contest the case submitted by Gambia,” the ministry for state counselor Suu Kyi’s office said in a Facebook post.

“The State Counselor, in her capacity as Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, will lead a team to the Hague, Netherlands, to defend the national interest of Myanmar at the ICJ,” it said, giving no further details.

Military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun told Reuters the decision was made after the army consulted with the government. “We, the military, will fully cooperate with the government and we will follow the instruction of the government,” he said.

A spokesman for Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, said she had decided to take on the case herself.

Rohingya refugees pray at a gathering mark the second anniversary of their exodus from Myanmar, at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, August 25, 2019. Suu Kyi had denied reports of mass killings and gang-rapes, dismissing them as ‘fake news.’ Rafiqur Rahman / Reuters

“They accused () Aung San Suu Kyi of failing to speak out about human rights violations,” spokesman Myo Nyunt said. “She decided to face the lawsuit by herself.”

Both Gambia and Myanmar are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, which not only prohibits states from committing genocide but also compels all signatory states to prevent and punish the crime of genocide.

The ICJ has said it will hold the first public hearings in the case on Dec. 10 to 12. The court has no means to enforce any of its rulings.

Suu Kyi, a longtime democracy activist who won the Nobel peace prize for her defiance of the military junta, swept to power in Myanmar after a landslide election win in 2015 that ushered in the country’s first fully civilian government in half a century.

But her reputation has been sullied by her response to the plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority living in the western Rakhine state.

While almost a million now live in squalor in Bangladeshi refugee camps, several hundred thousand remain inside Myanmar, confined to camps and villages in apartheid-like conditions.

She has publicly blamed the crisis on Rohingya “terrorists,” referring to militants who attacked security posts in August 2017, prompting the army crackdown, and has branded reports of atrocities, including gang-rapes and mass killings, as fake news.

“Aung San Suu Kyi has continued to deny the atrocities committed by the Myanmar government against the Rohingya,” said John Quinley, human rights specialist at Fortify Rights.

“Rohingya globally, including refugees in Bangladesh, support the case at the ICJ and want justice for their people.”

The ICJ, established in 1946, settles disputes between states, and individuals cannot sue or be sued there.

But Myanmar is facing a wave of international pressure from courts across the world, and other cases involve individual criminal responsibility.

Days after Gambia filed its case at the ICJ, Rohingya and Latin American human rights groups submitted a lawsuit in Argentina under “universal jurisdiction,” a legal premise that deems some crimes as so horrific that they can be tried anywhere in the world.

Suu Kyi was named in that lawsuit, which demands that top military and civilian leaders be sanctioned over the “existential threat” faced by the Rohingya minority.

Separately, the International Criminal Court has authorized a full investigation into crimes committed against the Rohingya in neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar does not recognize the ICC but Bangladesh accepts its jurisdiction.

Democracy icon

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel peace prize while under house arrest in 1991, when she was an opposition figure in Myanmar. The Nobel committee cited her work to “establish a democratic society in which the country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony,” according to its website.
After being freed, her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a historic majority in 2015, which brought in the country’s first civilian government in decades.
But critics say her reputation as democracy icon was sullied by her failure to speak out about mass killings and displacement of the Rohingya.
In 2017, she claimed during a phone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that a “huge iceberg of misinformation” about the Rohingya crisis was being distributed to benefit “terrorists.”
According to a readout of the call, she said her government was fighting to ensure “terrorism” didn’t spread over the whole of Rakhine state.

Myanmar’s Oppressed Muslims Face Ethnic Cleansing: Never Again?

Myanmar’s anti-Islam monks see an ally in Donald Trump

Radical Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu reading a TIME magazine article about himself.A column in “The Myanmar Times” asked readers to guess the author of a xenophobic comment: Donald Trump or Ashin Wirathu, the man known as “The Buddhist Bin Laden,” pictured above reading a “TIME” magazine article about himself. Photo by Lily and Maung Thin

On Sunday, The Daily Beast reported on an upsurge of support for presidential hopeful Donald Trump from an unlikely place: Buddhist temples in Burma. The infamous organization known as Ma Ba Tha, a group of Islamophobicsexistviolent monks, apparently likes Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.

A 34-year-old youth group leader affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, named Win Ko Ko Latt, said, “I like Donald Trump because he understands the danger posed by Muslims. It shows that our struggle is a global one and that Islam isn’t just a threat to Myanmar but to the entire world.”

Myanmar’s anti-Muslim movement is led by Ashin Wirathu, the famous monk who TIME Magazine dubbed “The Face of Buddhist Terror.” Last month, The Myanmar Times ran a column titled, “Who said it: Trump or Wirathu?” The column asked readers to guess who said “There are people that shouldn’t be in our country. They flow in like water.” (That’s from Trump.)

Trump’s growing popularity is a serious worry for the Rohingya people, members of Burma’s persecuted Muslim minority group. One man, whose village was torched by a Buddhist mob in 2012, told The Daily Beast, “[Trump] talks about Muslims the same way as some of our government officials. This is something that makes me nervous because the international community is our only hope.”

Excerpts:

Myanmar’s anti-Islam monks see an ally in Donald Trump

Radical Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu reading a TIME magazine article about himself.A column in “The Myanmar Times” asked readers to guess the author of a xenophobic comment: Donald Trump or Ashin Wirathu, the man known as “The Buddhist Bin Laden,” pictured above reading a “TIME” magazine article about himself. Photo by Lily and Maung Thin

On Sunday, The Daily Beast reported on an upsurge of support for presidential hopeful Donald Trump from an unlikely place: Buddhist temples in Burma. The infamous organization known as Ma Ba Tha, a group of Islamophobicsexistviolent monks, apparently likes Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.

A 34-year-old youth group leader affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, named Win Ko Ko Latt, said, “I like Donald Trump because he understands the danger posed by Muslims. It shows that our struggle is a global one and that Islam isn’t just a threat to Myanmar but to the entire world.”

Myanmar’s anti-Muslim movement is led by Ashin Wirathu, the famous monk who TIME Magazine dubbed “The Face of Buddhist Terror.” Last month, The Myanmar Times ran a column titled, “Who said it: Trump or Wirathu?” The column asked readers to guess who said “There are people that shouldn’t be in our country. They flow in like water.” (That’s from Trump.)

Trump’s growing popularity is a serious worry for the Rohingya people, members of Burma’s persecuted Muslim minority group. One man, whose village was torched by a Buddhist mob in 2012, told The Daily Beast, “[Trump] talks about Muslims the same way as some of our government officials. This is something that makes me nervous because the international community is our only hope.”

Human Rights

Myanmar denies using landmines along Bangladesh-Myanmar border areas

Myanmar has denied all allegations of using landmines along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border areas.

Myanmar’s Border Guard Police (BGP) made the claim during a regional commander-level meeting with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) at Regional Headquarters in Cox’s Bazar on Monday.

After the meeting, BGB Cox’s Bazar Region Commander Brig Gen Sajedul Rahman briefed journalists at a press conference held at The Central Resort in Teknaf at 6:30pm.

Brig Gen Sajedul led the BGB delegation while BGP 1 Brig Gen Ming Tu led a 14-member Myanmar delegation.

“They (BGP) said they did not implant any landmines or improvised explosive device (IED) in the common border areas with Bangladesh. However, they told us that they would inform their government about the matter once they go back to Myanmar,” the BGB commander said.

“The Myanmar delegation was asked to cooperate with Bangladesh to stop yaba pills from entering into Bangladesh and in reply the Myanmar delegation head assured full cooperation,” he added.

During the meeting, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed to keep the good relations between the two countries intact.

BGB Teknaf 2 Commander Lt Col Faisal Hasan Khan and BGB Cox’s Bazar 34 Commanding Officer Lt Col Ali Haider Azad Ahmed were present, among other senior officials from both sides.

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, or often simply the Mine Ban Treaty, aims at eliminating anti-personnel landmines around the world. Bangladesh ratified the treaty on May 7, 1998.

Till now, Myanmar remains a non-signatory state to the treaty. (Source: DT)

Human Rights

Bangladesh hands over list of 50,000 Rohingyas to Myanmar for verification

Bangladesh has handed over a new list of 50,506 Rohingyas, sheltered in different camps in Cox’s Bazar, to Myanmar for the verification in order to take them back to their homes in Rakhine.

Delwar Hossain, director general (South East Asia wing) of the foreign ministry, provided the list in a meeting with Myanmar ambassador to Bangladesh U Lwin Oo at the former’s office on Tuesday, according to sources concerned.

Earlier, Bangladesh has provided about 55,000 Rohingya names in three phases.

“You see there are 11 lakh (1.1 million) Rohingyas living in Cox’s Bazar. We did not give them a full list in the last year. So we are hurrying a bit in providing the list now,” foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told reporters at his office on Tuesday.

“There are also different rules in providing the lists like those based on families, so that it gets easy for them (Myanmar) to identify. They will accept them. So, we are giving them a new list,” he said.

“About 50,000…Earlier, it was 55,000. I cannot tell you the exact figure,” he added.

About a tripartite mechanism agreed between Bangladesh, Myanmar and China to expedite Rohingya repatriation, the foreign minister said, “The meeting will be held. The Chinese ambassador is physically ill.”

However, he said, “The process is ongoing.”

Mentioning his upcoming visit to Germany and France, Dr Momen said that he will raise the Rohingya issues in both the countries. (Dhaka Tribune)

Indigenous no-state people

UN mission accuses accountability for Myanmar ‘genocide’

ANI

A special U.N. fact-finding mission has urged that Myanmar be held responsible in international legal forums for alleged genocide against its Muslim Rohingya minority.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said in a report Monday wrapping up two years of documentation of human rights violations by security forces that counterinsurgency operations against Rohngya in 2017 included “genocidal acts.”

It said the operations killed thousands of people and caused more than 740,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

The mission said the threat of genocide continues for an estimated 600,000 Rohingya still inside Myanmar living in “deplorable” conditions and facing persecution. The situation makes the repatriation of Rohingya refugees impossible, it said.

“The threat of genocide continues for the remaining Rohingya,” mission head Marzuki Darusman said in a statement.

The report summarized and updated six others previously issued by the mission that detailed accounts of arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, enforced disappearances, forced displacement and unlawful destruction of property.

It is to be presented Tuesday in Geneva to the Human Rights Council, which established the mission in 2017.

Muslim Rohingya face heavy discrimination in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, where they are regarded as having illegally immigrated from Bangladesh, even though many families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Most are denied citizenship and basic civil rights.

The homes of many were destroyed during the counterinsurgency operation and there is little sign that refugees will not face the same discrimination if they return.

A plan to repatriate an initial group last month collapsed when no one wanted to be taken back.

The U.N. mission has focused on the Rohingya in Rakhine state but also covered actions by Myanmar’s military — known as the Tatmadaw — toward other minorities in Rakhine, Chin, Shan, Kachin and Karen states.

It said those groups also experienced “marginalization, discrimination and brutality” at the military’s hands.

“Shedding light on the grave human rights violations that occurred and still are occurring in Myanmar is very important but not sufficient,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer who was one of the mission’s three international experts.

“Accountability is important not only to victims but also to uphold the rule of law. It is also important to prevent repetition of the Tatmadaw’s past conduct and prevent future violations,” he said in a statement.

According to the mission, it has a confidential list of more than 100 people suspected of involvement in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, in addition to six generals whom it already named a year ago.

Citing the problem of military impunity under Myanmar’s justice system, the report called for accountability to be upheld by an international judicial process.

This could include having the U.N. Security Council refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, establishing an ad-hoc tribunal on Myanmar, such as was held for crimes in the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, or invoking the 1948 Genocide Convention — which Myanmar has ratified — to ask the International Court of Justice to rule on compensation and reparations for the Rohingya.

With its work concluded, the mission has handed over the information it collected to another specially established U.N. group, the new Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar.

The new group’s mandate is to “build on this evidence and conduct its own investigations to support prosecutions in national, regional and international courts of perpetrators of atrocities in Myanmar.”

Myanmar’s government and military have consistently denied violating human rights and said its operations in Rakhine were justified in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

Human Rights, International

Rohingyas trying to get refugee certificate from UN for staying in India

Rohingya Muslims, who have illegally entered India, are trying to obtain certificate of refugee status from United Nations. This has come to light on Tuesday when Railway police arrested five Rohingyas from Guwahati Railway Station here.

The GRP officials said the five arrested Rohingyas were trying to go to Delhi to obtain a certificate of refugee status from United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi.

Police officials said the Government Railway Police (GRP) staff arrested them from platform no. 1 of the railway station.

At first, GRP staff had apprehended two boys and a girl when they were not able to provide valid identity proofs. After interrogation, two boys were also arrested along with the other three persons.

As per reports, the arrested persons are originally from Myanmar and were trying to go to Delhi. The arrested persons have been identified as Makakmyayum Sahenas, MD Zubar, Mohammad Kamal Hussain, Nurul Hakim and Mohammad Kalimula.

They had earlier been arrested by the Manipur police in 2018.

The GRP sleuths found Myanmar made preserved fruit packets, sweets , white coffee and various kinds of edibles in their possession.

Mizoram police had recently arrested 12 suspected Rohingya refugees—eight women and four boys—for illegally entering the state from Bangladesh.

The suspected Rohingyas entered Mizoram from Bangladesh sans valid travel documents. They were found in the residence of a woman in Bawngkwan area of Mizoram.

They had claimed that her cousin, who lives at Tahan in Myanmar, had asked her for a favour for keeping the “guests” before being taken to the neighbouring country.

Earlier in April, eight Rohingya women were detained at Vairengte along India-Myanmar border for trying to enter Mizoram illegally and were pushed back.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017 after a military crackdown, triggering a massive refugee crisis. (Source: NE Now)