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Myanmar’s Buddhists block Rohingya Muslims from blood supplies, report says

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ec26a485713_story.html?utm_term=.a9dd50c0d218

Asia & Pacific
Myanmar’s Buddhists block Rohingya Muslims from blood supplies, report says
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Hla Hla Shwe and her infant receive treatment at a clinic at a camp for displaced people in Rakhine state, Myanmar, in November. (Reuters)

By Timothy McLaughlin and
Shibani Mahtani
December 24 at 6:00 AM

YANGON, Myanmar — One day earlier this month, a businessman turned social worker was going about a familiar and urgent task: looking for blood donors in camps crowded with Rohingya Muslims driven from their homes.

This time, Nu Maung needed three pints — one of O-positive, two of B-positive. Among those in need was a woman who had suffered complications during childbirth.

The military-led purges and abuses carried out against Myanmar’s Muslim minority Rohingya over the past year continue to yield new hardships. The blood hunt, as described by aid groups and others, offers another look at the extreme segregation Rohingya Muslims face in their country.

Rohingya are effectively blocked from accessing the blood bank in the main medical facility in the western Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, according to two internal reports by a consortium of six major international aid groups.

Buddhists insist that their blood go only to other Buddhists, and the hospitals oblige, the groups say.

So men such as 48-year-old Nu Maung have to persuade fellow Muslims in these squalid camps to offer their own blood for about $10 per donation. He said he has been a donor 44 times so far.

Pence pushes Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi on Rohingya, jailed journalists]

Since the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya in August 2017 in a crackdown led by the Myanmar military — labeled as genocidal by some U.S. lawmakers and a U.N. fact-finding mission — the Myanmar government has been under relentless international pressure to improve conditions for the Rohingya who remain.

But one of the two reports prepared by the aid group consortium operating in Rakhine concluded that little has been done by the Myanmar government despite its claims of “significant progress” on improving conditions. A copy of the 171-page document was seen by The Post. The six aid organizations allowed access to the report on the condition that the names of the agencies not be made public.

The report, prepared in late September, even questions whether international relief groups are indirectly complicit in “continued rights violations” by maintaining their work with authorities in Rakhine and with Myanmar’s leaders, including now-tarnished Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

These groups must “consider whether they should continue working with the government in Rakhine and . . . how to reduce the harm they themselves cause by remaining,” the report said.

“The dilemma is real,” said Charles Petrie, the top U.N. diplomat in Myanmar, also known as Burma, from 2003 to 2007, who is now a U.N. adviser on peace efforts. “However, it is too easy to walk away and hold the moral high ground. . . . There would be no one around to provide services for these extremely vulnerable people.”

Soe Aung, Myanmar’s deputy minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, said he met with the U.N. and international aid groups recently to discuss improving conditions for the Rohingya.

“We didn’t receive any complaints [from the groups] about restrictions or segregations in the meeting,” he said. Rohingya Muslims, he said, are able to travel outside Myanmar for medical treatment and education “according to the law” and if they get necessary documentation.

He declined to comment on the issue of blood donations and said there was no specific government order to restrict them to those in the same ethnic group.

Since the August crackdown — which Myanmar authorities claim was a response to attacks by Rohingya militants — increased restrictions have been imposed on the estimated 600,000 Rohingya who remain in Myanmar. This has complicated the minority’s already limited access to basic health care, education and their ability to continue their former livelihoods.

[U.S. considered citing Myanmar for ‘crimes against humanity.’ It didn’t happen.]

The aid group assessment notes that the government also has refused to address the matter of citizenship for Rohingya, who consider themselves native to the country but are seen by most in Myanmar as illegal interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh.

Aid groups say they have been left without a “comprehensive understanding” of the humanitarian needs, the assessment said, and find themselves working within a system that many Rohingya are resisting.

This conundrum is clear in Sittwe General Hospital, the main medical complex in Rakhine.

The Rohingya are treated in segregated wards, are denied access to their phones and often have to bribe hospital guards and doctors for better treatment, according to a separate report on health care by the six-group consortium. The report was first published in August 2017 and updated in April. The report was not made public but was viewed by The Post.

Last month, a Rohingya man who was outside the camp perimeters after dark was hacked in the face by a police officer after an altercation, a Rohingya witness in the camp told The Post. He had a bad gash near his eye, according to a camp resident, but refused to be transferred to Sittwe General Hospital. He sought care from a pharmacist in the camp, but his wound became infected.

“The doctors and nurses [at Sittwe General Hospital] are not only unkind to the patients, they neglect the patients,” said one Rohingya man in a phone interview from his camp, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of his safety. “We are scared to go there.”

The report, as well as aid workers, also detailed the heavy financial costs for Muslim patients treated at the hospital: payments to guards and drivers to safely transport them and additional bribes to nurses and doctors for better care. A Muslim patient, the report estimated, would pay 61 percent more than a Buddhist person admitted to the hospital for five days for the same condition.

The situation is “not ideal,” said Andrew Kirkwood, director of the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Myanmar. The government, he said, agreed to provide equal care to all patients as a condition for a U.N.-directed project to upgrade and expand the Sittwe medical facility.

He said the United Nations would “continuously assess the government’s commitment.” But he added: “We may be forced to stop our support if it benefits only one community.”

In northern Rakhine state, where destruction is widespread, access by aid groups remains severely limited. The U.N. Development Program, the U.N. refugee agency and the government signed a pact in early June to help improve conditions there to allow those who fled to return.

Early statements from the United Nations touted the year-long agreement, which has not been made public, as granting the agencies “effective access.”

But after six months, they have been allowed to carry out assessments in only 50 villages, according to Haoliang Xu, director of the regional bureau for Asia and the Pacific at the U.N. Development Program. Approximately 392 towns and villages out of a total of 993 in northern Rakhine were destroyed or damaged, according to U.N. estimates. Xu defended the deal as an important “confidence-building” measure that could open more opportunities to expand the work of aid groups.

The United Nations will soon begin 35 “quick impact projects” such as building roads and repairing dikes used for agricultural irrigation, Xu said in an interview.

Petrie, the U.N. official, led an internal review in 2012 into the global body’s failings in Sri Lanka, where U.N. agencies were found to be reluctant “to stand up for the rights of the people they were mandated to assist.”

He said he sees the possibility of the United Nations making similar mistakes in Myanmar.

“The U.N. is not working as a whole,” Petrie said. “If what the U.N. is doing now is all it is, then they should be severely condemned.”

Mahtani reported from Hong Kong. Cape Diamond in Yangon, Myanmar, contributed to this report.
 
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The Post's View Opinion
Myanmar forced Rohingya from their homes. Now it’s trying to make the exodus permanent.



Editorial Board
December 24 at 5:46 PM


ETHNIC CLEANSING, phase two, confronts the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar who were victims of a brutal uprooting beginning in August 2017. Myanmar soldiers forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in Rakhine state. The Rohingya fled to tent camps across the border in Bangladesh, frightened and stripped of everything. Now comes a report that Myanmar, also known as Burma, is taking steps to make the exodus irreversible.

On Dec. 18, Reuters published a special report including satellite photos, interviews and a government map showing how authorities in Myanmar, despite promises that the Rohingya could return, are in fact making that increasingly unlikely. Many of the villages were burned at the time of the assault, then bulldozed. New homes are being built and occupied mainly by Buddhists, some from other parts of Rakhine state; the Buddhist majority in Myanmar has long persecuted the Rohingya minority. Reuters discovered that the Myanmar government is building some of the new homes and helping the Buddhist resettlement, spearheaded by nationalists who want to establish a Buddhist majority in the area. Reuters was shown a resettlement map drafted by the government that reveals many returning Rohingya would be housed in several dozen Rohingya-only settlements, isolating them from the rest of the population. It all adds up to a new round of ethnic cleansing, creating permanent facts on the ground to erase the Rohingya presence, also conveniently paving over evidence of the original atrocity.

The Reuters report includes striking satellite photographs showing what has happened to the village of Inn Din, the scene of a massacre of 10 Muslim men during the 2017 offensive, a horror documented earlier by Reuters. The photographs show how the brown-roofed Rohingya homes in the village have been systematically destroyed. Buddhist houses are still standing, and 100 new homes for Buddhists are being built, according to the report. The government’s resettlement map shows that no site for Rohingya is planned in the village, according to Reuters.

Two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were investigating the killing by the security forces of Rohingya villagers, have been unjustly sentenced to prison terms on trumped-up charges by the Myanmar authorities.

Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the government is pursuing “the voluntary, safe and dignified return” of the Rohingya. But, so far, it is not happening. In November, plans to repatriate about 2,200 collapsed when Rohingya in the camps protested that they would not go unless granted citizenship and allowed back to their original homes. Myanmar wants the refugees to accept National Verification Cards, known as the NVC, a residency document short of citizenship. The Rohingya vehemently oppose the card, saying it depicts them as new arrivals undeserving of citizenship in lands where they were born and have lived for generations.

The latest estimates say more than 900,000 Rohingya are now stuck in Bangladesh, making this one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. They should be allowed to return unhindered and rebuild, but instead, because of wrongheaded thinking by Myanmar, their exodus and suffering threatens to become woefully permanent.

Read more:

António Guterres: The Rohingya are victims of ethnic cleansing. The world has failed them.

The Post’s View: What is happening in Myanmar is genocide. Call it by its name.

The Post’s View: Burma is bulldozing history and memory

Bill Richardson: Three steps Myanmar should take to turn the Rohingya disaster around

Anne Applebaum: Aung San Suu Kyi’s fall from the pedestal is an old story
 
Why people expecting monkeys to behave human?
They are what they are. Live with it
 
Myanmurder wants blood so this is nothing surprising. These Myanmurders are worse than wolves.

I have often wondered about the starvation that Rohingya in camps within Myanmar face. I was reading a paper from a few years ago by Amnesty or someone else once, and this was right when the attacks on Rohingya took an upswing. These people couldn't leave their homes for weeks. It's been years now since then. I wonder how many have starved to death. :(
 
Sad to hear this, whats the main reason Buddhists and Muslims are fighting against each-other in Burma ? is this a religious issue or ethnic one ?
 
Sad to hear this, whats the main reason Buddhists and Muslims are fighting against each-other in Burma ? is this a religious issue or ethnic one ?

They are not fighting each other. It's heavily one sided. When Myanmar first gained independence Rohingya were considered citizens, but after iirc Ne Win in the late 50s came into power he stripped them of citizenship and Myanmar has been persecuting them ever since.

In the 90s and 2000s, the Burmese military launched their largest campaigns targeting them which caused refugee crises and exodus into Bangladesh, but now the last half-decade has been the worst campaign against them. Their goal is outright genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Note that Myanmar has had dozens of insurgencies by different ethnic groups for decades, including the Kachin, Shan, Kokang, Arakanese, etc. All of them are considered citizens, and all of them have several dozen armed groups who have fought the Burmese regime. In comparison, Rohingya have been the least violent and armed and they are oppressed and massacred as a result.

Supporters of Myanmar's brutal actions try to justify them by painting Rohingya as terrorists while conveniently ignoring the above facts.

Rakhine State is also rich in resources such as gas, and it also happens to be the poorest region in Mynamar. The government uses the Muslim Rohingya as a distraction for the Buddhist Arakanese as part of it's divide-and-conquer strategy. There are pipelines being built and Special Economic Zones developing. By uprooting the Rohingya they get to take their land, and also it prevents the Arakanese from protesting about state landgrabs and environmental damage because they're too busy fighting the Rohingya instead.
 

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