info@burma.no<\/a>.<\/p>\nBackgrounder to the Oslo Conference<\/b><\/p>\n
Rakhine Action Plan<\/b><\/p>\n
In July 2014, Myanmar government floated a comprehensive plan, known as the \u201cRakhine Action Plan\u201d, to erase both Rohingya identity and the group\u2019s legal residency in their own ancestral land and sent a 3-member advocacy team \u2013 made up of President\u2019s adviser and former academic Dr Kyaw Yin Hlaing, Immigration Minister and ex-Brigadier Khin Yi, and Rakhine Chief Minister and ex-Major General Maung Maung Ohn – to lobby western governments and relevant international organizations to accept Myanmar\u2019s official plan to solve \u201cthe Rohingya problem\u201d.<\/p>\n
Thein Sein\u2019s government in Myanmar is currently implementing the Rakhine Action Plan. This is evidenced from the further illegalization and disenfranchisement of the vast majority of ethnic Rohingya since March this year, by forcibly confiscating their White Cards, the only documentation that Rohingyas had of their legal, permanent residency. Meanwhile, the international community\u2019s attention is diverted to the fighting along the country\u2019s Sino-Burmese borders between Myanmar army and Kokant Chinese armed resistance organization and its allies, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s attempts to push for changes in the military\u2019s 2008 Constitution in time for this year\u2019s planned elections.<\/p>\n
Myanmar\u2019s Policy of Official Denial and Persecution of the Rohingyas <\/b><\/p>\n
Following the large scale violence against the Rohingyas in June 2012, Myanmar\u2019s \u201creformist\u201d government officially proposed two solutions to the Rohingya issue to the visiting head of the United Nations Refugee Agency or UNHCR Ant\u00f3nio Guterres – either the \u201cresettlement\u201d of the Rohingyas to third countries, or placing Rohingya in UN-financed camps on their own ancestral soil in Western Myanmar. In his widely reported address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (or Chatham House), in London, UK on 17 July 2013, Myanmar President Thein Sein officially denied the existence of Rohingyas as either legal residents or an ethnic group while his government has made consistent attempts to pressure INGOs, foreign missions and the United Nations agencies and officials \u2013 including the UN Special Rapporteurs on the human rights situation in Myanmar – to stop recognizing the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group of Myanmar.<\/p>\n
Such statements and policies have been met with stiff opposition from the international community, including the highest level of leaderships such as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and US President Barack Obama. In sharp contrast to the international recognition of the Rohingya as an ethnic group, deserving non-discrimination, equal rights, dignity, and the same basic respect as any other indigenous peoples of Myanmar, the country\u2019s Bama or Myanmar Buddhist majority and Rakhine nationalists label the Rohingyas as \u201cillegal Muslim migrants\u201d from the impoverished Bangladesh. As such, Rohingya have popularly been dehumanized and referred to by terms such as \u201cviruses\u201d, \u201cleeches\u201d, (ugly) \u201cogres\u201d, \u201cdogs\u201d etc.<\/p>\n
Sadly, Myanmar\u2019s pro-democracy opposition leaders and human rights organizations including Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy and other iconic human rights the leaders of the 88 Generation Group also share this anti-Rohingya sentiment. The Myanmar government has, misleadingly, portrayed the plight of Rohingyas as the result of a communal conflict between the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya and a supposedly inevitable consequence of the \u201ctransition\u201d from dictatorship. Periodically, unsubstantiated claims are made by Myanmar President\u2019s Office attempting to link the Rohingya community to global \u201cIslamic fundamentalism\u201d, and worse still, \u201cterrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Worsening Plight of the Rohingyas <\/b><\/p>\n
The plight of the Rohingyas in Myanmar has worsened since the two bouts of organized attacks on the Rohingya in June and October 2012. In her 9-March-2015 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Professor Yanghee Lee stated that Rohingya refugees inside Internally Displaced Persons (or IDP) camps feel they have two (equally risky) options: \u201cto stay and die (in Myanmar) or leave by boat\u201d. According to the UN High Commissioner for the Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 53,000 Rohingyas, including women and children, left Myanmar (and Bangladesh) by boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia in the 11-month period between January and November 2014. International visitors to Rakhine state have described the human conditions for the Rohingyas, both inside and outside IDP camps, as \u201cdeplorable\u201d. Even by Myanmar\u2019s official report of Myanmar President\u2019s Rakhine Inquiry Commission, doctor-patient ratios among the Rohingyas in the two majority Rohingya towns in Western Myanmar are 1: 76,000 and 1:83,000 (vis-\u00e0-vis 1: 1,000 for the national average). Some local Rakhine groups routinely threaten international humanitarian organizations and attempt to disrupt and stop the delivery of basic humanitarian aid to the Rohingyas.<\/p>\n
International Responses<\/b><\/p>\n
Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have assessed Myanmar\u2019s treatment of Rohingyas as \u2018crimes against humanity\u2019 and \u2018ethnic cleansing\u2019. UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar including Tomas Quintana Ojea and Yanghee Lee have highlighted the official nature of discrimination and persecution of the Rohingyas that a condones popular racism and violence against Myanmar\u2019s Muslims. The Pacific Rim Law and Policy Association has published a 3-year academic study entitled \u201cThe Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingya\u201d in its peer-reviewed journal \u201cPacific Rim Law and Policy Journal\u201d (Spring, 2014). Currently, two independent teams of researchers from the International State Crime Research Initiative at Queen Mary University of London, UK and Yale University Human Rights Law Clinic and Fortify Rights are investigating the Rohingya situation using the genocide framework.<\/p>\n
Renowned academics, for instance, Harvard\u2019s Amartya Sen have characterized Myanmar\u2019s treatment of Rohingyas as a \u201cslow genocide\u201d. Likewise, at the conference on the Rohingyas at the London School of Economics held in April 2014 the then outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Tomas Oeja Quintana observed reportedly \u201cgenocidal acts\u201d in the case of Rohingyas.<\/p>\n
At this Oslo Conference, global leaders including George Soros and Desmond Tutu will call on the international community, both international investors, European Union and governments with close ties to Myanmar, to help end Myanmar\u2019s Rohingya persecution. They will also call for the restoration of basic human rights, nationality and citizenship to one of the world\u2019s most vulnerable and oppressed peoples who, as a group, do have the fundamental right to self-identity under international human rights law.<\/p>\n
Download Announcement pdf:<\/strong> Oslo Conference Announcement<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venues: The Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen
\nOslo, Norway
\n26-28 May 2015
\nAt this Oslo Conference, global leaders including George Soros and Desmond Tutu will call on the international community, both international investors, European Union and governments with close ties to Myanmar, to help end Myanmar\u2019s Rohingya persecution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}