Who are the Rohingya Muslims? The stateless minority fleeing violence in Burma

Rehingya Refugees,
Photo: ZANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES via Telegraph

They have often been called the most persecuted minority in the world. The 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims squeezed precariously into the north-west state of Rakhine, in mainly Buddhist Burma, bordering majority Muslim Bangladesh, are stateless and unwanted.

Neither country will give them citizenship even though their families’ roots in modern-day Rakhine, once called Arakan, can be traced back to the Eighth Century. 

Continue

Survivors tell of mass killings, beheadings as Myanmar 'cleansing operation' underway

Photo: AP

By Lindsay Murdoch

Survivors have described mass killings, including beheadings of children, and arson attacks in a dramatic escalation of the Rohingya crisis that the United Nations warns could be a humanitarian catastrophe.


A 41-year-old witness told the rights monitoring group Fortify Rights he found his brother and other family members in a field after attacks by Myanmar security forces on the Rakhine state village of Chut Pyin in Ratheduang township.

"They had marks on their bodies from the bullets and some had cuts," he said.


"My two nephews, their heads were cut off. One was six years old and the other was nine years old. My sister-in-law was also shot with a gun."

A27-year-old survivor from the village told Fortify Rights "some people were beheaded and many were cut…when we saw that, we just ran out of the house".


"The situation is dire," said Matthew Smith, Fortify Rights' chief executive officer.

Continue

The Burmese army of burning down villages and shooting Rohingya Muslim civilians

Credit: Independent/GettyImages

Activist groups have accused the Burmese army of burning down villages and shooting Rohingya Muslim civilians as part of a crackdown on insurgents in Rakhine state.

Violence has driven thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing towards Bangladesh for safety, along with a smaller exodus of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, where they face growing danger of sickness and attempts by the Bangladesh authorities to send them home.

The Burmese government has blamed Rohingya insurgents for the violence, including the arson.

Laura Haigh, Amnesty International's Burma researcher, said reports of villages being burned were "deeply disturbing."

Continue

U.S. Dropped 23,144 Bombs on Muslim-Majority Countries in 2015

Council of Foreign Relations resident skeptic Micah Zenko recently tallied up how many bombs the United States has dropped on other countries and the results are as depressing as one would think. Zenko figured that since Jan. 1, 2015, the U.S. has dropped around 23,144 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all countries that are majority Muslim.

The chart, provided by the generally pro-State Department think tank, puts in stark terms how much destruction the U.S. has leveled on other countries. Whether or not one thinks such bombing is justified, it's a blunt illustration of how much raw damage the United States inflicts on the Muslim world:

Sources: Estimate based upon Combined Forces Air Component Commander 2010-2015 Airpower Statistics; Information requested from CJTF-Operation Inherent Resolve Public Affairs Office, January 7, 2016; New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).

Continue

Why USA Destroyed Libya?

United States and its allies are the new colonizers in Africa. They had to destroy the richest countries in Africa, Libya.

A school bombed by NATO forces in August 2011

Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday, after US President Barack Obama ordered a new bombing campaign in Libya.

Continue

Russian Muslim clerics warn of unrest over banning of Quran translation

Russia’s senior Islamic clerics warned the country’s leaders on Friday that unrest could erupt in Russian Muslim communities and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of an interpretive translation of the Holy Quran is not overturned.

The Holy Qur'an (image: al-quraninstitute.co.uk)

On Tuesday, a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, outlawed the widely read text under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church.

The rights campaigners said the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned on appeal, comes dangerously close to banning the Quran itself.

Russia's Council of Muftis sounded the alarm in an open letter on Friday to President Vladimir Putin, who has frequently called for unity among the leading faiths, and warned that ethnic tension could tear Russia apart.

“Russian Muslims are indignant over the decision,” said the council’s deputy head Rushan Abbyasov, adding that if the ruling was acted upon, there would be unrest all over the world.

In the letter to Putin, the council drew a parallel with violence in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the actions of American pastor Terry Jones who threatened to burn the Quran on September 11, 2010.

“Is it necessary to discuss how the destruction of books, especially sacred religious books, has been received in Russia in the past?” it said.

A lawyer representing the text’s author, theologian Elmir Kuliyev, said he would appeal the ruling, which calls for the text to be banned and its copies “destroyed”.

Lawyer Murat Musayev, who has a month to file an appeal, said that a local prosecutor sent the material to a local court and together they decided to ban the holy book.

“On one hand there is freedom of religion in Russia, on the other they are banning fundamental religious texts,” he said.

Experts say the translation by Kuliyev, which is more than a decade old, is a respected scholarly work and one of the four translations of the Quran into Russian.

Russian Academy of Science Islamic expert Akhmed Yarlikapov termed the decision “unprofessional” and said it was “one step away from banning the Quran”.

“You could ban the Bible just as easily because it also has passages that talk about the spilling of blood,” he said.

Source: PAKISTANTODAY

Continue

Indian president approves death penalty for rapists

Photo: AP

People crowd outside the Presidential Palace as they protest against a brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old student, in New Delhi, India.

India's president on Sunday approved harsher punishments for rapists, including the death penalty, after a brutal gang-rape in New Delhi sparked national outrage and triggered demands for tougher laws.

Photo: Showkat Shafi

President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the new rape law two days after cabinet ministers recommended changes to improve safety for women.

"The Indian president has given his assent to the ordinance on crime against women. It comes into effect immediately but it will also be tabled before the parliament," a senior officer in the president's office told AFP.

Photo: Showkat Shafi

A government-appointed panel and the cabinet had recommended tougher laws after the death of a 23-year-old woman who was savagely raped and attacked in a bus on December 16 and died nearly two weeks later.

Under the changes, the minimum sentence for gang-rape, rape of a minor, rape by policemen or a person in authority will be doubled to 20 years from 10 and can be extended to life without parole.

In the existing law, a rapist faces a term of seven to 10 years

People crowd outside the Presidential Palace as they protest against a brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old student, in New Delhi, India.

India's president on Sunday approved harsher punishments for rapists, including the death penalty, after a brutal gang-rape in New Delhi sparked national outrage and triggered demands for tougher laws.

President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the new rape law two days after cabinet ministers recommended changes to improve safety for women.

"The Indian president has given his assent to the ordinance on crime against women. It comes into effect immediately but it will also be tabled before the parliament," a senior officer in the president's office told AFP.

A government-appointed panel and the cabinet had recommended tougher laws after the death of a 23-year-old woman who was savagely raped and attacked in a bus on December 16 and died nearly two weeks later.

Under the changes, the minimum sentence for gang-rape, rape of a minor, rape by policemen or a person in authority will be doubled to 20 years from 10 and can be extended to life without parole.

In the existing law, a rapist faces a term of seven to 10 years.

The cabinet has also created a new set of offences such as voyeurism and stalking that will be included in the new law.

But women rights activists have slammed the ordinance saying it lacks teeth to fight sexual crimes against women and lashed out at the government for passing the law without holding a debate or discussion.

Five men are being tried in a special fast-track court in New Delhi on charges of murder, gang-rape and kidnapping in connection with the death of the student, who died from her injuries in a Singapore hospital where she had been sent for further treatment.

A sixth suspect faces trial in a juvenile court.

The physiotherapy student was assaulted on a bus she had boarded with a male companion as they returned home from watching a film in an upmarket shopping mall.

India says it only imposes the death penalty in the "rarest of rare cases". Three months ago, it hanged the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks - the country's first execution in eight years.

Meanwhile noted criminal lawyer Kamini Jaiswal favours death sentence for rapists, she felt that catching the right people was as important.

From: The New Zealand Herald

Continue

Sarwo Edhie Wibowo (Commander killers of 3 million people of Indonesia)

 Sarwo Edhie Wibowo

Sarwo Edhie was born in Purworejo, Central Java to a family of civil servants working for the Dutch Colonial Government. As a child, he learned silat as a form of self-defense. As he grew up, Sarwo Edhie formed an admiration for the Japanese Army and their victories against the Allied Forces stationed in the Pacific and Asia.

In 1942, when the Japanese took control of Indonesia, Sarwo Edhie went to Surabaya to enlist with Defenders of the Motherland Army (PETA), which was a Japanese-run auxiliary force consisting of Indonesian soldiers.

Continue