Malaysia coast guard vows to turn back migrant boats - The Malaysian Insider

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Malaysia will turn away boats bearing desperate migrants from #Myanmar and #Bangladesh unless they are in imminent danger of sinking, says a top coast guard official. #Rohingya "The policy has always been to escort them out of Malaysian waters after giving them the necessary provisions," First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency told AFP today on the resort island of Langkawi. http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-coast-guard-vows-to-turn-back-migrant-boats
(Auto-Posted-Link via IFTTT from Justice In Malaysia fbpage on May 13, 2015 at 11:54AM.)

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Penindasan Rohingya: Data dan fakta penting / FACTBOX - Facts and figures about Myanmar's Rohingya

A link shared at J.I.M Facebook Page on August 18, 2014 at 09:51AM via IFTTT:

http://www.projekdialog.com/featured/penindasan-rohingya-data-dan-fakta-penting/

SIIWE, Myanmar (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Dalam tempoh dua tahun kebelakangan ini, pemerhatian dunia telah terfokus pada isu Muslim Rohingya di barat Myanmar. Mereka adalah golongan minoriti yang dikatakan oleh Pertubuhan Bangsa-bangsa Bersatu (PBB) sebagai terasing daripada etnik dan komuniti berlainan agama dan bahasa di Myanmar.
Di sini adalah sedikit fakta mengenai mereka.

Siapakah orang Rohingya?

* Mereka adalah golongan Muslim minoriti yang hidup di Myanmar (dahulunya Burma) yang mana majoriti penganutnya beragama Buddha. Kebanyakan Rohin berada di kawasan barat Rakhine dan bilangan mereka, menurut Kementerian Imigrasi adalah seramai 1.33 juta orang.

* Rohingya mendakwa mempunyai susur galur keturunan selama berabad lamanya di Rakhine. Walaubagaimanapun, Undang-undang Kerakyatan 1982, yang dikuatkuasakan oleh kerajaan tentera dahulu telah mengecualikan mereka daripada senarai lebih 100 kumpulan yang diiktiraf sebagai etnik minoriti. Pengecualian ini menyebabkan kebanyakan daripada mereka tidak mempunyai kerakyatan. Sejak itu, mereka tidak mendapat Kad Pengenalan, yang diperlukan untuk pelbagai urusan daripada persekolahan, perkahwinan, pekerjaan sehinggalah kepada sijil kematian.

* Majoriti daripada mereka berada di utara daerah Rakhine (NRS – Northern Rakhine State) yang terdiri daripada 3 bandar utama – Buthidaung, Rathedaung dan Maungdaw – dan bersempadan dengan Bangladesh. Rohingya merupakan 91peratus daripada jumlah penduduk NRS yang dianggarkan leih kurang 1 juta penduduk. Ia juga merupakan salah satu kawasan yang paling terpencil, miskin, dan padat di negara itu. Akses media dan bantuan ke NRS amatlah dihadkan.

Bagaimanakah kehidupan mereka?

* Rohingya di NRS mengalami pelbagai halangan. Mereka tidak dibenarkan berhijrah, berkahwin atau mencari rawatan tanpa kebenaran rasmi, yang sangatlah mahal dan tidak terjamin. Kumpulan-kumpulan pembela hak asasi mengatakan  Rohingya turut menghadapi dakwaan, pemerkosaan, dipaksa menjadi buruh, rampasan harta dan diberi akses yang terhad terhadap perkhidmatan awam.

* NRS terduduk di bawah standard bagi negara yang mempunyai markah rendah dalam kebanyakan kajian sosio-ekonomi. PBB mengatakan, kematian kaum ibu adalah sebanyak 380 kematian per 100,000 kelahiran hidup di Maungdaw – yang berganda daripada jumlah kematian di 200 negara dalam kajian UNICEF. Kematian bawah 5 tahun adalah sebanyak 135 orang per 1000 kanak-kanak di Maungdaw berbanding bilangan bagi negara sebanyak 77 orang.

* Tinjauan telah menunjukkan bahawa kes-kes kurang zat makanan di NRS secara berterusan sebanyak 15 peratus lebih tinggi daripada garis maximum yang diletakkan oleh World Health Organization (WHO). Pada tahun 2008, masalah kurang zat makanan adalah sebanyak 22.7% di bandar Buthidaung dan 20.2 % pada tahun 2009. Analisa pada tahun 2011 menunjukkan 45 % tidak mempunyai akses makanan yang meyakinkan.

Mengapakah mereka sering dipapar kaca berita kebelakangan ini?
* Dua peristiwa keganasan masyarakat pada tahun 2012 telah membunuh sekurang-kurangnya 192 orang dan membuatkan sejumlah 146,000 orang hilang tempat tinggal. Kebanyakannya adalah Rohingya. Ada puluhan ribu yang berada di kem-kem penempatan sementara di luar Sittwe ibukota Rakhine.

* Seramai 86,000 orang meninggalkan Rakhine menggunakan bot antara Jun 2012 hingga April 2014 untuk memulakan hidup baru, dan pejuang hak asasi mengatakan jumlah ini akan semakin meningkat.

* Mereka yang tidak boleh meninggalkan terpaksa bergantung pada bantuan daripada pelbagai agensi dari segi keperluan seharian, menyebabkan datangnya tuduhan daripada nasionalis Buddha di Rakhine dan juga Myanmar, mengatakan ianya tidak adil.

* Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (MSF-H) dan Malteser International, dua organisasi yang telah memberikan bantuan kesihatan yang besar di NRS dan di kem pelarian, telah dihalau daripada Rakhine pada Febuari dan Mac, setelah adanya kempen menentang mereka daripada golongan pelampau beragama Buddha. Pada 24 Julai, kerajaan Myanmar mengumumkan bahawa badan-badan tersebut dibenarkan untuk kembali untuk memberi bantuan, tetapi keadaan keselamatan mereka tidak terjamin.

* Walaupun kesusahan yang mereka hadapi, masih tidak banyak simpati yang berjaya diraih untuk golongan Rohingya di Myanmar. Sentimen anti-Rohingya tersebar luas, dan pihak berkuasa memanggil mereka ‘Bengalis’, untuk menyamakan mereka dengan pendatang asing daripada Bangladesh. Gerakan demokrasi di Myanmar, termasukalah penerima anugerah Nobel Aung San Suu Kyi, masih tidak menyatakan pendirian yang berpihak pada Rohinya.

Sumber : World Food Organization, UNHCR, UNOCHA, Fortify Rights, Human Right Watch, The Arakan Project, The European Comission.

Penterjemahan tidak rasmi “FACTBOX – Facts and figures about Myanmar’s Rohingya.” Diterjemah oleh Noor Amalina Rosli.

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English Version: http://www.trust.org/item/20140725075214-vrpmu/

SITTWE, Myanmar (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Over the past two years, the global spotlight has shone on the plight of stateless Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar. They are a minority group described by the United Nations as “virtually friendless” amongst Myanmar’s other ethnic, linguistic and religious communities.

Here are some facts about them.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar (formerly Burma), concentrated in the western state of Rakhine. There are about 1.33 million Rohingya in Myanmar, according to the Immigration Ministry.

Rohingya activists claim a centuries-old lineage in Rakhine, but the 1982 Citizenship Law, enacted by Myanmar’s former military government, excluded them from a list of more than 100 groups recognised as ethnic minorities. This exclusion rendered most of them stateless. Since then, most Rohingya have been denied identification cards, which are required for everything from schooling and marriage to finding a job or getting a death certificate.

The majority are in northern Rakhine state (NRS) which encompasses three townships - Buthidaung, Rathedaung and Maungdaw - and abuts the border with Bangladesh. Rohingya make up 91 percent of the estimated 1 million people living in NRS, which is one of the most remote, poorest, and most densely populated areas of the country. Media and aid agency access to NRS is tightly restricted.

What are their lives like?

Rohingya in NRS face many restrictions. They cannot travel, get married or seek medical treatment without official permission, which is costly and difficult to secure. Rights groups say the Rohingya also face persecution, rape, forced labour, extortion, land confiscation and limited access to public services.

NRS ranks below national averages on most socio-economic indicators in a country that already scores poorly on most such measures. According to the U.N., maternal mortality stands at 380 deaths per 100,000 live births in Maungdaw – which is double UNICEF's figure of 200 countrywide. Under-5 mortality is 135 per 1,000 children in Maungdaw, compared to a national average of 77.

Surveys show the prevalence of acute malnutrition in NRS is continuously above the 15 percent emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization. In 2008, acute malnutrition was 22.7 percent in Buthidaung township, and 20.2 percent in 2009. A 2011 assessment found that 45 percent of households do not have reliable access to food.

Why have they been in the news in recent years?

Two bouts of communal violence in 2012 killed at least 192 people and uprooted some 146,000 people from their homes. Most of the displaced were Rohingya. There are tens of thousands of Rohingya in displacement camps outside of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine.

Some 86,000 people left Rakhine by boat between June 2012 and April 2014 to start new lives, and rights group say the exodus will continue.

Those who cannot leave rely on aid agencies for basic needs, giving rise to accusations of bias by Buddhist nationalists in Rakhine and across Myanmar.

Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (MSF-H) and Malteser International, two organisations that had provided the bulk of healthcare in both NRS and in the camps, were expelled from Rakhine in February and March respectively, following a campaign against them by Buddhist radicals. On July 24, the Myanmar government announced the groups could go back to Rakhine, but the conditions of their return are uncertain.
Despite the hardships they face, there is little sympathy towards the Rohingya in Myanmar. Anti-Rohingya sentiment is widespread, and the authorities call them “Bengalis”, to signify they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Even those in Myanmar’s democracy movement, including Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have not spoken out on Rohingya’s behalf.

Sources: World Food Organization, UNHCR, UNOCHA, Fortify Rights, Human Rights Watch, The Arakan Project, The European Commission.

(Editing by Alisa Tang: alisa.tang@thomsonreuters.com)

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Rohingya children in Myanmar camps going hungry - The Boston Globe

A link shared at J.I.M Facebook Page on August 09, 2014 at 07:25PM via IFTTT:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/08/09/rohingya-children-myanmar-camps-going-hungry/BYkcx7Ph1Ku98lBwNDSZ7O/story.html

OHN TAW GYI CAMP, Myanmar — Born just over a year ago, Dosmeda Bibi has spent her entire short life confined to a camp for one of the world’s most persecuted religious minorities. And like a growing number of other Muslim Rohingya children who are going hungry, she’s showing the first signs of severe malnutrition.

Her stomach is bloated and her skin clings tightly to the bones of her tiny arms and legs. While others her age are sitting or standing, the baby girl cannot flip from her back to her stomach without a gentle nudge from her mom.

‘‘I’m scared she won’t live much longer,’’ whispers Hameda Begum as she gazes into her daughter’s dark, sunken eyes. ‘‘We barely have any food. On some days I can only scrape together a few bites of rice for her to eat.’’

Myanmar’s child malnutrition rate was already among the region’s highest, but it’s an increasingly familiar sight in the country’s westernmost state of Rakhine, which is home to almost all of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims.

More than 140,000 have been trapped in crowded, dirty camps since extremist Buddhist mobs began chasing them from their homes two years ago, killing up to 280 people. The others are stuck in villages isolated by systematic discrimination, with restrictions on their movement and limited access to food, clean water, education, and health care.

Even before the violence, the European Community Humanitarian Office reported parts of the country’s second-poorest state had acute malnutrition rates hitting 23 percent — far beyond the 15 percent emergency level set by the World Health Organization.

With seasonal rains now beating down on the plastic tents and bamboo shacks inside Rohingya camps, the situation has become even more miserable and dangerous for kids like Dosmeda.

Naked boys and girls run barefoot on the muddy, narrow pathways, or play in pools of raw sewage, exposing them to potential waterborne diseases that kill. Some have black hair tinged with patches of red or blond, a tell-tale sign of nutrient deficiency commonly seen in places experiencing famine.

After a 10-day visit to the area last month, Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, summed up what she saw.

‘‘The situation is deplorable,’’ she said.

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation, only recently emerged from a half-century of repressive military rule and self-imposed isolation. Despite occasional expressions of concern, the United States, Britain, and others in the international community have largely stood by as conditions for the Rohingya deteriorated.

Some ambassadors and donor countries say privately that coming down too hard on the new, nominally civilian government will undermine efforts to implement sweeping reforms and note there has already been a dramatic backslide. Others don’t want to jeopardize much-needed multibillion dollar development projects in the country.

But their hesitancy to act has emboldened Buddhist extremists, now dictating the terms of aid distribution in Rakhine.

The government claims ethnic Rohingya are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though many of their families arrived generations ago.

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