Rohingya Boy to Have Operation: Hundreds More Boatpeople Make Secret Journey Through Thailand

Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison

Mon, January 6, 2014

PHUKET: A young boy who arrived in Thailand on a Rohingya boat on Christmas Day with 138 others is to have an operation this week to fix a genital hernia, Phuketwan has learned.

 The boy and his family soon after they arrived in Thailand from Burma

Photo by phuketwan.com

According to reports, the Rohingya, stateless and persecuted inside Burma, are also refused access to hospitals.

Thirteen women and children from the Christmas Day boat are now being accommodated in a family shelter in Khao Lak, north of Phuket. It's thought that the menfolk associated with the families are also being held somewhere in Phang Nga province.

Local Immigration officials decline to say what has happened to the menfolk or to the other Rohingya who arrived on the boat. It's thought that, with the exception of the families, the other men and boys have probably already been ''deported'' through the Thai-Burma port of Ranong.

As Burmese authorities do not accept back Rohingya who flee the country, ''deported'' usually means they have been put back on a boat at sea, and probably transferred into the arms of traffickers.

Myanmar Refugee to Meet Her Children After Five Years

PRADIPTA TAPADAR

KOLKATA: Myanmar citizen Jahura Begum's dream of reuniting with her seven children is coming true after a five-year agonising wait in India which she entered along with her children illegally in 2009.

The 55-year-old woman fled her country after a reign of terror was allegedly unleashed by the Junta on Rohingya, which she belonged to, and other minorities in 2009, Debrup Bhattacharjee, a practising advocate attached with an NGO "Human Rights Law Network", said.

"Jahura had given up the hope of ever meeting her children and husband. But armed with a court's order now she will be able to reunite with her family sometime this month," Bhattacharjee said.

After Jahura Begum alias Jahura Bibi entered India via Bangladesh, she and his children were caught by the BSF and were handed over to the police.

Terror in Burma: Violence against Muslims

Hundreds of Rohingya people have been killed; tens of thousands were forced from their homes and live as suffering refugees in Internal Displacement Camps (IDP's) where disease is rampant and food and shelter are scarce.

"Terrorist" groups are frequently the banter of network news anchors and analysts; yet few in America devote time to the terrorists of Burma who have behaved treacherously toward the Muslim population for a year and a half now, due to old simmering hatreds and a desire among the majority population to live in a Buddhist only country. The Buddhist answer toward their frustration with having to live with Muslims, is most vividly expressed in the "969" movement led by a Buddhist monk named U Wirathu; which propagates false information that in turn damages the fragile existence of Muslims in this country that was locked down under a military junta for so many years. While all Muslims are threatened, the Rohingya Muslim people are at the center of the Buddhist's gun sites.

Wirathu is now an abbot in Mandalay's Masoeyein Monastery, an expansive complex where he leads about 60 monks and has influence over more than 2,500 residing there. Free from a prison sentence and back in a place of influential power, he is again preaching hatred and intolerance. "Many monks are highly influenced by his hateful messages, and are directly involved in genocidal campaigns against the minority Muslim population in Myanmar. They are also supported by government agencies at all levels - from local to central," noted Rohingya Muslim political leader, Dr. Habib Siddiqui.

Rohingya Tell of Voyage Killing

Alan Morison and Premkamon Ketsara

PHUKET: The Burmese Navy handed over a boatload of Rohingya men, women and children to people smugglers who killed 12 and savagely beat many others, survivors revealed today.

The group of 139, discovered by residents in a rubber plantation north of Phuket last night, were recovering today after a harrowing 22-day voyage south to Thailand with little food and water.

Mostly young men and teenagers, some of the children ranged from two, three and four years old.

Survivors showed recent scars from savage beatings to Phuketwan journalists at a community hall in the port of Kuraburi in Phang Nga province. They were being fed by a group of sympathetic local Muslims for the first time in days.

People without a Country

Wasif Ali

The long journey to Jammu city began in 2003 for Haroon Rashid when he had just married a neighborhood girl in his Alegan village of Burma. For the persecuted Rohingya Muslims living in the largely military controlled State, it is mandatory to keep the authorities informed about every development in their life, even if a pregnant cow delivers.

Haroon, a medium-built man with a round face and dark complexion, was busy in making pre-marital arrangements and somehow forgot to inform the authorities or police about his marriage “It was a big mistake,” he says.

On the eight day of marriage, a contingent of armed police personnel looking for Haroon surrounded Alegan village. When he came out of his house, two police personnel dragged him to a nearby police vehicle and put him in a jail. 

“I spent six months in jail where I was subjected to all kinds of humiliation and torture. I had to pay Rs 1 lakh so that they could set me free,” Haroon says in a muffled voice.

Thai navy sues journalists after reports on Rohingya trafficking

Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices

The Royal Thai Navy has filed defamation charges against international journalists for their reports on authorities being involved in human trafficking of ethnic Rohingya refugees. The move sends a chilling reminder to the media about the dismal state of press freedom in Thailand, the easy exploitation of flawed laws and how little outside inquiry Thailand’s military tolerates.

Rohingya migrants sit on a police van in southern Thailand. Pic: AP

Ever since the deadlypersecution of the Rohingya people, an ethnic minority denied citizenship in Burma, in 2012 that caused tens of thousands to flee, mostly on frail and overcrowded vessels on the Andaman Sea, the plight of Rohingya refugees in Thailand has been well documented in the past 12 months*. Reportsof abuse, rape, inhumane detention conditions and human trafficking have persistently accompanied the coverage of the refugees in Thailand. A deadline imposed by the Thai government to find and transfer the refugees to another country passed in July with no results and further developments being made, leaving the Rohingyas in legal limbo.

Myanmar Female Muslim Refugees Run Out of Hope

By Jurate Kazickas

WeNews commentator

At the end of our visit to the camp for internally displaced people, we thanked the women for sharing their stories. But then they said: visitors come, we talk to them, they listen, leave. Nothing changes for us.

 A female refugee and her child at a displacement camp in Myanmar's Rakhine State. (Credit: UN Photo/David Ohana)

In Myanmar's largest city of Yangon, at a conference bringing together women from around the country, women spoke confidently of their vision for a better future and their role in the political process.

But only a few hundred miles away, in the state of Rakhine, the second poorest in the country, in a crowded camp for families driven from their villages by ethnic and religious violence, the women feared for their lives and their uncertain future.

The situation for these people is so dire that a U.N. official could only say, "Not only is there no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no tunnel."