Habib Siddiqui

The headless body of a Muslim villager has been found days after he spoke to reporters on a rare government-guided media tour of restive northern Rakhine state, Myanmar police said on Friday. Police did not give a motive for the killing of the 41-year-old man, whose body was found floating in a river, but said he spoke to Burmese journalists on Wednesday in Ngakhura village. "On Thursday his family said he had disappeared after giving interviews to journalists," Police Colonel Thet Naing in Maungdaw town told AFP news agency. "This afternoon [Friday] I got the report his headless body was found... We have confirmed from villagers that it is him," he said. Myanmar soldiers have taken control of the dangerous and remote region bordering Bangladesh since October 9 when armed men raided police posts, killing nine officers. Troops have killed more than 80 people in Rakhine since the start of crackdown, according to official figures. Conflict analysts...

The shocking news below is from the RB News: Maungdaw, Arakan  – A Rohingya woman from Myaut Chaung village tract in Northern Maungdaw Towship was gang raped by the Myanmar military in front of her husband. Today, at 11am on December 23rd 2016, a 55-year-old Rohingya man from Ganda Khali hamlet of Myaut Chaung village tract was working in a paddy field. Whilst he was working, a group of military detained him and beat him severely. Then he was taken to his house and five soldiers raped his 25-year-old wife in front of him, according to a villager.  After raping the woman, the soldiers took the man to the village administrator's office and released him after extorting 100,000 Kyats from him. The soldiers also detained another man in the same hamlet, Baesar Ali age 50, son of Mamed Hussein, after they picked him up from the street. They released him after extorting 200,000 Kyats from him. In addition, on De...

Here and here are the two links that are recommended by Dr. Maung Zarni to understand the genocidal crimes against the Rohingyas of Myanmar. Inter-ethnic divisions in a young democracy cannot be downplayed or wished away, and it’s time Myanmar’s government and the international community acknowledge strong evidence that genocide is being perpetrated against the Rohingya and act to end it, Katherine Southwick writes in the first link. In the second link, Sir Geoffrey Nice and Francis Wade write, "The world can no longer look away from the intensifying assault on Burma’s Rohingya minority." They conclude: " Today we know enough about the conditions that give rise to genocide that no one in power can justifiably claim ignorance. An understanding of these processes is assumed among all modern leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi included. The democratic mandate handed to her civilian government a year ago has resulted in that most pernicious of democratic outcomes — a tyranny of the...

After nine Myanmar security officers were killed at the Bangladesh border by unidentified assailants on Oct 9, the systematic persecution and massacres of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has increased once again, for which the said murders were used as an excuse. During the one-and-a-half months following the Oct 9 incident, 428 Muslims were martyred, 440 were arrested, 192 women were raped, 160 Muslims were tortured, 1,780 houses were burnt, and mosques were set on fire in the brutal operations carried out by the Myanmar army and the Arakanese Buddhist minorities. The United Nations stated that almost all of the villages populated by Rohingya Muslims were declared “security zones”, but it was impossible to deliver the aid intended for 150,000 people. More than 30,000 Muslims had to leave their homes to flee this cruelty and brutality. John McKissick, head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees sub-office in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar, describes the recent at...

The news below is reported by the Reuters : Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he has evidence that U.S.-led coalition forces give support to terrorist groups including the Islamic State and Kurdish militant groups YPG and PYD, he said on Tuesday. "Now they give support to terrorist groups including Daesh, YPG, PYD. It's very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos," he said.

Franz Wassermann is not the only person worried about his country. But he is among the few Americans who’ve seen a country upended by words and actions that most people didn’t take seriously, until it was too late. Wassermann, a 96-year-old retired psychiatrist, has never considered himself to be a political activist. But this, he believes, is a moment that requires his voice, so he composed a brief letter, which he sent to Washington’s U.S. senators and shared with friends and family. His grandson’s partner sent a copy to me, and after I read it, I visited with Wassermann in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood to hear more of his story. Here’s how the letter begins: “I was born in Munich, Germany, in 1920. I lived there during the rise of the Nazi Party and left for the U.S.A. in 1938. The elements of the Nazi regime were the suppression of dissent, the purging of the dissenters and undesirables, the persecution of communists, Jews and homosexuals and the ideal of the Arians as the mast...

Here is an interesting article on the subject.

For the first time, in many years, the US government did not veto a pro-Palestine resolution that just got passed in the UN Security Council. Israel's hawkish prime minister Netanyahu is very upset about the resolution which calls for a total stoppage of all settlement activities in the West Bank. For years, it was simply because of the US support that the pariah governments of Israel, one after another, and it did not matter whether they were Likudniks or not, that virtually gave a blank cheque to the rogue state to violate established international laws, including those formulated and drafted by the USA. So, as the world simply watched and watched, Israel continued to build illegal settlements. That has changed last week when the US government decided not to veto the bill. Netanyahu is pulling the ambassador from all those countries that passed the bill. He is upset with Obama, the poor Obama, who had been the best supporter of the pariah state since probably Truman. Here is...

Saturday, December 17, 2016 Bertil Lintner makes facts up about Rohingya while playing  to popular and policy-Islamophobia By Dr. Maung Zarni The Irrawaddy is a disputable anti-Rohingya racist platform run by a group of anti-Rohingya Burmese . Why would a well-respected Swedish journalist based in Chiang Mai, Thailand for over several decades make facts-up on the Rohingya and the Burmese politics surrounding the Rohingyas while choosing to ignore the genocidal context in which various forms of Rohingya resistance has developed over the decades? One possible explanation: Jumping on the post-Truth bandwagon that rests on the pervasive and detectable Islamophobia and 'anti-terror'  opportunism - "It is also not known whether today’s militants, as suggested, want to establish an Islamic state in northwestern  Arakan State, or are looking only for new havens for operations in the region, including perhaps even India." Remarkably for a Muslim population subjected to decades...

Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO) Joint Statement 18 December 2016   Investigation Commission of Myanmar Indulges in Falsehood again   We, the undersigned Rohingya organisations worldwide, strongly condemn the false and fabricated statement of the Government Investigation Commission, led by military appointed Vice-President U Myint Swe, which was released on 14 December 2016 particularly for the following reasons: The members of the Commission made a 3-day trip to Rohingya villages in northern Maungdaw Township, such as Kyigang Pyin, Kyein Chaung (Bawli Bazar), Ngakura, Pyint Phyu Chaung, Praung Pyite, Wabeik, Gwa Sone, Thara Oat, Dar Gyi Zar, Zin Pyin Nya and Kyet Yoe Pyin before issuing this statement.   But 95% of the male villagers, including the leading persons of the villages, had been driven out or asked to stay away from their villages, ahead of the visit by the Commission members to most of the Rohingya villages. The soldiers even th...

According to the Rohingya Vision another 13 Rohingya homes and a shop were demolished by the Myanmar security forces in south Maungdow in the northern Rakhine state of Myanmar.

BRUSSELS, Dec 20 (KUNA) -- The European Union on Tuesday said it recognises long-standing solidarity of Bangladesh with those fleeing violence in Myanmar and urges Bangladesh not to deport them or turn them back. The EU urged Bangladesh to provide assistance and protection for people fleeing violence until the situation stabilises and their safe return can be ensured, thus contributing to the stability of the region. The EU noted in a press release tonight that "there was a full and frank exchange in a constructive spirit on a number of matters of common interest." The statement followed the EU-Bangladesh biennial meeting on Good Governance and Human Rights in the framework of the EU-Bangladesh Cooperation Agreement. Topics discussed included the rule of law, human rights, the rights of minorities, freedom of expression and of the media, the situation of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar. Moreover, the EU expressed "concerns on extrajudicial killings and e...

Myanmar, undoubtedly the country with the worst record of human rights in Southeast Asia, witnessed a development that aroused excitement and hope across the entire world about a year ago. After half a century of military junta government, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the November 2015 general elections. One of the election promises of that party’s leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was “real change”. However, the year that has passed since clearly showed that nothing has ever changed for the Rohingya Muslims: They are still the helpless victims of a horrific ethnic cleansing.  The project of purging Rakhine state of the Rohingyas continues at full steam. Hundreds of innocent Rohingyas have been massacred, hundreds of women have been raped, hundreds have lost their lives while trying to escape persecution and thousands of Muslim houses have been plundered and burned in the ongoing operations of Myanmar’s army and security forces since October. ...

US President elect Donald Trump has selected a hardline pro-settler lawyer to become the next Ambassador to the Zionist state of Israel. To find more, click here .

Here below is a report from Tony Cartalucci , a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook” . -------- Reading commentary, analysis, and even alleged “reports” from the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar, it would appear that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi – poster child of American and European “democracy promotion” – is helpless to avert what is quickly expanding into wholesale genocide against the nation’s Rohingya minority. In reality, Suu Kyi’s political coalition has for decades been bolstered by highly politicized sectarian factions, including saffron-clad “monks” who have regularly employed street violence in support of Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. These same factions – also for decades – have pursued a policy of racially and religiously charged, politically-motivated violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya population. Myanmar’s Rohingya – many of whom have lived in t...

Here is a report from the Independent of the UK on the latest news about the Rohingyas of Myanmar.

Here is the link to an important revelation on Nano Tata, which many outsiders like me did not know about.

Syed Wasif Haider was arrested by plainclothes policemen on July 31, 2001, from Kanpur, an industrial city in northern Uttar Pradesh state of India. He was accused of being a member of Hizbul Mujahideen, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by India, the European Union and the United States. After languishing in prison for eight years, he was finally acquitted of all the charges in court. On October 2, he was among 15 people wrongfully imprisoned, who gave evidence before the People's Tribunal on those acquitted in terror cases. The Tribunal, which released its report on Saturday in New Delhi, called for Indian officials responsible for wrongful arrests and prosecution to be held accountable. The Tribunal, organised by Innocence Network - an Indian collective of individuals and organisations working for the rights of those who have been wrongfully prosecuted - said the government should be made to pay compensation for the wrongful convictions. "The dignity of t...

Here is the link to an excellent piece by Jason Rhode. On Suu Kyi (the racist devil), Pulitzer award winning reporter Nicholas Kristof wrote in the Time magazine, “Instead, as her country imposes on the Rohingya Muslim minority an apartheid that would have made white supremacists in South Africa blush, she bites her tongue.” Well said! Jason's last paragraph sums up the current crisis appositely when the murderous regime says that it is following its rule: "The rule of law? There is a higher law. There is a higher rule. If the law of Myanmar says that the Rohingya deserve to be expelled from their homeland, then the law is a lie, and so is she." I fully agree.

I just came across a report published in the Bangkok Post that the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture of Myanmar has announced that it is working on a treatise based on documents and chronologies written by historians throughout the ages to prove that the Rohingya community is not an indigenous group of Burma. My comments follow: When genocide is taking place to wipe out an entire population based on their ethnicity, color, race and religion it is a moot point whether or not they are indigenous to the land where they are being persecuted. But fascist criminals always have such justifications, no matter how false they are, to hoodwink others, esp. their own whom they want to believe in the myth that they have create to nourish the sinister national agenda towards elimination of the targeted group. So such criminal ploys by the Myanmar ministry is not surprising to us at all. What these wicked war criminals ought to answer is: what international law allows such an elimination ca...

Ronan Lee analyzes the Rohingya crisis in this link .

Here below is an essay from Lindsay Branham who posted this in the Huffington Post : ========= Today I leave Sittwe. Five days with the Rohingya, who some call the most persecuted people on earth. Five days of attempted witness. Five days of peeling back the veil of a slow genocide. Five days of descent into their horror. Five days of seeing, even so briefly, what it is like to be stripped of birthplace, nationality, freedom, opportunity, land, education, jobs, food, health care, and finally, the right to your own name. Five days of warmth from a people who are told by their government that they do not deserve to be alive. I wrote the above on the day I left Sittwe, Myanmar, after wrapping production on Behind The Fence , a virtual reality documentary that I directed with my colleague Jonathan Olinger. This is my first virtual reality film, Executive Produced by The Nexus Fund. We chose VR because the situation facing the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar is so dire and little kno...

Human Rights Watch says satellite imagery shows the Burmese military intentionally razed Rohingya villages in the state of Rakhine. The United Nations has called on Burma leader Aung San Suu Kyi to intervene and halt the military campaign against the long-persecuted Muslim ethnic group. The recent military campaign has reportedly included the rape and killing of civilians, as well as the use of helicopter gunships to open fire against Rohingyas below. The images and interviews "firmly" place responsibility for the torchings with the military. “The new findings refute the Burmese military and government’s claims that Rohingya militants were responsible for burning down their own villages,” said HRW’s Asia Director Brad Adams. “The satellite imagery and eyewitness interviews clearly point the finger at the military for setting these buildings ablaze." It added that the government's denial that the military are using arson as a tactic lacked credibility. “Governmen...

A 13-member panel set up by Myanmar's de facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi to probe the clashes in Rakhine state and the army's response to it said in an interim statement that security forces acted according to the law. The commission was formed by Suu Kyi following international pressure to investigate allegations that the country's armed forces raped and killed Rohingya Muslim women and children, and burned down their homes . "Government authorities have followed the law and acted legally in their response to the attackers," Reuters cited the panel as saying. Incidentally, a similar statement was made in October as well, which Longroom had reported at the time . The commission, headed by Vice President Myint Swe, a general and an acolyte of former junta leader Than Shwe, is expected to deliver a complete report by 31 January. On Tuesday (13 December), the commission wrapped up a three-day visit to Maungdaw, where the military's response had report...

Preface: The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has monitored religious freedom conditions in Burma (also known as Myanmar) since the Commission first began its work in 1999. The law that created USCIRF, the International Religious Freedom Act, instructed the Commission to, among other things, recommend U.S. government policies in response to religious freedom violations around the world. Based on Burma’s systematic, egregious, and ongoing violations of the freedom of religion or belief, USCIRF consistently has recommended it be designated as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, every year since the Department of State first made the designation in 2000. USCIRF based this recommendation on its comprehensive assessment of the situation for religious minority communities, and also at times the ill treatment of majority Buddhists, relative to international human rights standards. ...