Italian couple’s footage against backdrop of Myanmar’s ‘holy land’ provokes outrage
Outrage is growing in Myanmar after the emergence of a 12-minute pornographic video shot in Bagan, the country’s best-known tourist spot and Unesco heritage site featuring thousands of revered Buddhist pagodas.
The video was posted on PornHub by users who described themselves as a 23-year-old Italian couple.
Continue reading...Refugees in Cox’s Bazar complain the international aid community does not utilise their experience and say the lack of education risks creating a ‘lost generation’
In a tea room just outside Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps, a group of young activists fiddle with their phones, which have suddenly started pinging in chorus now they are finally reconnected to the internet.
To circumvent a government internet blackout around the camps in Cox’s Bazar, they have to break a ban on travelling to nearby Bangladeshi towns, from where they can communicate and coordinate messages for the international community.
Continue reading...The Trump administration is expanding the reach of its controversial travel ban to six additional countries.
The United States will stop issuing visas that offer a path to residency to nationals from Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, Myanmar and Tanzania, said Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, in a conference call on Friday.
Continue reading...Children aged 11-13 will be first to benefit as government eases long-standing restrictions in effort to avoid ‘lost generation’
Bangladesh has confirmed it will lift restrictions on education for young Rohingya refugees, easing bans in place since the existing camps were established 30 years ago.
The government’s move to allow schooling for children aged 11-13 has been widely welcomed by activists and teachers.
Continue reading...ICJ could impose protective ‘provisional measures’ to stop further killings in Myanmar
The United Nation’s highest tribunal is to deliver its decision on whether emergency measures are required to prevent Myanmar conducting genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority.
The momentous pronouncement on Thursday follows a three-day hearing at the international court of justice in The Hague last month at which the Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi defended her country against accusations of systematic human rights abuses and war crimes.
Related: Aung San Suu Kyi pleas with court to dismiss genocide claims
Continue reading...Government-appointed investigators failed to meet alleged victims living in Bangladesh
A Myanmar government-backed inquiry that dismissed allegations of genocide against the Rohingya has been condemned as a deeply flawed cover-up, after it failed to interview a single victim of rape.
The full report of the panel inquiry, which has been criticised by the UN, was not made publicly available. It is not clear how many Rohingya were interviewed by the panel.
Continue reading...Devastated by his time in Germany, which he regards as still Nazi, the artist has moved. As he unveils a powerful virtual reality artwork, he talks about needing a monster to fight – and why he’d like to be a barber
‘When we filmed this,” says Ai Weiwei, “the elephants didn’t know what to do. Once they were used for labour, and now they have lost their job.” The artist is talking about the groundbreaking documentary he has just made about unemployed logging elephants in Myanmar. You watch the film, shot with 360-degree virtual reality technology, through a special headset. Turn your head slowly and your view gradually changes. Turn your head 180 degrees and the picture changes completely.
“When they lost their job,” he continues, “each elephant had a few people to take care of it, so those people also lost their job.” Ai (Weiwei is his first name and means unknown or future) relates to the elephants as readily as he does to the subject of the second part of his VR project – this one about the lives of Rohingya refugees in a Bangladeshi camp.
Continue reading...This year world leaders struggled to manage the fallout from the erratic tenant in the White House – as China flexed its imperial muscles. We look back at the events that created the most turbulence
Click here for 2019’s reasons to be cheerful
A year of high anxiety was rendered more alarming by intensifying clashes of interest between world powers. As international cooperation declined, and nationalist agendas gathered strength, China, the US, Russia and Europe, and their respective allies, emulators and proxies, engaged in often dangerous competition.
The Chinese communist regime’s increasingly assertive behaviour at home and abroad, reflecting the authoritarian outlook of its paramount leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, produced head-on collisions with western countries, notably over Hong Kong, trade, technology and the repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.
Continue reading...The Bangladeshi government is making life hard for young people trying to document levels of hardship in the world’s largest refugee settlement
For Azimul Hassan, 19, life before he entered the world’s largest refugee settlement was always busy.
He would wake early to visit his private tutor before school, then work late every evening to finish his homework. On Fridays, he would play football with friends – he was a striker.
Continue reading...When Aung San Suu Kyi rose to denounce genocide charges against her country at the “world court” last week, three victims of Myanmar’s ethnic violence were sitting close behind the Nobel peace prize winner – disbelieving and seething with anger.
Hamida Khatun, Yousuf Ali and Hasina Begum had travelled from the sprawling Kutupalong refugee camp outside Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh to sit on the legal delegation attending the International Court of Justice’s emergency hearing in The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Continue reading...Leader says a report from an internal inquiry into Myanmar soldiers was due soon
In a defiant closing address to the UN’s highest tribunal, Aung San Suu Kyi has pleaded with its 17 international judges to dismiss allegations that Myanmar has committed genocide and urged them instead to allow the country’s court martial system to deal with any human rights abuses.
The 74-year-old leader of the Asian country informed the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague that she expected a report by an internal inquiry to recommend more prosecutions of Myanmar soldiers soon.
Continue reading...Myanmar leader tells court in The Hague that civilian deaths were not genocide but part of a civil war
She might have been saving her best defence for the highest stage of all. But the arguments advanced by Aung San Suu Kyi at The Hague in response to allegations including genocide were much the same as the Burmese leader has been making for years. Most had been discredited long before she delivered her 20-minute address at the international court of justice on Wednesday morning.
There had undoubtedly been violence in the country’s restive northern Rakhine state, Aung San Suu Kyi told the judges. Armed groups had attacked the Burmese army, which had responded with force, sending more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. But she challenged the idea that the military’s actions were carried out with genocidal intent – “to destroy the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part”.
Continue reading...Aung San Suu Kyi has dismissed allegations of state violence against Rohingya Muslims at The Hague. Speaking on the second day of hearings at the International Court of Justice in the genocide case against Myanmar, the country's de facto prime minister denied there had been genocidal intent in her government't treatment of the Rohingya and blamed the conflict on an uprising by separatist insurgents
Continue reading...Humanitarian agencies say Rohingya people displaced by violence in Rakhine state are forced to live in ‘apartheid-like’ facilities
The UK has broken ranks with the UN and is continuing to put money into squalid Rohingya “apartheid-like” camps, despite a policy designed to avoid complicity in Myanmar’s rights abuses, the Guardian has learned.
Internal briefing documents as well as interviews with UN and humanitarian agency officials in Myanmar showed the British government was maintaining a policy of providing aid and other support to displaced people living in camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that have been slated for closure since 2017.
Continue reading...World’s failure to act over Myanmar is ‘stain on collective conscience’, UN court told
Aung San Suu Kyi has sat impassively through graphic accounts of mass murder and rape perpetrated by Myanmar’s military at the start of a three-day hearing into allegations of genocide at the UN’s highest court.
“I stand before you to awaken the conscience of the world and arouse the voice of the international community,” Abubacarr Marie Tambadou, the Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, said as he opened his country’s case against Myanmar at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague. “In the words of Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
Continue reading...Peace prize winner will lead her country’s defence against claims at court in Netherlands
A momentous legal confrontation will take place at the UN’s highest court this week when the Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi appears in person to defend Myanmar against accusations of genocide.
Once internationally feted as a human rights champion, Myanmar’s state counsellor is scheduled to lead a delegation to the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Continue reading...With rape and domestic abuse endemic in the lawless refugee camp, safe spaces have been set up to help the women affected
In a small, dark hut within the world’s largest refugee settlement, a fan hums quietly as Faizal speaks. He says that last month his 12-year-old sister was raped here in their home. The little girl sits in silence beside him wearing a pink headscarf and red dress.
Rape is endemic in the camp in Cox’s Bazar. Although the exact number of victims is unknown, many Rohingya women who experienced rape and torture fleeing Myanmar report facing sexual violence again in their new home.
Continue reading...Burmese leader will lead delegation to international court of justice next month
Aung San Suu Kyi will travel to The Hague to defend Myanmar against allegations of genocide, her office has announced.
The Burmese leader, once an icon of democracy but now tainted by her association with what UN investigators have described as crimes against humanity, will lead a delegation to the international court of justice (ICJ) next month.
Continue reading...Europe is in talks with Myanmar to increase seafood imports. It cannot ignore the widespread slavery within the industry
While forced labour and slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand and other parts of the world have been brought to light in recent years, the fishing industry in Myanmar has received less attention.
This is because fish caught there is mostly sold to local markets, but this may be about to change. Myanmar’s seafood businesses are increasingly seeking export markets, including the EU. And unless the EU responds to the clear evidence of widespread slavery and brutal conditions in Myanmar’s fishing industry, Europe could face another slavery scandal.
Continue reading...With citizenship in Myanmar still denied, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must either live under severe restrictions or move to an isolated island
Life in the world’s largest refugee camp has grown harder in the past few months. Mohammad, a Rohingya farmer who lost his leg fleeing violence in Myanmar, does not understand why.
“We got a lot more before in terms of food and help, but now it feels like we are not getting enough support from the government and NGOs. We are also more restricted in our movement,” he says, sitting on a bench outside his house, surrounded by discarded plastic bottles and rotting food.
The Bangladeshi government has launched a crackdown in the camp, shutting shops run by refugees, blocking internet services, confiscating mobile phones, putting up fencing and setting an 8pm curfew, meaning people can’t leave their homes at night.
Bangladesh appears to be getting frustrated with its more than 1 million guests. Politics is turning and it has been reported that locals in Cox’s Bazar are running out of patience. The government is finalising plans to move 100,000 refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal and refugees wonder if it is all connected.
The state minister of foreign affairs, Shahriar Alam, said fencing was being put up for security reasons. “As far as the internet is concerned, 2G is still available. Due to the credible security concerns, [the] government has kept the internet access limited,” he says.
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