Tag: Rohingya

Rohingya in India accuse Modi of double standards on citizenship law | Rohingya News

Kolkata, India – Muhammad Hamin has been unable to sleep at night since March 8 when the government of the northeast Indian state of Manipur ordered the deportation of Rohingya refugees.

On that day, the state’s Chief Minister N Biren Singh – who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – posted on X that his government had deported the first batch of eight refugees from a group of 77 members who had “entered India illegally”.

The deportation was later stopped after Myanmar authorities refused to work with India on the matter.

Hamin, a Rohingya who came to India in 2018, is in New Delhi, some 1,700km (1,050 miles) away from Manipur. But the 26-year-old, who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration in India’s capital, spends his time watching television or scrolling through social media platforms on his mobile phone for any updates on attempts to deport members of his community.

He does this even as he observes the dawn-to-dusk fasts during the holy month of Ramadan.

“The news of deportation has certainly triggered a panic button among most of the Myanmar nationals living in India as nobody knows who would be the next to go out and face the same horror of violence and bloodshed,” he said.

For many Rohingya refugees in India, that fear is tinged with bitter irony. Three days after the Manipur government began its crackdown on Rohingya, Modi’s government on March 11 announced the implementation of a controversial citizenship law aimed at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants nationality to six religious minorities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – who had come to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before 2015 and faced religious persecution.

Missing from the list of potential beneficiaries are Muslim communities from these nations, who are the targets of violence, such as the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan and the Hazara in Afghanistan. Also absent are the Rohingya, from another bordering nation, also persecuted, and also mostly Muslim.

“We are also the victims of religious persecution, just like the citizens of three other countries that will be granted citizenship. We are also a minority in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar. But the Indian government is not bothered about us simply because we are Muslims,” a Rohingya rights activist told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals from the government.

Rohingya children at a refugee settlement in New Delhi [Handout via Al Jazeera]

A long struggle

The Rohingya are a mainly Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar, which denies them citizenship, thereby rendering them stateless and without basic rights. The community, most of whom are residents of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, has been facing violence and repression in the Buddhist-majority country for decades.

In 2017, more than 750,000 Rohingya were forced to flee Myanmar after it launched what the United Nations has called a military campaign conducted with “genocidal intent”. The people fled to the coasts of southern Bangladesh, transforming the region into the world’s largest refugee camp.

Many also fled to neighbouring India or reached the country after fleeing the camps in Bangladesh.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says nearly 79,000 refugees from Myanmar, including Rohingya, live in India, with about 22,000 registered with the UN refugee agency. Most Rohingya in India have been given UNHCR cards that recognise them as a persecuted community.

Hamin arrived in India in 2018 – a year after his family of 11 members landed in Bangladesh’s cramped settlements.

“My family is still in Bangladesh but I came here for my education and started living with my friends who had come here before me,” he said.

But like other Rohingya refugees in India, his existence in the country is precarious.

India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which spells out the rights of refugees and a state’s responsibilities towards them. The South Asian country also does not have a law protecting refugees.

Critics have slammed the government for excluding persecuted minorities such as the Rohingya from Myanmar or the Ahmadis from Pakistan from the scope of the citizenship law, calling it a double standard aimed at pandering to anti-Muslim tropes ahead of the general election starting next month.

‘Reckless statements’

During a hearing last week on a plea challenging the deportation of Rohingya, the government told the Supreme Court the group did not have the fundamental right to live in India.

The Rohingya activist who requested anonymity said: “We have the refugee cards issued by the UNHCR but the Indian government claims we do not have the fundamental right to live in India.”

Supreme Court lawyer Colin Gonsalves condemned the government’s stand.

“The right to live is not only for Indians but covers all citizens in the territory of India, including the Rohingya and others who flee religious persecution. The Indian Constitution protects their rights but it is surprising that senior officers in the government are making reckless statements,” he said.

“The top court makes it clear that protection of the lives of the refugees is a constitutional right. They are protected under [the] non-refoulement or non-return policy that states a refugee cannot be sent back to the place from where he or she had fled due to the fear of physical or sexual assault.”

Myanmar refugees story [Handout via Al Jazeera]
Rohingya men and women at a shelter in New Delhi [Handout via Al Jazeera]

‘Future seems dark’

Salai Dokhar is a New Delhi-based activist who runs India for Myanmar, a political campaign creating awareness of the rights of refugees. He fears the deportation of Rohingya could endanger the lives of the refugees amid a civil war in Myanmar that arose after a military coup in the country in 2021.

“We fear the refugees might be used by the [Myanmar] army as human shields in the [civil] war or would be treated badly for leaving the country,” he said, adding that if the Indian government was adamant about deporting the Rohingya, it should hand them over to the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), a platform of opposition parties in Myanmar.

For years, the Rohingya in India were also subjected to a hate campaign by alleged right-wing Hindu groups on social media. In January, Hamin and a fellow Rohingya, Muhammad Kawsar, 19, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court demanding action against Facebook for providing a platform for an anti-refugee social media campaign. The petitioners urged the court to order the United States-based social media company to remove hate speech and other harmful content.

“We have been noticing that there are hate campaigns against us on Facebook but the company has done nothing to stop them. Some posts are briefly suspended and soon restored on social media. Such posts heighten the risk of attacks on the vulnerable community by branding them as terrorists,” said Hamin.

Germany-based Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin, also the co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, a non-profit fighting for the rights of the community, said the Indian media’s frequent portrayal of the Rohingya as a potential national security threat has compounded their challenges.

“The right-wing Indian government doesn’t hold a favourable outlook towards us and the situation is only made worse by the apathetic attitude of the media,” he said.

“We just need some protection to live here [until] the situation normalises in our country. But the future seems dark for us.”

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Conflict, climate, corruption drive Southeast Asia people trafficking: UN | Human Trafficking News

Latest report comes amid a surge in mostly Muslim Rohingya making dangerous sea journeys in search of safety.

Conflict, climate and the demand for low-paid labour in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia, with corruption as a “major enabler”, are driving the growth of the people smuggling trade in Southeast Asia, according to a new report from the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Tens of thousands of people from Myanmar as well as from other parts of Southeast Asia and from outside the region are smuggled to, through and from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand every year, the UNODC said in its report Migrant Smuggling in Southeast Asia, which was published on Tuesday.

The report identified three key trends in people smuggling: the demand for workers willing to take on low-wage jobs and the limited channels available for people to fill these jobs legally; the existence of “substantial populations” of people in need of international protection but also with few legal ways to reach safety; and the prevalence of corruption among some public officials.

The report noted that such corruption acted as a “driver and enabler of migrant smuggling, as well as contributing to impunity for perpetrators. Public officials share smuggling profits; are bribed to ensure compliance; and obstruct criminal investigations.”

The UNODC surveyed some 4,785 migrants and refugees in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand for the report, with 83 percent of them saying they were smuggled. An additional 60 migrants and refugees also took part in in-depth qualitative interviews, while 35 key informants were interviewed.

One in four of those smuggled said they had experienced corruption and been forced to bribe officials including immigration officers, police and the military. The UNODC noted that corruption also fed the smuggling trade, because those making the journey felt they needed the smugglers to deal with state authorities, because of the corruption.

Many of those fleeing conflict were from Myanmar, including the mostly Muslim Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled into neighbouring Bangladesh when the military began a brutal crackdown in 2017, which is now being investigated as genocide.

The report comes amid a surge in the number of Rohingya people risking dangerous sea journeys from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the hope of reaching safety in Southeast Asia.

On Monday, Indonesia ended the search for a boat thought to be carrying about 150 people that capsized off the coast of the northern province of Aceh, tossing dozens of people into the sea. Some 69 people were rescued and three bodies recovered.

The UNODC also found that abuse was rife, with three-quarters of those surveyed saying they had experienced some form of abuse during their journey from the smugglers themselves, the military and police, or criminal gangs. Physical violence was the most reported type of abuse.

In 2015, Thailand and Malaysia discovered mass graves at more than two dozen trafficking camps hidden in the jungle on the Malaysian side of the border at Wang Kelian. Police found 139 graves as well as signs that those held there had been tortured.

Thailand and Malaysia carried out a joint investigation into the camps and Thailand convicted 62 defendants, including nine government officials, over the deaths and trafficking of Rohingya and Bangladeshis to Malaysia via Thailand two years later.

Last June, Malaysia charged four Thai nationals over the camps after they were extradited from Bangkok.

An earlier inquiry found that no Malaysian enforcement officials, public servants or local citizens were involved in trafficking syndicates, but there was “gross negligence” on the part of border patrols who had failed to notice the camps.

As well as conflict and work, the UNODC said climate change had emerged as a factor in people smuggling to Southeast Asia.

The report said one in four of those surveyed had said they felt compelled to migrate because of more extreme weather events including heat waves and flooding, including three out of four Bangladeshis surveyed.

The report found the average price paid to be smuggled to Southeast Asia was $2,380 with men paying slightly more than women.

Afghans being smuggled to Malaysia and Indonesia paid the most – $6,004.

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Bodies of three Rohingya found as Indonesia ends rescue for capsized boat | Rohingya News

Local authorities in Aceh province have received several reports about dead bodies floating in nearby waters since Saturday.

The bodies of three Rohingya refugees have been found in open waters off Indonesia’s Aceh province, says the provincial search-and-rescue agency as authorities end a search for survivors from a capsized boat.

The wooden boat with an estimated 151 people on board capsized some 19km (12 miles) from the beach of Kuala Bubon on the west coast of Aceh on Wednesday morning. Fishers and a search-and-rescue team rescued 75 people from the boat by Thursday – 44 men, 22 women and nine children – after they huddled on its overturned hull throughout the night.

However, more than 70 Rohingya were “presumed dead or missing”, which if confirmed would be the biggest loss of life in such an incident so far this year, the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

“After we searched the area, the team found three bodies, two adult women and one boy. They are allegedly Rohingya refugees who were the passengers of the capsized and sunken boat,” Al Hussain, chief of Banda Aceh Search and Rescue Agency, said in a statement on Sunday.

Fishers first spotted the three bodies and reported them to local authorities on Saturday. The bodies were taken to the hospital in Calang city in Aceh Jaya district before local authorities buried them.

Officials of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said survivors had confirmed the deceased refugees were on the capsized boat.

“We have verified … we [took] one of the refugees to identify and verify that they were together on the boat,” Faisal Rahman of UNHCR in Aceh said on Saturday.

Local authorities in Aceh have received several reports about dead bodies floating in nearby waters since Saturday. Most of those presumed to have died – mainly women and children – were likely unable to swim, and were carried out to sea by the currents.

The predominately Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar faces widespread discrimination, and most are denied citizenship. About one million of them fled to Bangladesh – including about 740,000 in 2017 – as refugees to escape a brutal campaign by Myanmar’s security forces, who were accused of committing mass rapes and killings and burning thousands of homes.

In recent years, many Rohingya have been fleeing overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to embark on dangerous sea journeys on rickety boats to reach Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia in search of a better future. Many have drowned on the way. The 2023 toll of at least 569 Rohingya dead or missing while trying to flee Myanmar or Bangladesh was the highest since 2014, the UNHCR said in January.

Indonesia, like Thailand and Malaysia, is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, and so is not obligated to accept them. However, it generally provides temporary shelter to refugees in distress. More than 2,300 Rohingya arrived in Indonesia last year, UNHCR data showed, surpassing the number of arrivals in the previous four years combined.

However, resistance to the Rohingya has grown in Indonesia, where some allege, without evidence, that the refugees receive more resources from aid agencies than residents and that they engage in criminal activity. Locals have protested for authorities to turn back Rohingya arriving on boats.

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How is renewed violence in Myanmar affecting the Rohingya? | Rohingya News

The Rohingya are yet again bearing the brunt of renewed fighting and military air strikes in Myanmar, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned this week.

The latest wave of fighting by rebel groups who want to overturn the country’s 2021 military coup flared up in October last year. The military extended the country’s state of emergency in January and announced a new, mandatory conscription programme in mid-February, which is also feared may disproportionately affect the Rohingya people.

Not only are the Muslim-majority Rohingya being bombed “indiscriminately” but they are also being forcefully drafted into the army even though they are not recognised as citizens and have long been subject to persecution by the State Administrative Council (SAC) – or the military government – activists say.

Here’s what we know so far:

What is happening in Myanmar?

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was under military rule for five decades until the 2015 election, when democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory. However, the military removed her in a coup on February 1, 2021, prompting an armed uprising by rebel groups which has continued since.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) has reported that 4,680 people have been killed by the Myanmar military since the start of the coup.

Most recently, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a collective of armed anti-coup resistance groups – the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – launched a major offensive in October 2023.

Codenamed Operation 1027, the attack by the alliance on October 27 last year led to the fall of more than 100 military posts as the military retreated and left heavy weapons and significant ammunition behind.

In November 2023, the military announced that it had lost control of Chinshwehaw, which borders China’s Yunnan province and is central to the flow of trade from Myanmar to China, after days of fighting with armed groups.

In January, the Arakan Army, one of the armed rebel groups, said it had taken full control of a key western town, Paletwa, in Chin state, having overrun several military outposts.

The military has responded with force. “The Myanmar junta has been indiscriminately bombing Rohingya areas in different townships in Rakhine state,” said Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, a global network of Rohingya activists.

Quoting local sources, Nay San Lwin said on Monday, 23 Rohingya, including children and a religious scholar, were killed during the bombardment of the western Minbya township. Additionally, 30 Rohingya were injured. “These attacks on Rohingya are happening everywhere,” said Nay San Lwin.

Other factors, such as a declining economy and depleting natural gas reserves, which are a crucial revenue source for the military government, have further brought its legitimacy into question.

A recent mandatory conscription order has triggered panic throughout Myanmar, with many residents looking for ways to escape. For the Rohingya, however, avoiding the draft is particularly difficult due to their restricted mobility.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are a Muslim-majority ethnic group in Myanmar. Myanmar is ethnically diverse, with 135 major ethnic groups and seven ethnic minority states, according to the international human rights organisation, Minority Rights Group. Among these, the Burmese are the largest and most dominant group.

The Rohingya are not acknowledged in this list of 135 groups and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982. Nearly all the Rohingya live in the coastal state of Rakhine, which was called Arakan until 1990.

While Aung San Suu Kyi’s electoral victory was initially viewed as a desperately needed reprieve from a long period of unjust military regimes, she remained silent on the issue of the Rohingya.

The Myanmar military has repeatedly cracked down on the Rohingya in Rakhine since the 1970s. This has resulted in a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees to neighbouring Bangladesh. In 2017, a violent military crackdown forced more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees across the border. During crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.

How does the new conscription law affect the Rohingya?

On February 10, the Myanmar military government announced that it would enact the People’s Military Service Law which makes conscription mandatory for young men and women, but which had lain dormant since it was passed under a previous military administration in 2010.

The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said on February 21 that the imposition of the mandatory draft was a sign of the military’s “weakness and desperation”.

Men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 can be drafted into the armed forces for two years at a time, and this term can be extended to five years when a national emergency is declared.

Nay San Lwin told Al Jazeera that local sources had reported at least 1,000 people from the Rohingya community being taken by the military from three towns – Buthidaung, Sittwe and Kyaukphyu. Nay San Lwin added that some have completed two weeks of training and have been taken to the battlefield. “Dozens have been killed on the battlefield while being used as human shields in Rathedaung township,” he added. The Myanmar military has previously used porters as human shields.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify these accounts of conscription of the Rohingya.

The Rakhine state has experienced communications blackouts since at least 2019. A blackout was reinstated in January this year with only limited access to communications since then.

Zaw Win, a human rights specialist at the independent Southeast Asia-based rights group, Fortify Rights, said that during these limited periods, the group has received phone calls from Rohingya people saying they have witnessed friends and family members being taken from camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Rakhine by the military.

Zaw Win added that his team had interviewed a man who had “witnessed how the junta military took away the Rohingya youth from Ward 5, Buthidaung. The military came in their vehicle and caught the Rohingya”, he said.

However, he said that Fortify Rights has not been able to independently verify these reports so far.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK in London, also highlighted reports of forced recruitment via his account on X.

The military government has not issued any official statement about the recruitment of the Rohingya into the armed forces, but Nay San Lwin said it had issued a denial that young Rohingya were “forcibly recruited, arrested and then taken to military battalions for training” via state newspapers in both English and Burmese.

It is especially difficult for the 600,000 Rohingya living in camps and villages in Rakhine to leave Myanmar in order to escape conscription, activists say.

To move from one village to another, individuals must obtain permission from the village administrators who are also Rohingya but act under orders from the military. This process can be long and costly, requiring approvals from several different local government departments.

Activists claim recruiting the Rohingya is designed to create communal tensions between the Rohingya and the Rakhine Buddhists.

Videos surfaced on social media on March 19 showing the Rohingya apparently protesting against the Arakan Army. However, many X users speculated that this was a military government-sponsored protest. In an X post, Aung Kyaw Moe, cabinet member of the National Unity Government Myanmar – the elected MPs who were removed in the coup – wrote, “Junta is using the Rohingya as a proxy to protest against AA [Arakan Army] in Buthidang is not definitely organic.”

Myanmar’s 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya has been under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2019. However, there has been a lack of progress in the case.

“It has been three years since the coup, and not a single ICC member state has referred Myanmar to the ICC. I think that’s a practical failure, it’s a moral failure. But it’s one that can be rectified,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights.

A separate case was also filed by The Gambia in 2019 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya. While the ICJ issued orders for provisional measures to be taken by Myanmar to protect the Rohingya, Nay San Lwin and Smith said that no action has been taken.

“The UN Security Council should regard the Myanmar military flouting the provisional measures as a reason for action,” said Smith.

Nay San Lwin said that the Rohingya crisis could be resolved if a civilian government which acknowledges the plight of the Rohingya comes to power. Furthermore, he said: “If the international community takes serious action against the military, we will not suffer.”

 



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Photos: Desperate, dehydrated Rohingyas picked up in dramatic sea rescue | Rohingya News

As the skipper of an Indonesian search-and-rescue vessel scoured the sea early on Thursday, a dot appeared on the horizon – dozens of Rohingya refugees drifting on the rusty hull of their overturned ship poking out of the water.

Against the ocean expanse were men, women and children trying to escape Bangladeshi camps filled with poverty, crime and a lack of hope to reach the shores of Indonesia or, eventually, Malaysia for a better life.

Under the beating sun, a rescuer had seen one of the men desperately waving a red shirt through his binoculars, hailing the ship in the direction of the group whose boat capsized on Wednesday, with dozens feared to have been swept away.

The group was standing on their makeshift metal buoy because there was not enough room for them all to sit with more than half of it submerged by the sea, AFP footage from the rescue boat showed.

But the arrival of the rescuers had brought hope.

“The first thing I saw was a little girl, around five years old. A rescuer carried the girl. I looked at her feet and they were badly wrinkly, as if they had been submerged in water for a long time,” said an AFP journalist on board the rescue ship.

“She looked so weak and dehydrated, but her face seemed hopeful again.”

As the rescue boat approached them, a group of men and children stood together, water tumbling around their legs as the rescuers tied a rope to the hull to keep their dinghy close.

Some men panicked and tried to jump into the inflatable rescue boat, having to be calmed down by their peers and the rescuers.

Others then made sure to let the children stranded on the hull board the rescue boat first.

As the rescuers negotiated who they should first take back to a larger ship, some of the men had to be dragged on to rescue dinghies, with no energy left in their arms.

Others looked on patiently as they waited for their turns to be rescued. Many had no shirts on their backs despite the scorching temperatures.

The 69 successfully reached land in Aceh on Thursday afternoon, with most taken to a temporary shelter. Some were immediately taken to hospital.

Yet the status of those who accompanied them but were swept away when the boat capsized remains unknown.

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UN seeking more than $850m for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh | Rohingya News

Bangladesh hosts more than a million Rohingya people, many of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.

The United Nations is calling for more donations for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.

In its annual response plan to the crisis, the UN appealed for $852.4m to provide food and other aid to the mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees and their host communities.

Bangladesh has taken in more than a million members of the mostly stateless minority, many of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar, where conflict continues to escalate.

About 95 percent of the Rohingya people in Bangladesh remain dependent on humanitarian assistance, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Wednesday.

“International solidarity with Bangladesh and refugee protection is needed more than ever as the conflict in Myanmar escalates,” it said.

The UN made a similar appeal last year, asking countries to provide $876m to help the Rohingya, but only $440m was provided.

With the humanitarian crisis largely out of the international spotlight, the UNHCR warned that significant funding shortfalls in recent years has had “serious implications”.

Many of the refugees are struggling to meet their basic needs, it warned, insisting that “sustained assistance is critically and urgently needed.”

More than 75 percent of the refugees receiving aid are women and children, it said, adding that they are facing “heightened risks of abuse, exploitation and gender-based violence”.

“More than half of the refugees in the camps are under 18, languishing amidst limited opportunities for education, skills-building and livelihoods,” the UNHCR said.

The donations will be used to pay for food, shelter, healthcare, drinking water access, protection services, education and other assistance, the agency said.

Many Rohingya wanting to escape conditions in the camps have attempted dangerous, often deadly boat journeys to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, there is little progress towards repatriating the refugees to Myanmar, which is facing a UN genocide probe over the 2017 crackdown.

In 2021, the military seized power in Myanmar, ousting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government.

“The human rights situation in Myanmar has morphed into a never-ending nightmare away from the spotlight of global politics,” UN rights chief Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council this month.

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Dozens of Rohingya refugees flee Malaysian immigration detention centre | Rohingya News

Police blame riot after 115 Rohingya and 16 other people from Myanmar escaped the facility on Thursday night.

Malaysia is searching for dozens of Rohingya refugees and other people from Myanmar after they escaped from a temporary immigration detention centre in the country’s north.

One man was killed after 131 men escaped from the Bidor facility in the northern state of Perak on Thursday night, the Immigration Department said in a statement. Perak police said the man had been hit by a car when he tried to cross the main north-south highway, and that the men fled following a riot at the camp.

Some 115 of the men were Rohingya and the remaining 16 of other Myanmar ethnicities.

Immigration Department director-general Ruslin Jusoh said 375 police, soldiers and reservist volunteers had been deployed to look for them.

Malaysia is a popular destination for the mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown that is now the subject of a genocide investigation at the International Court of Justice.

Many have sought to escape the grim conditions in Myanmar and the Bangladesh refugee camps by making dangerous journeys by boat to Southeast Asia. Some 569 died or went missing at sea last year, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said last month.

People from Myanmar made up 88 percent of the 185,300 people registered with the UNHCR as refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia at the end of 2023.

Some 107,670 of those registered with the agency are Rohingya who were stripped of their citizenship by a military government in the 1980s. Other people from Myanmar have sought sanctuary in Malaysia amid a deepening civil war since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi three years ago.

Malaysia has no system to process applications for asylum, and refugees are considered undocumented migrants. Most live a precarious existence, at risk of arrest as “illegal migrants” or exploitation in low-paid jobs that Malaysians do not want.

The immigration department has accelerated a crackdown on undocumented migrants in recent months, reporting regular raids, but the UNHCR has not been allowed to visit immigration detention centres to verify the status of refugees for a number of years.

In April 2022, more than 500 Rohingya refugees, including children, fled a temporary detention centre in Penang state and six were killed trying to cross the highway.

That incident was also blamed on a riot.

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UNHCR: 569 Rohingya died at sea in 2023, highest in nine years | Rohingya News

People from the mostly Muslim Myanmar minority continue to make perilous journeys across the sea in search of safety.

Some 569 Rohingya people died or went missing at sea last year – the most since 2014 – as they embarked on dangerous boat journeys to Southeast Asia, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said nearly 4,500 Rohingya people took boats across the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal in 2023, fleeing crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh or persecution in their native Myanmar.

“Estimates show one Rohingya was reported to have died or gone missing for every eight people attempting the journey in 2023,” UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said in a statement. “This makes the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world.”

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh after a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017 that is the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Those who remain in Myanmar, where the military seized power in a coup nearly three years ago, are mainly confined to camps in their native Rakhine State with strict curbs on their movement and daily lives.

More than 1,500 Rohingya landed on the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on barely seaworthy wooden boats in November and December last year, a period when waters are generally calmer.

But while people there have previously welcomed the refugees, this time villagers and the military pushed boats back out to sea and told their passengers they could not come ashore despite the dreadful conditions on board.

In one incident, some 200 people were feared to have drowned after their boat sank in the Andaman Sea. Others remained at sea for days longer as they sought a place to land.

In December, a mob of students stormed a community hall in Banda Aceh where dozens of Rohingya had been given shelter, demanding that the group be deported.

The UNHCR urged governments to take steps to avoid a repeat of such tragedies.

“Saving lives and rescuing those in distress at sea is a humanitarian imperative and a longstanding duty under international maritime law,” the statement said, adding that the UNHCR was working to develop a “comprehensive regional response” to the boat journeys.

Many of the Rohingya who flee Bangladesh and Myanmar hope to make it to Malaysia, a majority-Muslim country that is currently home to nearly 108,000 Rohingya refugees.

Like Indonesia, Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees, and those who live in the country are considered undocumented migrants at risk of harassment, detention or deportation.

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Fire at Rohingya refugee camp leaves thousands homeless again | Rohingya

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Around 7,000 displaced Rohingya Muslim refugees have been made homeless yet again after a fire tore through their camp in southeastern Bangladesh, according to the UN refugee agency.

Published On 7 Jan 2024

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What’s really at stake in the US moves to target TikTok? | Social Media

Who owns the narrative? If United States lawmakers are to be believed, it is currently at risk of being hijacked by China, disseminated on de-facto spyware by impressionable youth swiping short-form videos in their bedrooms.

Official tutting at TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, is nothing new. The prospect of a ban has been looming for a while. In March, US senators introduced the Restrict Act, a bipartisan bid to give the president powers to boot it out of US cyberspace on national security grounds.

Israel’s war on Gaza has reignited the debate, with Republican presidential contenders accusing the platform not only of boosting pro-Palestinian content but of actively turning the nation’s youth into Hamas supporters. Every 30 minutes spent watching Tiktok makes people “17 percent more anti-Semitic, more pro-Hamas”, said Nikki Haley at a presidential primary earlier this month, misinterpreting survey data.

Republican presidential contenders, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (left), talking with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (right), at a Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, December 6, 2023 in Tuscaloosa [Gerald Herbert/AP]

Some other countries have already banned TikTok, led by India, which barred the app in 2020 after border clashes with China. But the debate in the world’s leading media market, which has unparalleled global reach, to banish one of the only tech behemoths that is not from Silicon Valley in the midst of a global infowar raises crucial questions about how narratives are managed, say experts.

Who’s doing the censoring?

The drive to ban TikTok was turbo-charged by an echo from the relatively distant past. After Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, young American TikTokers looking to understand US involvement in the Middle East appear to have unearthed Osama Bin Laden’s post-9/11 Letter to the American people. It had been gathering dust on the Guardian’s website – now it sparked a decontextualised memeathon on US imperialism.

The furore over Bin Laden’s resurrected tract, which does repeat classic anti-Jewish tropes about Jews controlling “your policies, media and economy”, only served to increase interest in his strident critiques of US foreign policy. Shocked to discover episodes like the 12 years of deadly sanctions imposed by the US on Iraq before it invaded in 2003 as part of the disastrous “War on Terror”, young Americans were now seeing their country’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza in a new light.

TikTok responded swiftly, “aggressively” removing the content.

The Guardian took down the Bin Laden letter after it became their top-trending article.

TikTok’s motives were likely about keeping its foothold in the lucrative US market, says Michael Kwet, a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. As a foreign entity, it has come under intense pressure from lawmakers, its CEO facing a grilling in Congress earlier this year, which accused the app of being a “Trojan Horse” for Chinese influence.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during a hearing of the US House Energy and Commerce Committee, on the platform’s consumer privacy and data security practices as well as its impact on children, on Thursday, March 23, 2023, in Washington, DC [Jacquelyn Martin/AP]

“TikTok wants to keep the gravy train rolling,” says Kwet. “There’s no reason to believe TikTok will offer substantially more diverse views across the global media landscape … When confronted with content moderation decisions, TikTok will do what all big social media companies do: remove content at the request of entities with power, so long as it becomes too costly to disobey.”

The problem, in his view, is corporate ownership of platforms beholden to the governments that regulate the markets.

How is the flow of information controlled?

The ability of governments, corporations and powerful interests to direct the flow of information has come under greater scrutiny in recent years. Last year’s release of the so-called “Twitter Files” drew the interest of those seeking to understand infiltration into the engine rooms of social media.

However, the findings came with a caveat. Billionaire Elon Musk, at that time positioning himself as a champion of free speech after his takeover of Twitter – now known as X – had carefully curated the documents to endorse his own right-wing grievances about liberal bias under previous owner Jack Dorsey.

Elon Musk during his visit to the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, on June 16, 2023 [Alain Jocard/AFP]

Much of the story, told by handpicked journalists, fixated on the insular dynamics of US politics. And while the reveal was only partial, it was nonetheless damning, proving how the US government and security services systematically pressured the platform to suppress, moderate and amplify.

But when it comes to the US’s power to warp the narrative beyond its borders, the smoking gun was provided by communications from CENTCOM, the central command unit at the Pentagon, which repeatedly got Twitter to promote certain accounts to boost its influence overseas, infecting the stream of information as far afield as Yemen and Syria.

If, as the Twitter Files demonstrated, Silicon Valley giants like Meta, Instagram and even X are already working with the US government, the TikTok affair illustrates how easily foreign contenders that theoretically have the potential to broaden global discourse can effectively be made to kneel when the profit motive is wielded, say analysts.

“At the end of the day, it’s kind of worse because TikTok was being more compliant than they had to be,” says Nadim Nashif, the director of 7amleh, a non-profit promoting Palestinian digital rights which has highlighted cases of “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian content on platforms.

What impact is this having on the world?

The land of the First Amendment is not alone in erecting digital walls, even if its ability to build global tunnels of influence is greater. Having repeatedly berated countries like China, Russia and Iran in their attempts to stifle uncomfortable narratives to serve purported national security interests, the US stands accused of double standards.

But virtue signalling aside – from all sides – a much bigger tit-for-tat geopolitical battle is being played out on the corporate terrain. That battle begins at home. US intolerance of TikTok is predicated on ensuring tech platforms not answerable to its diktats do not gain a foothold in a domestic market with global reach. China, its biggest economic rival and the home of TikTok, has done the same, creating a controlled space by blocking Google and Facebook.

On questions of privacy, there is not much to choose, say experts.

“All of it is spyware. When you install X, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok on your phone, it is spyware, whether it’s American or Chinese. That’s all it is. Pure and simple,” says Dina Ibrahim, a professor of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University.

Amid all this, it is the vulnerable who suffer, says Nashif. “You can see it in a very clear way, when we talk about weaker, indigenous communities in the Global South. We can see it in Kashmir because obviously, they [social media platforms] will think twice before targeting the Indian government. We can see it when we talk about the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. You can see it when we talk about the Palestinians.

“We can see it in these communities that don’t have enough power, that don’t have somebody standing behind them and pushing.”

Palestinians evacuate from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, December, 20, 2023 [Fatima Shbair/AP]

When it comes to Palestine, examples are not lacking. Whether it be Meta-owned Instagram’s automated translation tool adding the word “terrorist” to the biographies of Palestinian users – a problem for which it later apologised – or Whatsapp, also owned by Meta, answering prompts regarding Palestine with illustrations of kids with guns.

Digital rights groups, including 7amleh, have accused the world’s biggest digital platforms of content takedowns, account restrictions and hashtag suppression.

Is this just algorithmic misfire, inadvertently fanning the flames of a violent conflict that has aroused global passions – or is it part of something bigger?

Can balance be restored?

In this asymmetric infowar, experts say the poorest and the most disenfranchised suffer. So, is there any way the imbalance can be corrected?

“That’s the billion-dollar question,” says Nashif.

The question, it seems, has to be directed at the biggest digital power of them all. But, Kwet says, the opinion-forming elites are looking the other way. “Imperialism is embedded in the minds of the US-European intelligentsia. When digital colonialism issue is discussed, it’s at the margins, and in abstract terms, a form of virtue-signalling to show that you’re hip to ‘decolonisation’,” he says.

When it comes to vulnerable communities in the Global South, only people on the ground can break the paradigm, he thinks.

“Genuine opposition to digital colonialism seeks to break down digital capitalism and build a tech economy by and for the people. There would be no single, centralised network for those with power to influence and control. The technology needed to make it a reality already exists, but it will require a global solidarity campaign to scale it up.”

For now, we have X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. “They’re engineered for misinformation. They are engineered so that you, the reader or the viewer seeking information, are deliberately fed what you already believe,” says Ibrahim.



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