JRP 2020 stated that Rohingya response should be a real joint venture ensured by aid transparency and management that should be accountable
Demanding a single line authority for ensuring maximum benefit for the displaced Myanmar citizens (Rohingya refugees), a Cox’s Bazar based network has stated that proper planning will benefit the national and local economy at the same time.
The network, Cox’s Bazar CSO NGO Forum (CCNF), was presenting its response to the Joint Response Plan (JRP) 2020 at a press briefing in the city’s press club.
JRP 2020 stated that Rohingya response should be a real joint venture ensured by aid transparency and management that should be accountable.
The JRP in Rohingya response is being prepared by ISCG (Inter-Sectoral Coordination Group). The Rohingya response will formally be launched in Geneva in March. The plan envisages funds to the tune of around $887 million for 2020.
Tun Khin said he fled the Rakhine state in the 90s after being denied access to a university education simply because of his Rohingya identity. Since then, he has watched from afar how the Myanmar authorities persecuted his people with impunity.
The ICJ in The Hague on January 23 imposed the emergency “provisional measures” on Myanmar regarding its actions against and treatment of the Rohingya community in Rakhine state of the country.
The order may sound like incomprehensible legal jargon to any average person, but for many Rohingyas, it was probably one of the best news they ever received, after waiting for long to witness the international community take meaningful action to end their suffering, Tun Khin wrote.
The “World Court” of the United Nations, with this decision, effectively directed the Myanmar government, led by de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, to respect the requirements of the 1948 genocide convention and bring an end to its military crackdown on the Rohingyas.
This was the first time that a credible international body said “enough” to the Myanmar government that has abused and oppressed the Rohingyas for so many decades, he wrote.
The Rohingyas’ plight captured global attention in August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a vicious “clearance operation” in the Rakhine State, the then home to over a million Rohingya people. Soldiers went on a rampage through the region, killing thousands, committing mass rapes, burning down entire villages, and driving more than 700,000 people to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh.
The atrocity committed against the Rohingya people was outrageously violent, but that was only the tip of the iceberg, Tu Khin wrote.
Dozens of Rohingya Muslims, including two children, appeared in court in Myanmar, the latest group to face charges after attempting to flee conflict-torn Rakhine state throughout the week.
The group of about 20 were among 54 people from the Rohingya minority arrested on Wednesday on the outskirts of the commercial capital Yangon while trying to leave for Malaysia, according to judge Thida Aye.
“The immigration officer submitted the case because they found no identification cards from these people,” she said.
Some were barefoot, others clothed in colourful head-scarfs, as they were ushered into the small courtroom in Yangon. A small boy was naked from the waist down.
Defence lawyer Nay Myo Zar said they had fled Rakhine state, the western region where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions and have come under increasing pressure as government troops battle ethnic rebels.
More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape a military-led crackdown that U.N investigators have said was carried out with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rapes.
Myanmar says the army was fighting a legitimate counter-insurgency campaign against militants who attacked security posts.
Some 600,000 Rohingya remain in the country, confined to camps and villages where they are unable to travel freely or access healthcare and education. The vast majority lack citizenship.
The government says it is working on a national strategy to close camps and that Rohingya would not face movement restrictions if they accepted a so-called national verification card, which many reject, saying it labels them foreigners.
Rakhine state has for the past year been rocked by increasingly intense clashes between government troops and fighters from the Arakan Army, an insurgent group comprised of ethnic Rakhine, another mostly Buddhist minority.
Bangladesh announced on Sunday that it may drop previous plans to move 100,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island located in the Bay of Bengal in the country’s south.
“Our main target is to repatriate Rohingya to their original homeland, Myanmar’s Rakhine state,” Foreign Minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen on Sunday told reporters in the capital Dhaka following a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Li Jiming.
Lauding recent development projects on the islet of Bhasan Char and plans to turn it into a business hub and “new Bangladesh,” Momen said Bangladeshi citizens left homeless due to river erosion or other reasons should instead be settled there.
Bhasan Char, a remote islet where the Bangladesh announced in 2018 it would resettle 100,000 Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar, is measured 15,000 acres at low tide and 10,000 acres at high tide, according to the government sources.
The scheme had elicited concerns that the site was less than ideal. Dhaka since said it undertook projects to improve living conditions on the islet.
“We all are agree not to send Rohingya there. Now we place our recommendations to the government for final decision on alternative use of Bhasan Char project,” said Momen.
The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017, pushing the number of persecuted people in Bangladesh above 1.2 million.
Taslima was dreading the day. It was SweTinSit, an annual population census conducted by Myanmar government officials in northern Rakhine state. Military, police and customs officials would be sweeping through, collecting data on Rohingya families – monitoring the birth of children, photographing family members and listing their names. This was in 2016, when tensions in Rakhine were escalating.
For many Rohingya people, like Taslima and others in her village of Tula Toli, the SweTinSit (or “Map Record Check,” in Burmese) was a mandatory and intense audit, and always unpredictable. If one is absent during a SweTinSit, their relatives can be subject to extortion, imprisonment, arbitrary taxation, or worse. The year before, a relative of Taslima’s was raped by a military officer.
In the SweTinSit of 2016, Taslima’s brother-in-law had gone to work outside the village, to repay a debt. Fearing that he would be arrested for his brother’s absence, Taslima’s husband disappeared for the three days it took for the census to be completed in Tula Toli. Taslima paid a fine of 300,000 kyats (US $208) for her brother-in-law and a further fine of 200,000 kyats (US $138) for her husband.
Officers warned her that if her husband did not return while the census was still underway, there would be further consequences. In the early hours of the very next day, Taslima says that four men, including the village chairman Aung Ko Sein, entered her hut and raped her in front of her two young children.
Top official says the main target is to repatriate Rohingya to original homeland, in Rakhine state, Myanmar
Bangladesh announced on Sunday that it may drop previous plans to move 100,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island located in the Bay of Bengal in the country’s south.
“Our main target is to repatriate Rohingya to their original homeland, Myanmar’s Rakhine state,” Foreign Minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen on Sunday told reporters in the capital Dhaka following a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Li Jiming.
Lauding recent development projects on the islet of Bhasan Char and plans to turn it into a business hub and “new Bangladesh,” Momen said Bangladeshi citizens left homeless due to river erosion or other reasons should instead be settled there.
Bhasan Char, a remote islet where Bangladesh announced in 2018 it would resettle 100,000 Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar, is measured 15,000 acres at low tide and 10,000 acres at high tide, according to the government sources.
The scheme had elicited concerns that the site was less than ideal. Dhaka since said it undertook projects to improve living conditions on the islet.
“We all agree not to send Rohingya there. Now we place our recommendations to the government for a final decision on the alternative use of Bhasan Char project,” said Momen.
The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
Nearly 50 Rohingya Muslims have been detained at sea by Myanmar’s navy on Friday, local officials said on Sunday (Feb 15), the latest from the persecuted minority to be caught trying to flee camps in Bangladesh and Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state.
It was not immediately clear where the group started their boat journey but they were likely aiming for Malaysia or Indonesia, predominantly Muslim countries with large Rohingya diasporas.
Thousands of Rohingya have taken to the sea over the years in high-risk attempts to escape sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh and oppressive conditions in Rakhine.
Village administrator Myint Thein told AFP by phone the navy had picked up 48 Rohingya men, women and children, as well as five “traffickers”, at sea on Wednesday evening.
A reporter saw the group arrive Friday morning at Pathein township police station.
“We don’t know how authorities in Pathein town will proceed,” Myint Thein said.
Some 740,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine to Bangladesh to escape a brutal military crackdown in 2017 and now languish in sprawling refugee camps.
Hundreds of thousands more remain in Rakhine, living under tight restrictions with little access to healthcare, education or livelihoods in conditions that Amnesty International brands as “apartheid”.
The group detained at sea this week is just the latest in a series of arrests in recent months as seasonal calmer waters tempt more Rohingya to put their lives in the hands of traffickers.
On Tuesday, at least 15 Rohingya refugees drowned when an overloaded boat carrying mostly women and children sank as it tried to reach Malaysia from Bangladesh.
Local authorities have so far responded with various measures.
Dozens of sprawling informal education centers across refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar are providing a glimmer of hope for thousands of Rohingya refugee children who survived a massacre in their home country of Myanmar in 2017.
Across makeshift camps in the refugee city of Kutupalong, hundreds of informal learning centers have been set up by international agencies and Rohingya community leaders to give the refugee children access to education. The opportunity to learn and improve skills is something the youngsters were never offered back in Myanmar.
Sharmeen Noor, a mathematics teacher at Kutupalong Primary School, told VOA that their programs ensure the Rohingya children do not fall behind in their education despite the absence of formal schooling. The centers can also create a positive impact to help those traumatized by the Burmese army’s 2017 crackdown that forced nearly 700,000 ethnic Rohingya to flee from Rakhine state to Bangladesh.
“Those who have seen violence think about it all the time,” said Noor. “They pay very little attention in class. As teachers, we are working on this matter. We are trying our best to bring them into normal life. God willing we will do it.”
About 350 Rohingya children are currently enrolled at Kutupalong Primary School, which provides basic informal education from preprimary through fifth grade. The children are taught subjects such as general science, mathematical, English, Burmese, and Bengali.
Noor said many of their teaching activities focus on play-based learning to provide education and at the same time give the children a chance to forget the daily struggles they face in the overcrowded camps. Particular attention is given to children who are mentally challenged.
On 23 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued what amounted to a “cease and desist” order against Myanmar, ordering authorities there to end genocidal practices against the Rohingya. The ruling of the so-called “World Court” has brought hope that international justice will prevail after the horrors inflicted on women, men and children in Rakhine State by Myanmar’s security forces.
But while the court’s ruling was a landmark moment, there are still many lingering questions. What happens next? What effects will the ruling have on Myanmar’s domestic scene, where an election looms later this year? Will Myanmar comply with the order — and what happens if it does not?
The ICJ’s ruling meant that a global legal body for the first time officially recognized the real threat of abuse against the Rohingya, and ordered Myanmar to do what it can to protect them. The ICJ also called on Myanmar to prevent further breaches of the Genocide Convention, rein in abuses by its security forces and preserve evidence of past abuses.
It is important to note, however, that the ICJ’s provisional order is in no way a final ruling on whether genocide has taken place. Genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” The convention against genocide imposes a duty on states that are signatories to “prevent and to punish” genocide, thus the ability of the Gambia to bring the case to the ICJ.
The legal threshold for proving “genocidal intent” is notoriously high and a final decision will likely take years to reach, even if atrocity crimes against the Rohingya are already well-documented. One of the ICJ’s 15 judges, Xue Hanqin from China, has already issued an opinion questioning whether genocide took place as well as the Gambia’s right to even bring the case before the ICJ, an indication that this will be a drawn-out process with no easy answers.
While the decision is an important symbolic victory for the Rohingya, it remains to be seen how much effect the provisional measures will have in practice. The court has little power to actually enforce the order by itself. Like most international justice efforts, the ICJ’s effectiveness largely depends on the goodwill of states.
Many people do not know what it is like to be a refugee at night. The international humanitarian organizations have to leave the refugee camp at night in Bangladesh. The nighttime in the camps is different than in Rakhine state. Rohingya refugees try to sleep but most can’t sleep for fear of the future and a longing for justice.
However, nighttime is still a social time for Rohingya people. We sit together, and many of us talk about the days that have passed – about our shared suffering from the Myanmar military and our hope for justice.
There are now more than a million Rohingya refugees in the camps in Bangladesh. At night, shops keep their doors open. Rohingya people come and gather around the solar light the shops use to get customers. The solar lights reflect beautifully off the betel-nut and sweet drinks being sold.
Refugees don’t watch clocks or see the time. The days turn into nights. My Rohingya people watch the sun turn into the moon to tell the time – day after day.
I am a Rohingya from Buthidaung Township, in Rakhine state, Myanmar. I fled with other Rohingya after waves of violence from the Myanmar military in August 2017 that killed many people. Since fleeing to the refugee camps I have been training myself in photography through watching YouTube videos on my phone. And through other famous accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
I started taking photos on my phone and later started using a real camera. Now in Bangladesh, we Rohingya have started to find some safety. We have become artists including poets, musicians, and photographers. I have become a photographer and I am using my skills to bring light to my people.
