Habib Siddiqui

  31 March 2021 :1 HOUR AGO Human Rights Watch says any return to Myanmar would put the lives and liberty of refugees "at grave risk", adding that the military government is committing massacres across the country.   Human Rights Watch said Bangladesh had been intensifying restrictions on livelihoods, movement and education in an apparent effort "to coerce refugees into considering returning to Myanmar." (AP)   Human Rights Watch has called on Bangladesh to suspend plans to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, warning conditions there would not be safe for the persecuted and stateless minority.   Bangladesh is home to around a million Rohingya, most of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar that is now subject to a UN genocide investigation. A delegation from Myanmar's military regime travelled to Bangladesh this month to interview potential candidates for return and jump-start a stalled repatriation scheme. ...

  The ICC’s decision to take action against Russia’s Putin is in glaring contrast to its slow or non-existent response to myriad war crimes in Asia, from the wars in Vietnam to Afghanistan to Myanmar today. By  Philip Smucker March 31, 2023 Credit:  Depositphotos The world, and Asia in particular, is trying to understand the implications of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin issued on March 17, related to Russian efforts to forcibly deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.   The Russian president’s alleged crimes against humanity are unique, but they are also comparable to ongoing and past war crimes committed in Myanmar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and even in Vietnam over 50 years ago by U.S. forces serving there. The indictment of Putin recalls for me an era when journalists, myself included, pursued reporting on war crimes in Cambodia, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia wit...

  Repatriation to Myanmar Under Military Junta Threatens Lives, Freedoms Rohingya refugees shout slogans against repatriation at Unchiprang camp near Cox's Bazar,  Bangladesh, November 15, 2018. © 2018 AP Photo/Dar Yasin   Bangkok) –  Bangladesh  authorities should suspend plans to send Rohingya refugees back to  Myanmar , where their lives and liberty would be at grave risk, Human Rights Watch said today. Rohingya told Human Rights Watch that they were lied to, deceived, or otherwise coerced by Bangladesh administrators into meeting with a recent delegation of Myanmar junta officials as part of a “pilot repatriation” effort to return about 1,000 refugees. Some were told the meetings concerned possible resettlement to a third country. “Voluntary, safe, and dignified returns of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar are not possible while the military junta is carrying out massacres around the country and apartheid in Rakhine State,” said  Meen...

  DENIS D. GRAY MAE HONG SON, Thailand -- Except for striking images of their women, some of whom wear piles of metal coils that appear to stretch their necks, Myanmar's Karenni are a little-known ethnic minority group. But they are waging one of the world's longest insurgencies, a struggle for self-determination with cycles of extreme violence and precarious peace. Lodged in a remote, rugged border state with a small population and a neglected history, the Karenni -- along with the neighboring Karen minority -- have fought for more than seven decades against Myanmar governments dominated by the country's Bamar ethnic majority and military leaders. Hopes of autonomy rose in 2015 with the election of a democratic government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, even though her National League for Democracy party was dominated by Bamar members. But the dream of a federal nation, sought by most of Myanmar's numerous minorities, was destroyed on Feb. 1, 2021, when the military over...