Modi's government gulty of denying press freedom

It is critical to correct the international media since India is blocking free media. When the Emmy-winning show, Late Night Tonight with John Oliver, presented a segment that criticized Modi, it was blocked in India. India, the so-called largest democracy, is 140th in the world when it comes to freedom of media. This must stop and here are a few things you can do about it.

Take charge of responding to media: Google “Delhi” news and if the report says “Hindu-Muslim clash” or “communal violence” or “communal riot” look for the twitter account of the writer to tweet at her/him that it was a pre-planned attack. 

New York Times coverage about India has been somewhat balanced until now. As a result the Hindu American Foundation, which is an ally of the Modi regime and publicly supports these discriminatory laws against Muslims, has been bombarding them with emails and phone calls.

Tweet to the New York Times reporter in India at @gettleman Also write a letter to the editor letters@nytimes.com

India's Discriminatory Citizenship laws threaten and hurt minorities

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A human rights lawyer from India brought Muslims’ concerns about his country’s new citizenship law to a hearing on Capitol Hill.

“The fear among Muslims today is genuine,” testified Aman Wadud, who defends detainees in the northeastern state of Assam. “The fear of losing citizenship is genuine.”

Wadud spoke at a Wednesday (March 4) hearing of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom at the Russell Senate Office Building.

In December, the Parliament in majority-Hindu India passed a Citizenship Amendment Act that for the first time makes religion a criterion for citizenship. While the law gives Hindus and religious minorities from neighboring Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan a fast track to citizenship, it excludes Muslims. An estimated 190 million Muslims comprise just under 15% of India’s population.

Wadud said the recent protests in the capital city of Delhi — which erupted into violence that targeted Muslims and left dozens dead — are not only about the Citizenship Amendment Act, but also about plans for a National Population Register and a possible National Register of Citizens. Critics’ worries include the possible need to present documentation. 

“How do you prove that you were born in India?” he asked. “You need a birth certificate. Most of the people do not have birth certificates.”

The hearing on citizenship laws and religious freedom was held within a week after President Donald Trump met in New Delhi with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which time some of the violence took place. Several U.S. cities, most recently Albany, New York, have passed resolutions denouncing changes to the citizenship law by India’s far-right government.

Ashutosh Varshney, director of Brown University’s Center for Contemporary South Asia, testified that protests about the CAA since the enactment of the law in December have mostly been nonviolent. Though Muslims have predominated the protests, non-Muslims have participated in significant numbers.

Protesters view CAA as a departure from India’s Constitution — which includes sections on the rights to equality and to freedom of religion — that could leave many current Muslim citizens “stateless” and vulnerable if they lose basic rights.

“The threat is serious and implications quite horrendous,” Varshney said. “Something deeply injurious to the Muslim minority can happen once their citizenship rights are taken away.”

He said such a circumstance could lead to marginalization and “creates an enabling atmosphere for those who think they can act violently on behalf of the nation against the minorities.”

USCIRF Vice Chair Gayle Manchin posited that such action could “create another Holocaust” or lead to genocide.

“Yes, the threat of violence becomes so prevalent,” she said.

Commissioners of USCIRF, an independent agency, noted that citizenship has been revoked for religious minorities in countries ranging from Vietnam to Kenya. Two other panelists at the hearing highlighted the situation of Rohingya, an ethnic and religious minority with many refugees who have left Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh after losing their citizenship rights.

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Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, recently returned from a visit to Cox’s Bazar, an area of Bangladesh where close to 1 million displaced Rohingya refugees are living.

“The most common refrain we heard from Rohingya refugees,” said Kikoler, whose center is at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “was that they wanted their citizenship restored.”

Azeem Ibrahim, an expert on displacement and migration at the Center for Global Policy, said the mistreatment of Rohingya is being echoed in India.

“This pattern of using legal changes to mask religious discrimination and strip identifiable groups of citizenship is also a feature of Modi’s BJP government in India,” said Ibrahim, chair of the Rohingya Legal Forum.

USCIRF Chair Tony Perkins said in an interview after the hearing that he thinks it will take work by the international community to address the plight of the Rohingya, which he describes as “just quite frankly, a mess.”

He hoped the hearing’s attention on India might discourage other nations from following its example.

“By drawing attention to this, that this is unacceptable even within the legal framework of a country,” he said, “we’re sending a message to other countries that might be considering similar activity that this is not acceptable.”

Justice abused in fascist Myanmar

The persecuted Rohingyas are caught between man-eating tiger in the land and the sharks in the sea. The Buddhist Myanmar has been guilty of genocidal crimes against them. The surviving few inside Myanmar have no rights. However, when they try to leave the den of intolerance inside Myanmar, they are imprisoned and given extra-ordinary sentences. See the report below from the RFA.
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Myanmar Court Jails 15 Rohingya For Two Years For Trying to Flee Country

2020-03-06 

Myanmar police officers escort the convicted Rohingya to a police van following their sentencing at a courthouse in Minhla township, central Myanmar's Magway region, March 6, 2020.RFA video screenshot

A court in central Myanmar’s Magway region on Friday sentenced 15 Rohingya Muslims to a maximum of two years in prison each for attempting to leave the country illegally, an immigration official said.

Authorities in Minhla township arrested the 15 adults and one child for traveling without official proof of identity or travel documents on Feb. 14.

Eight men and seven women were sentenced at the township courthouse under Section 6(3) of Myanmar’s Immigration Act and immediately transferred to Thayet Prison, while the six-year-old was sent to the Magway Child Care Center run by the region’s social welfare department.

“Their sentence came fast because they traveled without any proof of identity or travel documents,” said Minhla township immigration officer Aung Pyi Soe who testified at the hearings. “We didn’t need much evidence to convict them.”

But because of restrictions on their freedom of movement, the Rohingya cannot freely travel inside or outside Myanmar without first obtaining official permission. Those who decide to travel illegally usually do not take identification cards with them, which all Myanmar residents must carry.

More than 200 Rohingya have been charged under the same act during the past three years, he added.

About 70 other Rohingya adults who also tried to illegally flee Myanmar but were arrested on Feb. 20-21 appeared Friday at the courthouse in Yangon region’s Hlegu township amid their ongoing trial.

The group consists of 67 adults and three children under 10 years of age. They are on trial for violating Myanmar’s nationality statutes for traveling illegally and without documentation.

Four witnesses, including the head of Hlegu's Myoma Police Station, testified Friday.

“The Immigration Department filed a case against them under the Immigration Act,” said Maung Maung Oo, head of the police Station. “We were with immigration officers when we arrested these Rohingya. That’s why I am here as a witness.”

Authorities apprehended the Rohingya, who hail from Rakhine’s Kyautphyu, Sittwe, Minbya, and Buthidaung townships, as they were heading to Malaysia with the help of human traffickers.

One of those charged said the group left to escape travel restrictions imposed on them and to find work.

“We cannot travel and don’t have jobs in Rakhine,” said the Rohingya who did not provide a name. “We find it difficult to survive. That’s why we fled from our homes.”

‘Seduced by traffickers’

Attorney Thazin Myat Myat Win, who is defending the Rohingya, said that traffickers told the members of the group that they would help them get jobs in Malaysia.

“They were seduced by traffickers because they lack job opportunities,” he said, adding that some had to pay the traffickers 1 million kyats (U.S. $674), while others paid 3 million kyats (U.S. $2,000) each to the traffickers.

“Some kids said that the traffickers told the Rohingya who couldn’t pay them before leaving that they could pay them after they got jobs in Malaysia,” Thazin Myat Myat Win said.

Rohingya activist Thar Aye said the Rohingya did not deserve to be sentenced.

“Although they don’t have proof of identity to travel in the country, the sure thing is they are not foreigners,” he said. “Instead of giving them jail sentences, authorities should send them back to their places of origin.”

Thousands of Rohingya have tried to leave Myanmar in the last several years to escape institutionalized persecution, grinding poverty, and insecurity in Rakhine state.

They have paid human traffickers hundreds of dollars or more each to transport them to other Muslim-friendly nations in Southeast Asia where they hoped to have a better life.

Myanmar authorities have apprehended more than 2,200 Rohingya Muslims as they attempted to illegally leave the country by sea since 2015, according to a list of the detainees obtained from a naval officer by RFA’s Myanmar Service in February.

Nearly 1,500 Rohingya were detained in 2015, more than 500 were picked up in 2018, and roughly 250 have been apprehended so far in 2019, according to the list provided by the officer, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to give information to the media.

The figures do not include Rohingya who fled by land from two brutal military-led crackdowns in northern Rakhine state in 2016 and 2017.

During the first round of violence, about 90,000 Muslims left and headed across the border and into Bangladesh, while the second more brutal clampdown forced more than 740,000 out of their villages and into Myanmar's neighboring country.

Of the estimated 600,000 Rohingya still living in Rakhine state, about 120,000 reside in internally displaced persons camps where they were sent to live following communal violence with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.

Those living in refugee camps in Bangladesh have refused to return to Myanmar despite a repatriation agreement signed in November 2017 that lets approved Muslims voluntarily return to Rakhine state. They fear reprisals of targeted violence and continued repression and discrimination if they return.

Funds for Rohingya crisis

Myanmar, which has denied that its soldiers committed widespread atrocities against the Rohingya, now faces legal action against it on genocide-related charges at three courts — the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court, and an Argentine court.

The ICJ in January ordered the country to protect the Rohingya from further harm and genocidal acts and to refrain from destroying evidence of alleged crimes that could be used in later hearings.

On Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), International Organization for Migration, and other NGOs issued an appeal for U.S. $877 million in humanitarian assistance for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The funds will be used “to respond to the needs of approximately 855,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and over 444,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in the communities generously hosting them,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

The Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis will help provide food, shelter, clean water and sanitation, health care, protection, education, and site management, it said.

In response to the call, the U.S. State Department on the same day announced more than $59 million in additional humanitarian assistance for Rohingya refugees and host communities in Bangladesh and for internally displaced Rohingya and members of other affected communities in Myanmar.

The U.S. has now contributed a total of nearly U.S. $820 million in humanitarian assistance for the Rohingya crisis since the August 2017 crackdown. Of this funding, almost U.S. $693 million has been earmarked for programs inside Bangladesh.

“We continue to call on Burma to create the conditions that would allow for voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable returns, based on the informed consent of those who have been forcibly displaced,” the statement said.

“We also call on the government of Burma to ensure unhindered and sustained humanitarian access to all people requiring assistance,” it said.

Reported by Myint Zaw Oo and Kyaw Lwin Oo for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Rohingya Activist Urges US to Ramp Up Pressure on Myanmar

By Mohammad Hussain

March 01, 2020 03:04 PM

Tun Khin, President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, reacts outside the International Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 23, 2020, after the court ordered Myanmar take all measures in its power to prevent genocide against the Rohingya.

The United States should increase pressure on Myanmar to end persecution of ethnic minorities and restore the citizenship rights of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims driven from that country by government-sanctioned violence, said a Rohingya political activist visiting Washington last week.

Tun Khin, president of the London-based Myanmar Rohingya Association UK, lauded the U.S. government as “a champion for the refugees’ humanitarian aid”

]] and its sanctions against several Myanmar military leaders for alleged rights abuses. But he also encouraged Washington to back the tiny African country of Gambia in its genocide case against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).“

We need more powerful countries to join with Gambia to move forward this case,” Tun Khin said in an interview Thursday with VOA.

FILE -Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves in a car after attending a hearing in a case filed by Gambia accusing Myanmar of genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population, at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands.

A day earlier, the South Asian island nation of Maldives announced it would join the Gambia in its ICJ case. The suit, filed at The Hague in November, accuses Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in its treatment of Rohingyas. Both Maldives and Gambia are predominantly Muslim; Myanmar has a Buddhist majority.

Celebrity attention

The Maldives’ case will be represented by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. She previously had represented the Maldives’ former president, Mohamed Nasheed, getting a U.N. determination that he had been unfairly tried and imprisoned on politically motivated terrorism charges in 2015. The Maldivian Supreme Court suspended his 13-year jail sentence in 2018.  

Clooney is married to Hollywood actor George Clooney. Her backing of the Rohingyas’ cause “is big,” Tun Khin said, noting her celebrity “will give more attention to the case.” That, he said, will benefit Rohingyas and “other minorities in Burma. We all want justice.”

Recent months have brought other legal action on the Rohingyas’ behalf. In November, the International Criminal Court said it would investigate Myanmar’s military for alleged crimes against humanity. At the same time, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK – the group Tun Khin leads – filed a “universal jurisdiction” case against Myanmar in Argentina. As he explained in an Al-Jazeera opinion piece, the case “is based on the principle that some crimes are so horrific that they concern humanity as a whole, and can be tried anywhere regardless of where they were committed.”

Asked about the timetable for the Argentine case, Tun Khin said prosecutors were “analyzing the case. I believe that in a few weeks’ time, we will hear some good news.”

Emotional moment

In January, Tun Khin was in the courtroom when the ICJ – the United Nation’s top court – imposed emergency “provisional measures” on Myanmar, also known as Burma. “It almost brought me to tears,” he said of the ruling.

The court ordered the government to prevent any acts of genocide against the estimated 600,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims remaining in the country.  Another 1.1 million live in neighboring Bangladesh, where more than 723,000 had fled after a bloody military crackdown in August 2017. Myanmar’s government has said it was acting to quell terrorist threats after Rohingya insurgents attacked military outposts in Rakhine state.  

United Nations investigators have accused the military of burning villages and raping and killing civilians with “genocidal intent.” While defending the military at an ICJ hearing in mid-December, Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledged some individuals might have used excessive force but said they would face military tribunals at home.    

FILE - Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the top United Nations court, after court hearings in a case filed by Gambia against Myanmar alleging genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population.

Tun Khin urged the United States to describe Myanmar’s actions as “genocide” – a determination that the ICJ is considering in the case that may take years to decide. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has denounced the “Burmese military’s horrific atrocities” and, in a 2018 report, called the violence “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.”

Washington focus

Last Tuesday, Tun Khin joined in a Capitol Hill panel discussion on “Justice and Human Rights in Burma: The Way Forward.” The event – sponsored by American Jewish World Service, Amnesty International and Refugees International – opened with remarks by Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Todd Young of Indiana. Both support the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, a bill to promote democracy and human rights.

The Rohingya people, Cardin said, “have been subject to genocidal activities. And we have to speak out against that and act out against that – take steps to make sure this never can happen [again].”

Those steps, Tun Khin said, should include:

Seeking stronger sanctions on Myanmar. In December, the U.S. government tightened restrictions on four Burmese military leaders accused of rights violations, freezing any U.S. assets. Last July, they had been banned from entering the country. The Rohingya activist called for ending U.S. corporate ties to any Myanmar businesses – such as in the oil sector – that benefit the Burmese military.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol Building is seen in Washington. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)

Encouraging Bangladesh to lift restrictions on education and internet access in Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. In January, Bangladesh announced it would expand schooling for youngsters – perhaps as early as April. They currently receive basic lessons in English, Burmese, life skills, math and drawing and only through early primary years. 

In September, Bangladesh’s government shut down 3G and 4G mobile phone services and internet access in the camps, leaving only limited phone service. The telecommunications minister said the move would enhance “state security” and “public safety.” Human Rights Watch objected, saying the communications block puts refugees “at serious risk” regarding “security, health and other necessary services.”      

Tun Khin, who left Myanmar in the 1990s after he was blocked from university access, said he appreciated U.S. humanitarian aid for his people. The U.S. government is the top aid contributor to the crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh, providing more than $669 million since August 2017.

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The violence in Delhi is not a ‘riot’. It is targeted anti-Muslim brutality

Kenan Malik

A man collects the remains of damaged fruit in a row of burnt-out shops in north-east Delhi on 28 February. Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA

To read the article in the Guardian, click here.

Myanmar army clash with insurgents kills five Rohingya

YANGON (Reuters) - At least five ethnic Rohingya were killed and several injured after troops clashed with insurgents in Myanmar’s conflict-torn western state of Rakhine, a lawmaker and two residents said on Sunday.

Saturday’s fighting broke out after Arakan Army rebels attacked a military convoy passing the historic temple town of Mrauk U, the regional MP, Tun Thar Sein, and a spokesman for the armed group, Khine Thu Kha, said.

Two military spokesmen did not answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek comment, and the army did not immediately issue a statement on its website.

Khine Thu Kha, the Arakan Army spokesman, blamed government troops for the civilian casualties.

A government spokesman said he could not comment.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the details of the attack in the remote area, where journalists are barred and internet access curtailed.

Myanmar army artillery shells hit the village of Bu Ta Lone, killing four people, the Arakan Army spokesman said in a message.

The MP, a health worker who treated the injured, and a villager said at least five Rohingya, members of a persecuted Muslim minority, had died.

There were conflicting accounts of the number of Rohingya injured, which ranged from six to 11, along with several members of the state’s Rakhine ethnic majority.

Rakhine is the state from which more than 730,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for neighboring Bangladesh after a military crackdown in 2017 that the U.N. has said was executed with genocidal intent. Myanmar denies committing genocide.

Several hundred thousand Rohingya remain in Myanmar, many confined to camps and villages where they are caught in the middle of fresh fighting between the military and Arakan Army, which recruits from the mostly Buddhist majority in a drive for greater autonomy from the central government.

That conflict has displaced tens of thousands and killed dozens.

Tun Thar Sein, the Mrauk U MP, said troops responded with gunfire and shelling in two villages on Saturday after rebels attacked their convoy.

“In response to that, the military started firing at suspicious locations,” he said.

A local health worker, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said three of the Rakhine ethnic majority were also injured and one woman had died of cardiac arrest.

TRAPPED BY FIGHTING

Journalists are blocked from traveling to most of central and northern Rakhine, now in the eighth month of a mobile internet shutdown the government justifies on grounds of security.

Many of the several hundred thousand Rohingya still in Rakhine are confined to apartheid-like conditions, unable to travel freely or access healthcare and education.

“Five Muslims died as their bodies were found,” a Rohingya villager from the area told Reuters on Sunday, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. “Their funeral was held today.”

He said the bodies had bullet wounds.

“We can’t go out and we can’t go anywhere,” he added. “We are just staying safe in our village. If this keeps happening, I feel like there is no hope.”

Saturday’s attack was one of several to kill Rohingya this year.

In early January, four Rohingya children died in a blast the military and rebels blamed on each other.

Weeks later, two women were killed after shells hit a village in Buthidaung township, two days after the world court ordered Myanmar to protect the minority.

At the time, the military blamed the Arakan Army for those deaths, saying it would not have carried out an attack just after a world court verdict in a genocide lawsuit brought by Gambia in November against Myanmar.

In January, the International Court of Justice at the Hague had ordered Myanmar to protect the Rohingya against further atrocities and preserve evidence of alleged crimes.