Rohingya Myanmar Burma Israel/Saudi Aung San Su Kyi genocide

[xmasdale]

The Burmah Campaign UK has sent us this:


Dear Friend

The true scale of the horrific crackdown on peaceful protestors in Burma
is
not yet known. Thousands have been arrested, and hundreds killed. We
have
received reports of crematoriums working through the night on the
outskirts
of Rangoon.

The first priority for the Burma Campaign UK was to make sure that the
world
knew what was happening in Burma. The question now is, how will the
world
respond?

10,000 people marched through the streets of London on Saturday, and 200
protests took place in 30 countries around the world. Visit
<http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/demonstrations.html>
and
<http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=24957770200&amp;view=all >
to see pictures.

And the pressure is working. We are pleased to be able to tell you that
the
British government is now using its considerable diplomatic resources to
push for international action on Burma. The government is backing many
of
the steps we have been campaigning on for so long, such as action by the
United Nations Security Council, targeted economic sanctions by the
European
Union, and the personal engagement of the Prime Minister and Foreign
Secretary. You can view our media release at:
<http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P296>

BUT WE ARE NOT THERE YET! The United Nations Security Council has still
not
agreed on a statement condemning the brutal crackdown, and the European
Union has yet to agree on targeted economic sanctions. Now is a
critical
time, please spare a couple of minutes to take these urgent actions.

TAKE ACTION
The Burma Campaign UK and MTV have joined forces again to call for
action by
the United Nations Security Council. Visit
<http://www.mtvburmaaction.com>
to email the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the permanent members
of
the United Nations Security Council.

TAKE ACTION
Email European Union governments calling on them to agree targeted
economic
sanctions that will ensure European companies no longer help pay for the
guns and the bullets used against peaceful protesters in Burma. Visit:
<http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/eu_sanctions.html>


Thank you for your support.

Anna Roberts
The Burma Campaign UK


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The Burma Campaign UK
Registered Company No. 3804730
Registered office address
28 Charles Square
London N1 6HT

[Mark Gobell]

It seems that the 12 foot tidal wave that has NOT been reported as a tsunami, in preference to "Cyclone Nargis", which hit the Union of Myanmar, aka Burma, has now claimed 22,000 lives.

Last night's news stated 10,000 victims.

Today it is reported that 41,000 are still missing.

These must be estimates.

The "weather" hit Myanmar on Saturday3rd May 2008

It is now Monday 6th May 2008.

The figures can only be estimates.

I heard Bush on the radio tonight, demanding that the "Burmese junta allow our disaster assessment teams into the country" and that "the US is ready to use its navy to help find the missing, to help stabilise the situation".

BBC

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

[paul wright]

You're saying Mark, that this is bleedin' weather wars?
I'd say it's bleedin' obvious

[Mark Gobell]

Well, there are, more, natural interpretations I guess. . .

Like maybe , natural phenomena do, actually, frequently coincide with US foreign policy . . .

3 days earlier on 30th April 2008, Bush signed Executive Order (WTF are they?) 13464- Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain Transactions Related to Burma [PDF]

His third, in a series of 4, started by Clinton in 1997.

[Leiff]

Perhaps Aung San Suu Kyi should use her Congressional Gold Medal acceptance speech to call for weather weapons to be banned.

[Mark Gobell]

Military aid 'an option' in Burma

Military action on humanitarian grounds is an option to get more aid to Burma's cyclone survivors, Britain's foreign secretary has told the BBC.

David Miliband said the "responsibility to protect" UN doctrine, drawn up to apply in cases like genocide, could apply to natural disasters.

BBC

[conspiracy analyst]

May 13, 2008

CERN ‘Nailed Heart Of Earth’ With China Quake, Chilean Volcano

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)

The team of Russian Physicists who assisted in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), located in Switzerland, are reporting today that an experiment being conducted during the colliders ‘cool down’ phase has resulted in what they are calling an ‘antiquark spree’ that has, literally, “Nailed the heart of Earth”.

Working in conjunction with Chile’s National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT), these reports continue, CERN scientists, while attempting to establish a quark based means of near speed-of-light communications with other Western scientific and military installations, ‘lost control’ of this experiment on the South American ‘anchor’ triggering an ‘unexpected’ stream of antiquark’s which first ignited a massive volcanic eruption in Chile, and in a ‘straight shot’ through the entire planet has further triggered a catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China.

Chile’s Chaiten volcano [pictured 3 photo on left] began its massive eruption nearly a week and half ago, and nearly two weeks to the date when Russian Scientists blamed CERN for destabilizing Earth’s orbit causing the returning capsule from the International Space Station to veer dramatically off course from its intended landing zone, and as we had previously reported on in our April 20th report, "CERN Experiment Said To Have Destabilize Earth Orbit".

So disastrous has Chile’s Chaiten volcano become that scientists are warning that ‘long-term environmental damage’ is being done to large portions of South America, and where the volcanic plume is covering large portions of the South American continent.

In central China, and which is the antipode (exact opposite) to Chile’s Chaiten volcano, the effects of the massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake in their country can only be described in the most catastrophic terms as the death toll is now over 8,500, with a further 900 students trapped in the rumble of their schools.

These reports further state that the past few days’ eruptions of Kamchatka's Karymsky volcano, and Italy’s Mount Etna volcano are further linked to these CERN experiments gone tragically wrong.

The direst warning of these reports, however, is the summation that states that these catastrophic events due to CERN’s experiments may not be finished as calculations of these antiquark’s paths through our Earth show an increased likelihood of catastrophic tectonic plate changes to both Central and North America.

This is especially worrisome, these reports continue, due to the North American ‘anchor’ to CERN’s quark based communication system, based at their highly secretive base named Area 51 in Nevada, causing over 5,000 earthquakes in that region in recent weeks.

To whatever the outcome of these latest CERN experiments will lead our World, it remains to be seen if these scientists can really play God without having the full instruction manual available to them.

[Justin]

The United Nations is designed not to succeed properly when it comes to responding in a timely and effective way to humanitarian emergencies, especially when it comes to helping and saving 'useless eaters'.

I've just sent this email to the World Food Programme, reminding them that they have the perfect delivery system to feed the survivors in Burma. I'm not holding my breath!

http://www.wfp.org/english/?searchsource=google&n=1001&fullTextSearch= snowdrop

"In East Timor, WFP introduced the “snowdrop” technique, a new approach to delivering

emergency food by air developed in conjunction with a South African aircraft operator,

SAFAIR. Small food sachets, which are dropped from an aircraft, descend slowly to the

ground. The new technique allows WFP to deliver emergency food, as an interim measure,

to the displaced—usually moving populations—until they are settled in identified, less

insecure locations, where normal methods can be used."


Dear Friends,

Back in the late 1990s, I was involved in testing and promoting this unique and safe Air Delivery System for Food Aid. In fact, I had one of these double sachets land on my head during a test drop on the Island of Texel in the Netherlands.

It would seem to me that this would be the ideal way of getting food aid to the Burmese, especially if the Burmese Government continue to be reluctant to allow outside agencies to deliver food aid direct to the desperate survivors of the cyclone. The sachets can float until retrieved and tens of thousands can be fed from one C-130 drop.

Have you any plans to use this safe, innovative system?

All best wishes

Justin Walker

[conspiracy analyst]

Weather modification weapons and nuclear experiments are probably causing these 'natural' disasters.

All else is about getting hold of the oil of Burma.

Its no coincidence it used to be a British colony like Iraq....

[TonyGosling]

[conspiracy analyst]

Tonight Nick Cohen and Simon Jenkins both armchair warriors have been calling for intervention in Burma for the sake of the ...people.

I experienced some of the summer fires in Greece first hand and observed fires appearing hundreds of metres apart despite the presence of waterplanes and fireengines. Whilst half the area was put out another area suddenly flared up. It cant happen unless they were engineered, which is what they were.

Climate change is a new business to impose a whole raft of measures or to fight countries which one is in dispute in.

Burma was attacked whether China was is difficult to tell from a distance. They may have been underground nuclear testing and something went haywire. After all the earthquake we experienced looks dodgy dont it?

From MIT in the USA
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20463/?a=f

Weather Engineering in China

How the Chinese plan to modify the weather in Beijing during the
Olympics, using supercomputers and artillery.

By Mark Williams

Rainmakers: Inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, senior
officials of China's National Development and Reform Commission and
its State Environmental Protection Administration meet the press to
discuss issues of environment, resources, energy, and emission control
(top). Below, one member of China's army of part-time rainmakers mans
an anti-aircraft gun to show the international media how he will shoot
silver iodide into passing clouds.
Credit: Xinhua

To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium that
Beijing natives have nicknamed the Bird's Nest, the city's branch of
the national Weather Modification Office--itself a department of the
larger China Meteorological Administration--has prepared a three-stage
program for the 2008 Olympics this August.

First, Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's
weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer,
purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating
point operations per second. It models an area of 44,000 square
kilometers (17,000 square miles) accurately enough to generate hourly
forecasts for each kilometer.

Then, using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and
rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the city's weather engineers will
shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that
are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before
they reach the stadium.

Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near the Bird's Nest will be
seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain won't fall until
those clouds have passed over. Zhang Qian, head of Beijing's Weather
Modification Office, explains, "We use a coolant made from liquid
nitrogen to increase the number of droplets while decreasing their
average size. As a result, the smaller droplets are less likely to
fall, and precipitation can be reduced." August is part of Northeast
Asia's rainy season; chances of precipitation over Beijing on any day
that month will approach 50 percent. Still, while tests with clouds
bearing heavy rain loads haven't always been successful, Qian claims
that "the results with light rain have been satisfactory."

Modifying the weather may seem a hubristic exercise. But arguably,
given what else the Chinese have already invested to make this year's
Olympics a showcase for China's emergence as a 21st-century
superpower, it's almost the least they could do. Following the
announcement in 2001 that the 2008 Games had been awarded to Beijing,
the government of the People's Republic initiated $40 billion of new
construction there, bringing 120,000 Chinese migrant workers into the
city (at about $130 each a month) and triggering a five-year steel
shortage worldwide. Today, Beijing boasts, alongside the vast Bird's
Nest, megastructures like a new airport terminal that on its own is
bigger than any airport elsewhere in the world. One measure of the
city's transformation is that today 300 or so new towers, some
designed by the most avant-garde architects on the planet, rise where
a few short years ago there were only siheyuans (traditional Chinese
courtyard residences) interspersed with bland 1950s-era boxes in the
Sino-Soviet style.

Equally, though, the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and
Evictions estimates that 1.5 million of Beijing's natives will have
been displaced from their homes by government edict when the Olympics
finally begins. This preemptory modernization is of a piece with
China's scale, its 1.32 billion population, and the authoritarian
control exerted by its Communist central government, which nowadays is
dominated by technocrats and engineers who favor mega-projects like
the world's largest dam (the Three Gorges dam over the Yangtze River),
its highest railway (the Qinghai-Tibet line), and even its biggest
Ferris wheel (in Beijing, opening in 2009). Unsurprisingly, therefore,
China's national weather-engineering program is also the world's
largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals
directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time
workers--mostly peasant farmers--who are on call to blast away at
clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.



The Chinese began experimental weather engineering in 1958 to irrigate the country's north, where average yearly rainfall compares with that during the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and sudden windstorms blasting down from the Gobi desert have made drought and famine constant possibilities. Today, the People's Republic budgets $60 to $90 million annually for its national Weather Modification Office. As for the return on this investment, the state-run news agency Xinhua claims that between 1999 and 2007, the office rendered 470,000 square kilometers of land hail-free and created more than 250 billion tons of rain--an amount sufficient to fill the Yellow River, China's second largest, four times over. Furthermore, while Qian's weather engineers in Beijing have been testing their capabilities for the past two years, the Chinese say that during the past five years, similar efforts have already helped produce good weather at national events like the World Expo in Yunnan, the Asian Games in Shanghai, and the Giant Panda Festival in Sichuan.

Although they possess the world's largest weather modification program, the Chinese point to the Russians as being the most advanced. In 1986, Russian scientists deployed cloud-seeding measures to prevent radioactive rain from Chernobyl from reaching Moscow, and in 2000 they cleared clouds before an anniversary ceremony commemorating the end of World War II; China's then president, Jiang Zemin, witnessed the results firsthand and pushed to adopt the same approach back home. As for the historical credit for starting the whole weather-engineering ball rolling back in 1946, that belongs to employees of General Electric in Schenectady, NY--most notably, scientist Bernard Vonnegut (brother of the late novelist Kurt), who worked out silver iodide's potential to provide crystals around which cloud moisture would condense. During the 1960s and '70s, the United States invested millions of federal dollars in experiments like Stormfury (aimed at hurricane control), Skywater (aimed at snow- and rainfall increase), and Skyfire (aimed at lightning suppression). Simultaneously, the U.S. military tried to use weather modification as a weapon in Project Popeye, during the Vietnam War, by rain-making over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in an effort to close it.

Nevertheless, because weather is the epitome of a complex, emergent system, no analytical models or methodologies existed that produced data conclusively, proving that weather modification worked. In the United States, research funding died down and commercial weather modification efforts became hemmed in by stringent regulation. A 2003 report from the National Academy of Sciences concluded that despite more than 30 years of efforts, "there is still no convincing scientific proof of the efficacy of intentional weather modification efforts."

Still, according to William Cotton, a meteorologist at Colorado State University, "as far as the science of weather modification is concerned, the evidence that it works in certain situations is very compelling." The Chinese are certainly in no doubt: once they have demonstrated their capabilities to the rest of the world at the Olympics later this year, the party's central planners intend to expand their national weather modification program in 2010, turning the Weather Modification Office into a separate government ministry that will double the amount of rain-making and other weather engineering that China is now doing.

[marky 54]

[Mark Gobell]

I saw the "pictures" from the BBC, showing palm trees bending in the storm that we have been told was Cyclone Nargis, and I thought, that looks familiar.

I then discounted my reaction. I'm not a picture library and could not provide any evidence, even to myself, that the swaying palm trees, I might have seen before . . .

[Mark Gobell]

[outsider]

They only need a handful of more signers to make their 10,000 target:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/387386597?z00m=19783367

[Disco_Destroyer]

Stop Believing in Authority and Start Believing in Each Other
Like This Page · 13 hours ago

PLEASE SPREAD THIS! SHARE IT! MAKE IT VIRAL! THIS NEEDS TO BE SHOWN TO EVERYONE! YOU WILL NOT SEE THIS ON MAINSTREAM TV!!!

"If you get all your news from the mainstream media you will be forgiven for not knowing that right now thousands of people – men, women, children – are being slaughtered in Burma. This is no hyperbole. Over the last 24 hours the violence has escalated dramatically and on Twitter photos and videos of the massacres have been relayed. We are seeing genocide."

http://www.genocidewatch.org/myanmar.html


http://darkernet.in/genocide-of-rohingya-happening-right-now-no-bs/

http://priceofoil.org/2013/03/18/is-oil-one-reason-for-burmese-genocid e/

[TonyGosling]

The Halo has slipped
Aung San Suu Kyi: complicity with tyranny
Guy Horton - 31st October 2013
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2140042/aung_san_suu_ky i_complicity_with_tyranny.html

Aung San Suu Kyi is the international face of Burma and a global icon of courage, endurance and moral authority. But as Guy Horton reports from Burma, she is now actively colluding with the Burmese military's violent campaigns against minority ethnic and religious groups.

The sound of the Secretary General of the United Nations welcoming a ceasefire on the radio was punctuated by the sound of heavy mortar shells. There was nowhere to run.
One morning in January this year I stood near the front line between the Kachin Independence and Burma armies. The former was defending some of the last remnants of its territory. The latter was inflicting a massive attack consisting of tens of thousands of troops, supported by helicopter gunships and jet fighter bombers under the direction of the Supreme Command.

It was a systematic onslaught. The sound of the Secretary General of the United Nations welcoming a ceasefire on the radio was punctuated by the sound of heavy mortar shells. There was nowhere to run. The Chinese border, a row of bamboos 400 yards away, was closed.

Two young boys behind me were preparing to defend their home made bunker with toy Kalishnikovs. On the wall sat an eight year old boy whose mother had been shot dead in her kitchen while he watched from the edge of a sugar cane field. He looked as though his eyes had been blown out. An old man wept uncontrollably after describing his daughter being bayoneted to death in front of him.

The people doing this were the Burmese army. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi actively disregards all this and refuses to visit Kachin State. It does not fit the narrative: democratic transition and the fairy tale democracy princess miraculously released from bondage.

I am not Kachin or Burmese. I am English. I am a Winston Churchill Fellow, sometime member of the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Society of Arts, and member of the Front Line Club. I have a BA and MA from Cambridge and post graduate qualifications from London University and Oxford Brookes. I can quote Chaucer for breakfast. I am as English as the Cotswolds, or a Windsor Park Oak tree, or a song thrush singing its heart out on a blustery February morning.

I therefore take exception to being shelled by an army now being aided by the British government on the recommendation of the world's democracy and human rights icon - Aung San Suu Kyi. I take further exception to the naivety, or cynicism, of The Elders, the Carter Centre, the Myanmar Peace Centre and Uncle Tom Cobley and all calling for 'peace', without the essential preconditions of a real peace in this multi-ethnic, multi-religious country: a democratic and federal Constitution.

Questions must now be asked about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's position - because what she is saying and doing seems to transcend mere evasiveness. It includes, amongst other things: apparent denial of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Rakhine State; implicitly blaming Muslims for the violence because "global Muslim power is very great"; through her silence in the face of atrocity, passively condoning Buddhist hate speech; equation of the suffering of Buddhists with that of Muslims; sustained disregard of the violations inflicted on the Christian Kachin; encouragement of military collaboration between the British and the Bamar army that is responsible for repeated and multiple crimes against humanity; and condoning the army's actions by sharing the podium with the generals on March 27, 'Union Day'.

Her easiveness has now degenerated into complicity with the military-controlled government and its 'Burmanisation' policies, to shoehorn the multiple ethnicities of Burma into a single national identity. This does not appear to be naivety. It appears to be a deliberately chosen political policy. She appears to be doing the one thing no responsible politician in a volatile, multi-racial society should do: playing the race card to gain votes.

Such criticism is expressed with the greatest reluctance and deepest sadness. Aung San Suu Kyi has shown such noble grace and indefatigable courage under pressure that she has deserved and needed unqualified support. Through the long years of the world's indifference, I and others supported her without reservation, even while organisations like the International Crisis Group produced cleverly nuanced misrepresentations implying she was inflexible, stubborn, and irrelevant.

When her husband and I tried to arrange meetings in her support, he would resignedly lament that we would be lucky to get five people to turn up. And he was right. When I asked the bookshops in Oxford to place her work prominently in the store windows no one knew who this woman with an unpronounceable name was, or could be bothered to find out. Even the Oxford Town Council, her home town, had to be prodded into recognising and honouring her with the Freedom of the City Award.

In short, it appeared the candle of hope was being quietly snuffed out no matter how hard we worked to keep the flame burning. But now, in entirely new circumstances, candid questions must be asked. We are now no longer dealing with a vulnerable woman under house arrest, but with a freed global icon who may become Burma's next President, or Vice-President. The situation demands objective scrutiny and searching questions, not cult-like obsequiousness.

Why, 23 years after the 1990 election, has she not followed in her father's footsteps and appointed a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, shadow cabinet? Remember: a Christian Karen and a Muslim Cabinet Minister died with Aung San when he was assassinated.

Why has a set of policies for a shadow government not been drawn up?

Why did her NLD party boycott the 2010 elections and then stand in the 2012 by-elections, thus providing an apparently legitimate democratic fig leaf for the illegitimate military controlled government and the whole grotesquely rigged political transition?

Why did she take an oath of allegiance to a Constitution which legitimises the illegitimate military controlled government?

Why does she unrealistically promise hopes of reform when the military and its civilian thugs effectively control the Parliament?

Why does she want to stand for President? And so provide the military with apparent democratic legitimacy without any real transition to a federal democracy?

Why did she sit on the podium showing solidarity with the Generals at their annual military parade of March 27? Just after they had launched the biggest military assault on an ethnic people since the Second World War? An attack that caused thousands of deaths, including those of young conscripted Burmese soldiers forced to carry out human wave attacks?

Why did she endorse the Letpadaung land grab by the Chinese Wanbao mining company, and a Burmese military holding company? And in so doing, confirm the Constitution's denial of the right of the people of Burma to securely own property?

How were the results of the 1990 election allowed to be annulled when the combined votes for democratic parties approximately exceeded 80 percent? when this was a political disaster for which there are few parallels in modern history?

Why does she travel the World? Yet refuse to visit Rakhine and Kachin States where some 250,000 people have been terrorised out of their homes since her release and the 'democratic transition' began?

"To stay neutral between an aggressor and a victim is to side with the aggressor", she is reported to have said. Her comments, equating Buddhist with Muslim suffering while disregarding that of the Christian Kachin, appear to do just that.

In so doing she has become alarmingly close to being the military controlled government's complicit apologist. A single visit by Aung San Suu Kyi, accompanied by the world's media, to an internally displaced Rohingya or Kachin camp could have transformed perceptions of modern Burma around the world.

We need to stand back and see Burma's 'peace in our time' in a wider historical and geographical context. Governments may be making the same mistake they made in places like Iraq and Indo-China: implementing policies based on an inadequate understanding of the cultures and dynamics of the peoples of those regions.

Diem and Chalabi did not represent Vietnam or Iraq. Aung San Suu Kyi - born from the Bamar elite, educated in a Methodist English school in Rangoon until the age of fifteen, and who then lived abroad until the age of 44 - should not be the single prism through which the world sees Burma.

The global media's infatuation with Aung San Suu Kyi, and its wilful misrepresentation and endorsement of Burma's fatally flawed political process, has done incalculable harm to hopes of a genuine democracy ever being realised.

With Aung San Suu Kyi and much of the ethnic Burman 'opposition' co-opted by the military controlled government, the other ethnic peoples face a ghastly choice: to be coerced into signing 'peace agreements' that will turn them into impoverished wage slaves on their own land in the service of Bamar or foreign crony capitalists; or continue to resist, and risk annihilation.

Could this 'peace' possibly be precisely what Aung San Suu Kyi wants? She has always been first and foremost her idealised Father's daughter; and the army has always beem the "soft spot" she "cannot help" but identify with. She once asked of the violently displaced Letpadaung farmers, forced to give up their land for a giant copper mine: "Why do they want their mountain?" One day they, and all the people of Burma, will offer the resounding reply: "Because it's ours!"

Guy Horton, known as "The man who uncovered the truth about Burma", has worked in Burma and its border zones since 1998. From 2002-2005 he researched the violations inflicted on the eastern ethnic peoples, receiving funding from the Netherlands government. His 2005 report Dying Alive and supporting video footage received worldwide coverage and contributed to the submission of Burma to the UN Security Council in January 2007. As result of the report, the UN Committee on the Prevention of Genocide carried out an investigation and placed Burma Myanmar on the Genocide Alert list.

Since 2005, Guy has focused on establishing a coalition of governments, funders, institutions and leading international lawyers with the aim of getting the violations objectively and authoritatively investigated and analysed so that impunity can be addressed. He is a Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Unversity of London and has been affiliated to the Irish Centre for Human Rights investigating the plight of the Rohingya people in western Burma.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

This is sickening and heartbreaking.

Children are being thrown into fires in front of their mothers in Burma.

(I've removed the YouTube link as it is horrific)

If you have a second please do sign this to try and get our government to intervene and save what's left of these innocent children:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/170740

I really hope you can just find a few seconds to sign this, it's easy to ignore things when they're not happening close to home and every signature matters.

Plz Plz Plz 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼forward as much as you can

[TonyGosling]

Iran raps persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m7spoLfiYY
Published on 5 Dec 2016
The Foreign Ministry spokesman says Tehran slams all types of discrimination against minorities anywhere in the world. Bahram Qassemi urged Myanmar to stop the violence directed toward the Muslim community. Rohingya Muslims have suffered extensive discrimination despite living in Myanmar for centuries. Over a hundred Muslims have been killed and thousands displaced in the latest state-sponsored crackdown that was launched in October.

[TonyGosling]

Terrorism in South East Asia & Rohingya persecution: Prof. Bilveer Singh, Singapore University

Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaQHQcoQOJM

Japan's historic vote means fighting US wars
Terrorism in South-East Asia
Prof. Bilveer Singh, Singapore University
BCfm ThisWeek.org.uk Friday 18th Sept 2015

Historic: during this broadcast the Japanese parliament votes to use armed forces outside Japan for first time since World War Two and Professor Bilveer Singh [Political Science Dept. Singapore University]: Interview with Professor Bilveer Singh [Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, India] – he discusses terrorism and repression in SE Asia: the Rohingya – Buddhists and Muslims in Myanamar/Burma; The original 'Rohingya Mujahadin'; Nazi/Japanese gold and war crime trials in Manilla.
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/82802
Bilveer Singh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore. He was Acting Head, CENS from January to December 2010. He graduated with Masters and PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University. His current research interests include studying regional security issues focusing on the rise and the management of Islamist terrorism in Southeast Asia, security issues in Indonesia, especially the challenge of separatism in Papua, the role of great powers in Southeast Asia, especially China and India, as well as the domestic and foreign policies of Singapore. He has published widely, his latest work being on the Rohingyas in Myanmar. Currently, Bilveer is the President of the Political Science Association of Singapore.
https://www.rsis.edu.sg/profile/bilveer-singh/

[TonyGosling]

Press freedom 'under threat' in new Myanmar
By Kevin Ponniah
BBC News
3 July 2017
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40448504

Lawi Weng. a well-respected journalist known for his coverage of Myanmar's conflicts, faces up to three years in prison
Under the military junta that ruled Myanmar for nearly 50 years, the media were tightly controlled.
But after a quasi-civilian government took over in 2011, many curbs were lifted and a rigid censorship regime abolished.
Journalists were among masses of political prisoners released, and media outlets mushroomed to serve a highly literate population that had been starved of independent news.
When the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate kept under house arrest for years because of her democratic activism, won historic elections in 2015, many expected more media freedom would follow.
But journalists and press freedom advocates are alarmed by what they say is an increasingly heavy-handed approach, especially on matters of sensitivity to the military, which retains significant power.
The latest case involves three journalists arrested by the military on 26 June after watching the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), a rebel group, burn drugs in north-eastern Shan State.
Journalists hold a banner as they protest against a law they say curbs free speech, at the start of a trial of two journalists who the army is suing for defamation over a satirical article, in YangonImage copyrightREUTERS
Image caption
"Using the archaic Unlawful Associations Act to incarcerate journalists is an affront to democracy in Myanmar," says the Committee to Protect Journalists
Aye Nai, 53, and Pyae Phone Naing, 24, report for the Democratic Voice of Burma broadcaster, while Lawi Weng, 38, works for The Irrawaddy news magazine and website. Both outlets were run by exiles who fled during the junta era to report on abuses in the then pariah state, and who returned home after reforms in 2012.
The trio were handed to police and charged under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act for having alleged contact with the TNLA, which the army has recently been clashing with and describes as a "terrorist" group. They could face up to three years in prison, and a close aide of Ms Suu Kyi has defended the charges.
"It's true that they broke the law by going to meet ethnic groups," Win Htein, a former political prisoner, said.
Yet the case has caused uproar because many journalists have met TNLA rebels without facing prosecution, and the group came into direct contact with reporters and officials when it attended peace talks in May in the capital, Naypyitaw.
'Climate of fear'
Lawi Weng is well-respected for his reporting on ethnic armed groups around Myanmar.
His fiancée, Loa Htaw, told Reuters news agency that he was well aware that he could be jailed for reporting on such issues, and criticising both the military and government.
But "he needs to report for the voiceless and the powerless", she said.
Myanmar's state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (C) blows on candles during a ceremony celebrating her 72nd birthday at the Parliament in Naypyitaw, MyanmarImage copyrightEPA
Image caption
Aung San Suu Kyi recently told the BBC she was "just a politician" and "not quite like Margaret Thatcher" but "no Mother Theresa either"
Aung Zaw, editor of The Irrawaddy, said his reporter had been planning to investigate reports of abuses by the army and local militias in the area.
He said he had been unlawfully arrested, and that journalists were legally allowed to gather news in conflict zones. "Our work is under threat," he told the BBC.
In an opinion piece, he wrote: "The return of a climate of fear is very disturbing, particularly after the National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in the 2015 election.
"I can't help but recall Lawi's optimism on Election Day. No, he was not thinking that he would eventually be locked up under this government".
Facebook posts targeted
The arrests come weeks after two journalists from The Voice newspaper were sued by the military over a satirical article.
Editor Kyaw Min Swe remains in custody and has been charged with defamation under a controversial section of the telecommunications law that human rights groups say is being used to silence criticism of the military and government online.
Activists say at least 71 people have been charged under Section 66(d) since the law came into force in 2013 - the vast majority after Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD took power.
One man was sentenced to six months for posting a poem on Facebook about having a tattoo of former President Thein Sein on his penis.
Kyaw Min Swe (C), editor-in-chief of The Voice Daily newspaper, arrives to hear the Bahan township court for the third trial in Yangon on June 16, 2017Image copyrightAFP
Image caption
Kyaw Min Swe, editor of The Voice, has had several bail requests rejected
Aung San Suu Kyi has come under sustained criticism internationally for what many perceive as her failure to speak out about grave human rights abuses allegedly committed by the military against the Muslim minority Rohingya community, and civilians from other ethnic minorities in conflict-affected areas.
The treatment of journalists under her government has also come under scrutiny.
Some Myanmar watchers say that not all the criticism is warranted, however. The military retains significant power throughout the country, and controls the defence, home and border affairs ministries and holds 25% of the seats in Parliament.
As a tenuous democratic transition continues, Ms Suu Kyi's room to manoeuvre is tight and she is choosing her priorities carefully, some argue.
In April, she told the BBC that she was "just a politician" and "no Mother Theresa".
Suu Kyi denies Rohingya ethnic cleansing
A global icon, isolated
Still, with a parliamentary majority the NLD government "has the power to amend or abolish many repressive laws" that are used to target journalists, the Democratic Voice of Burma's editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing told the BBC.
He adds that the arrest of two of his journalists for doing their "normal job" is "shocking ".
"It's very disappointing the way the government [has reacted] on this case," he says.
"We can understand the way the military is acting but it's really shocking to see [the government], instead of helping and siding with the independent journalists, is kind of giving the green light to the military to go ahead."


Media captionAung San Suu Kyi gave a wide-ranging interview to the BBC's Fergal Keane in April
But Win Htein, the aide to Ms Suu Kyi, has said that getting a peace deal is a bigger priority than amending the Unlawful Associations Act.
Mratt Kyaw Thu, a senior reporter with the magazine Frontier Myanmar, says he doesn't believe journalists will stop reporting from conflict zones and on ethnic armed groups.
But he does admit that the recent series of cases has sparked fresh debate among reporters about how far they can go in criticising the military.
He says journalists approached Aung San Suu Kyi on 28 June to ask about press freedom in the wake of the arrests, "but she never listens about that".

[TonyGosling]

Israel continues to arm Burma military amid ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslims
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-burma-sell- arms-rohingya-muslims-military-junta-violence-massacre-deaths-flee-a79 32126.html

Bethan McKernan Beirut @mck_beth Wednesday 6 September 2017 10:58

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Israel is under fire from human rights groups for the continued sale of weaponry to the Burmese junta after intensified violence against the country's Rohingya Muslim minority.

More than 100 tanks, as well as boats and light weapons, have been sold to the Burmese government by Israeli arms companies, investigations by several rights watchdogs have found.

One company, TAR Ideal Concepts, has also trained Burmese special forces in northern Rakhine state, where much of the violence is taking place, posting pictures on their website of its staff teaching combat tactics and how to handle weapons.

An army crackdown triggered by an attack on 25 August by Rohingya insurgents on Burma security forces has triggered a major humanitarian crisis. At least 400 people have been killed and nearly 125,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

There is a US and EU embargo on selling arms to the South East Asian country, which was until recently under military rule. Israel’s high court will decide on whether to ban arms sales to the country later this month after a petition by Israeli acitivists.

In March, the Israeli defence ministry defended sales, saying that the courts had no jurisdiction over a “diplomatic” issue.
Read more
Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi says 'fake news' fuelling Rohingya crisis
At least five drown after boat carrying Rohingya Muslims capsizes
Burma laying landmines near Bangladesh border to stop Rohingya return
Chechen Muslims protest in solidarity with Burma's Rohingyas

“Successive Israeli governments have been selling arms to the military dictatorship in Burma for years,” Ofer Neiman, an Israeli human rights activist, told Middle East Eye.

“This policy is strongly related to Israel's oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Weapons used against the Palestinians are being sold as 'field-tested' to some of the worst regimes on the planet.”

Graphic photo and video from the region show beheaded children and entire villages burnt to the ground by military and paramilitary forces.

The violence has been condemned by the international community; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labelled it a “genocide” last week.

[TonyGosling]

So, Israel arming the Burmese government
Saudi Arabia arming the Rohingyas
Sound familiar?

Myanmar: Who are the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army?
The government calls it a terrorist organisation and says its leaders have trained abroad. The International Crisis Group (ICG) also says the militants have trained abroad and released a report in 2016 saying the group was led by Rohingya people living in Saudi Arabia. The ICG says Arsa's leader is Ata Ullah, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41160679

Myanmar's Rohingya insurgency has links to Saudi, Pakistan: report
Reuters|December 15, 2016
https://www.dawn.com/news/1302509

A group of Rohingya Muslims that attacked Myanmar border guards in October is headed by people with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday, citing members of the group.

The coordinated attacks on Oct 9 killed nine policemen, and sparked a crackdown by security forces in the Muslim-majority north of Rakhine State in the country's northwest.

At least 86 people have been killed, according to state media, and the United Nations has estimated 27,000 members of the largely stateless Rohingya minority have fled across the border to Bangladesh.

Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar's government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, blamed Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the Oct 9 attacks, but has issued scant further information about the assailants it called “terrorists”.
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A group calling itself Harakah al-Yakin claimed responsibility for the attacks in video statements and the Brussels-based ICG said it had interviewed four members of the group in Rakhine State and two outside Myanmar, as well as individuals in contact with members via messaging apps.

The Harakah al-Yakin, or Faith Movement, was formed after communal violence in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed and about 140,000 displaced in Rakhine State, most of them Rohingya, the group said.

Rohingya who have fought in other conflicts, as well as Pakistanis or Afghans, gave clandestine training to villagers in northern Rakhine over two years ahead of the attacks, it said.

“It included weapons use, guerrilla tactics and, HaY members and trainees report, a particular focus on explosives and IEDs,” the group said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

It identified Harakah al-Yakin's leader, who has appeared prominently in a series of nine videos posted online, as Ata Ullah, born in Karachi, to a Rohingya migrant father before moving as a child to Makkah in Saudi Arabia.

“Though not confirmed, there are indications he went to Pakistan and possibly elsewhere, and that he received practical training in modern guerrilla warfare,” the group said, noting that Ata Ullah was one of 20 Rohingya from Saudi Arabia leading the group's operations in Rakhine State.

Separately, a committee of 20 senior Rohingya emigres oversees the group, which has its headquarters in Makkah, the ICG said.

Groups like the militant Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent have referred to the plight of the Rohingya in their material, and the battlefield experience of at least some of the Rohingya fighters implied links to international militants, the ICG said.

However, ICG said the group has notably not engaged in attacks on the civilian Buddhist population in Rakhine. And Harakah al-Yakin's statements to date indicate its main goals are to end the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and secure the minority's citizenship status.

“It is possible, however, that its objectives could evolve, given its appeals to religious legitimacy and links to international jihadist groups, so it is essential that government efforts do not focus only or primarily on military approaches, but also address underlying community grievances and suffering,” the ICG said.

[outsider]

‘China and Russia Urge Diplomatic and Media Objectivity in Myanmar’:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/09/30/china-russia-urge-diplomatic-med ia-objectivity-myanmar/

China and Russia Urge Diplomatic and Media Objectivity in Myanmar - 21st Century Wire
21stcenturywire.com
Gearoid O Colmain | China praises Burmese government for dealing with humanitarian crisis caused by Western-backed ARSA terrorists.


Why on earth should we believe what we are being fed by our Western Governments and thier MSM propaganda outlets? How come the West kept very quiet when the Military Regime was in power in Myanmar, yet now lambasts them for clearly ‘False Flag’ ARSA terrorist attacks, just like they do in Syria?
‘…Russia warned of the danger of Islamist terrorism spreading throughout South East Asia. According to Syrian journalist Afraa Dagher, the ‘Rohingya Free Army’ is being formed in Syria for redeployment to Myanmar….’

Just more US ‘Balkanisation’ through their murderous head-chopping proxies.

‘….Many of the agencies financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy such as the Karen Women’s Organisation, have come out in opposition to Aung San Suu Kyi. To therefore suggest that US agencies are supporting Aung San Suu Kyi is patently false. Aung San Suu Kyi has criticised the US government for using the term rohingya; yet US-funded media and NGOS in the country continue to defy the State Councillor’s requests….’

The ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ have their blood-soaked paws in this? What next, the ‘White Helmets’?

‘….US Containment of China
As part of the US ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy, the Pentagon seeks to establish military bases all along the South East coast of Asia. Many parts of South Asia Asia’s coastlines are heavily populated with Muslims. US militarization of those regions would serve to contain China’s growing economic and military power.
China has become Myanmar’s chief economic partner. Myanmar is a key strategic interest for China’s One Belt One Road initiative. Chinese gas pipe-lines and the construction of the Deep Sea port of PyaukPyu in Rakhine State have had huge benefits for the local population, who now have 24 hour electricity supply for the first time. Chinese access to the Bay of Bengal is essential for the development of the country’s Western and inland provinces. The Rohingya crisis is part of US psychological war to break up the Union of Myanmar and hamper China’s growing economic and military power in Eurasia.
Terrorists Burning Villages not Military
Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia began his speech by reminding the delegates that the cause of the violence was the ARSA terrorist attacks. He also pointed out that there were Muslims, Buddhist and Hindus fleeing the violence and not just Muslims as Western media outlets claim.
“In recent days we’ve received an illustration of the fact that ARSA were responsible for the massacre of civilians. What was also found were cashes of improvised explosive devices. There is information that the extremists forced members of the Hindu community in border villages to leave their homes and to migrate to neighbouring Bangladesh with the Muslims. Furthermore, there is information that terrorists burned entire villages and that evidence confiscated from the fighters.
Photographs were confiscated from the terrorists which were in all likelihood meant to be used as reports to the leadership of ARSA or its foreign sponsors. This information is confirmed by the earlier statement of Naypyidaw when they said that the initiators of the outbreak in Rakhine State had the objective of maximally increasing the scale of the humanitarian disaster and transfering the responsibility for it to the government.”….’

I must admit I did not understand what was going on in Myanmar, till I read this and some other articles.
I couldn’t believe Aung San Suu Kyi would stay silent if it really was the Myanmar Government committing the atrocities, though.

‘….In a clear reference to what Myanmar’s State Councilor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has called an ‘iceberg of misinformation‘, Wu politely criticised the aggressive media war waged by the international community (the US and its vassal-states) against Myanmar:
“It behoves the international community to view the difficulties and challenges confronting the government of Myanmar through objective optics, exercise patience and provide support and help.”….’

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Israel Sold Advanced Weapons to Myanmar During anti-Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing Campaign
Israeli-made navy patrol boats custom-fitted with remote weapon stations are part of arms deals estimated to be worth tens of millions
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-sold-arms-to-myanmar-during -ethnic-cleansing-campaign-1.5459614

Gili Cohen
24.10.2017 | 16:58
“Welcome to the Myanmar Navy,” said the caption on the Myanmar Navy’s Facebook page, in honor of the arrival of an Israeli patrol boat to Myanmar’s shore. “The Super-Dvora MK III is moving forward at 45 knots on Myanmar waters,” the post continued. The post is from April, only half a year ago, when the Myanmar (Burmese) army was already being accused of war crimes.

Related Articles
Israel Won't Stop Arms Sales to Myanmar, Despite Its Campaign of Rape and Torture Against the Rohingya
Israel's Top Court Just Ruled About Arms Sales to Myanmar. But We're Not Allowed to Say More
Although the persecution of the Muslim minority in Myanmar, the Rohingya people, has become more intense in recent months, back in November 2016 the army was already being accused of brutality against them and of torching their villages. During that period tens of thousands of Rohingyans were expelled from their homes.


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>> Israel is sending weapons to a country that’s carrying out ethnic cleansing and is a partner in a genocide | Opinion <<

The representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees in the region said then that the ultimate purpose of Myanmar’s government is “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority.” Since last August more than half a million Rohingyan refugees have fled to Bangladesh, and some of them have testified to methodical rape and murder by the Myanmar military.

The pictures of the two boats on the Facebook page also reveal the weapons that have been installed on them, all blue-and-white products. There’s a remote weapon station, made by Elbit Systems, which allows the firing of a heavy machine gun or cannon of up to 30 millimeters. The new patrol boats are only part of a larger transaction signed between Israel and Myanmar. The Ramta division of Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures the Super Dvora, is meant to transfer at least two more boats to the local military. According to some reports on the deal, these boats will be built in Myanmar with the help of Israeli technology. IAI refused to comment.

Myanmar Border Guard Police officers travel in a wooden boat operated by Rohingya Muslim men in Rakhine State, Myanmar on July 14, 2017.
Myanmar Border Guard Police officers travel in a wooden boat operated by Rohingya Muslim men in Rakhine State, Myanmar on July 14, 2017. Esther Htusan/AP
The total value of the arms deal, according to sources in the Israeli weapons industry, is estimated at tens of millions of dollars. An officer involved in the matter told Haaretz that the Myanmar naval commander visited Israel in the past year, “was impressed and wanted to learn.” It was the second visit to Israel by the naval commander in the past five years.

Israeli weapons are being sold to Myanmar despite the restrictions on weapons sales to that country. Only last month Israel refused to announce that it would stop selling weapons to Myanmar despite the UN declaration about ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya minority is now considered the most persecuted people in the world.

Israel is careful not to officially confirm that it is granting permits to Israeli weapons firms to sell weapons to Myanmar. But the visit two years ago by Myanmar’s chief of the armed forces, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who met with Israel’s entire top military brass, was an indication of the cooperation between the two armies. During his visit, Hlaing announced that he had purchased the Super Dvora patrol boat, and he visited the Palmahim Air Force Base and the Gaza Division. A year-and-a-half ago, a reciprocal visit to Myanmar was made by Brig. Gen. Michel Ben-Baruch, head of the Defense Ministries International Defense Cooperation Directorate. In the past, Myanmar purchased Israeli air-to-air missiles and cannons, while an Israeli company, TAR Ideal Concepts, has noted on its website that it has trained Myanmar military forces. Now the site makes no specific reference to Myanmar, referring only to Asia.



The two countries in recent years have signed a memorandum of understanding clarifying the bilateral cooperation and transfer of relevant information and intelligence. According to official reports in Myanmar, the agreement includes military training and improving security cooperation between the two countries. There is, however, no known instance of Myanmar military personnel being trained in Israel, or of Israeli officers who were involved in training Myanmar military forces.

The efforts to fully expose the Israel-Myanmar connection by attorney Eitay Mack, who is active in increasing transparency of Israeli arms exports to countries that violate human rights, have so far been unsuccessful. Last month the High Court of Justice issued a ruling in response to a petition he filed with other human rights activists against the sales, but the ruling was kept classified at the state’s request.

The Defense Ministry said in response, “In general, the Defense Ministry doesn’t typically address security export issues.”

According to a source familiar with the issue, there is currently no relationship between the Israel Defense Forces and the Myanmar army, and no uniformed personnel are involved in any cooperative venture with the Myanmar security establishment.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Israeli weapons used in genocide against Rohingya Muslims
Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh after being persecuted in Myanmar
Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh after being persecuted in Myanmar
August 31, 2018 at 3:01 am
2.5KSHARES
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180831-israeli-weapons-used-in-gen ocide-against-rohingya-muslims/

“Israeli weapons are used in the ethnic and religious cleansing carried out by the Myanmar army against the Rohingya minority, resulting in the persecution of 700,000 Muslims who were slaughtered and expelled from their country, ”said Israeli writer and journalist Tsur Shezaf in an article published by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Shezaf asserted that “Israel contributed to the grievances of Rohingya Muslims through its refusal to abide by the UN international boycott resolutions to prevent supplying Myanmar with arms.”

He also noted that Israel continues, through its army, security services and military industries, sending various weapons to the Armed Forces of Myanmar, including military technology.

Shezaf added that “Israel and Myanmar have longstanding historical ties, and it is not reasonable that we repeat today the same mistakes that we made in South Africa, during the apartheid regime, with Myanmar which is committing ethnic cleansing crimes. Currently, Israel is contributing to a new tragedy.”

Read: Military intervention to protect the Rohingya still isn’t on the Western agenda

He confirmed that “Israel’s continued support for Myanmar’s actions, through sending arms and military supplies despite the mass killings, property destruction and rapes committed by the Army. This is an unjustifiable imbecility. This will result in the creation of new refugee camps around Myanmar, specifically in Bangladesh, and from there more armed groups will surface.

Shezaf also noted that “the Rohingyas are subjected to systematic deportation and ethnic cleansing by the Myanmarese and Buddhists in the western side of Myanmar. They are forced to stay in refugee camps set up by Bangladesh on small areas, sheltering one million women, toddlers, men, elders and infants.”

He pointed out that some Rohingya women are still having babies as a result of rapes committed by the Myanmar army, police and Buddhist monks.

Shezaf concluded: “Millions live amidst poor environmental circumstances, where they cannot have a minimum of decent living conditions. Today, after Rohingyas’ lives became almost impossible, the UN woke up and officially declared that Myanmar, including the army, the police as well as the Buddhist establishment and even the Prime Minister and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, are all responsible for killing an entire population.”

[TonyGosling]

Rohingya crisis: Villages destroyed for government facilities
By Jonathan Head
South East Asia correspondent
10 September 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49596113


Media captionJonathan Head visits the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp, which is built on the site of two demolished Rohingya villages
Entire Muslim Rohingya villages in Myanmar have been demolished and replaced by police barracks, government buildings and refugee relocation camps, the BBC has found.

On a government tour, the BBC saw four locations where secure facilities have been built on what satellite images show were once Rohingya settlements.

Officials denied building on top of the villages in Rakhine state.

In 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar during a military operation.

The UN has described it as "textbook ethnic cleansing". Myanmar (also called Burma) has denied large-scale killings by its forces.

How a 'genocide' was investigated
Rare look at Myanmar military celebrations
Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country, continues to deny its troops carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide. It now says it is ready to take some refugees back.

But last month, a second attempt to start repatriating Rohingya refugees failed, after none of the 3,450 people approved by Myanmar to return agreed to do so. They cited the lack of accountability for atrocities committed in 2017, and uncertainty over whether they would get freedom of movement or citizenship.

Myanmar blamed Bangladesh, and said it was prepared to receive large numbers of returnees. To demonstrate this they invited journalists, including the BBC, to see their facilities.

Access to Rakhine is normally tightly restricted. We travelled in a government convoy, and were not allowed to film or interview people without police supervision.

But we were able to see clear evidence of the deliberate eradication of Rohingya communities.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which has been analysing satellite images, estimates that at least 40% of Rohingya villages damaged by the 2017 violence have since been completely demolished.

What did the BBC find in Myanmar?
The government took us to Hla Poe Kaung transit camp, which it says can house 25,000 returnees, who would stay for two months before moving to permanent housing.

The camp, which was completed nearly a year ago, is in poor condition; the communal toilets have fallen apart. It was built on the site of two Rohingya villages, Haw Ri Tu Lar and Thar Zay Kone, demolished after the 2017 violence.

When I asked the camp administrator Soe Shwe Aung why they had destroyed the villages, he denied any had been demolished. But when I pointed out that satellite images showed otherwise, he said he had only recently taken the job and was not able to answer.

We were then taken to Kyein Chaung, a relocation camp, where houses have been built with Japanese and Indian government funding as long-term accommodation for returning refugees. But a Rohingya village called Myar Zin was bulldozed to clear land for this camp, which lies close to a massive new barracks for the Border Guard Police - a unit of the security forces accused by Rohingyas of serious abuses in 2017. Speaking off-camera, officials there confirmed the demolition of Myar Zin.

Just outside the main town, Maungdaw, was Myo Thu Gyi, which once had a population of more than 8,000 Rohingyas.

In September 2017, I filmed Myo Thu Gyi while driving past it in another government convoy. Many of the houses had been burned, but larger buildings were still intact, and the trees that usually surround Rakhine villages were still there. But now, passing where Myo Thu Gyi used to be, there is a large government and police complex. The trees have gone.

We were also taken to Inn Din, a village notorious for a massacre of 10 captured Muslim men in September 2017, and one of the few atrocities the Myanmar military has admitted to.

About three quarters of the population of Inn Din was Muslim, the rest Rakhine Buddhist. Today, no trace of the Muslim quarter remains. The Rakhine quarter is quiet and peaceful. But when you reach where the Rohingya houses used to be, the trees have gone, replaced by barbed-wire fences enclosing an extensive new Border Guard Police barracks.

The Rakhine Buddhist residents told us they would never accept Muslims living next to them again.

What does this mean for the refugees?
The extensive and continuing destruction of Rohingya communities long after the violent military campaign of 2017 had ended means few of the refugees would be able to go back to their old lives and communities.

Image caption
As little as 10% of the original Rohingya population of Rakhine is believed to remain after the 2017 exodus
The only visible preparations for a large-scale refugee return are dilapidated transit camps like Hla Poe Kaung, and relocation camps like Kyein Chaung. Few refugees are likely to overcome the trauma they suffered two years ago for that kind of a future. It raises questions over the sincerity of Myanmar's public commitment to take them back.

I was able to meet a young displaced Rohingya on my way back to Yangon. We had to be discreet; foreigners are not allowed to meet Rohingyas without permission. He has been trapped with his family in an IDP camp for seven years, after being driven out of his home in Sittwe, one of 130,000 Rohingyas displaced in a previous outbreak of violence in 2012.

He is unable to attend university, or to travel outside the camp without permission. His advice for the refugees in Bangladesh was not to risk coming back, and finding themselves similarly confined to guarded camps.

What does the government say?
We approached the Myanmar government's spokesman for a response to our findings in Rakhine, but have not received a reply.


Media captionMyanmar: Who are the Rohingya?
Officially, the government is committed to a phased return of the refugees, in collaboration with Bangladesh. But ministers still refer to the Rohingyas as Bengalis, who they say arrived in waves of illegal immigration over the past 70 years. There is little evidence of such immigration.

This reflects a widespread belief in Myanmar that they do not belong. The government has refused Rohingya requests for citizenship and guaranteed freedom of movement. It is willing to give them what are called National Verification Cards, which it says could be a step towards eventual citizenship. But most Rohingyas reject these cards because they would be required to identify themselves as Bengalis.

What awaits the Rohingya back in Myanmar?
No homecoming for Rohingyas
At the height of the military campaign against the Rohingyas in early September 2017, the commander of the Myanmar armed forces General Min Aung Hlaing said they were taking care of what he called "unfinished business" left from 1942.

Image caption
Today no trace of the Muslim quarter remains at Inn Din village, the site of one of the few atrocities the Myanmar military has admitted to
He was referring to the fighting then between Japanese and British forces in Rakhine, in which Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists backed opposing sides, often killed each other, and caused large-scale movements of displaced civilians. The commander said Muslims had flooded into northern Rakhine state over what is today the border with Bangladesh.

The two districts of Maungdaw and Buthidaung on the border, where the great majority of villages destroyed since 2017 were located, was the only region of Myanmar with a Muslim majority. Since the Rohingya exodus the remaining Muslims, perhaps only 10% of the original population, may now be in a minority.

The government's refusal to allow a credible investigation, to offer freedom of movement or a clear path to citizenship, will deter most refugees from returning. That would leave the balance between Muslims and non-Muslims as it is; perhaps the "unfinished business" is now finished.