After
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20106768
But, but, Myanmar Burma is on the way to democracy. What are those native champions of democracy and human rights doing about this?Burma: HRW satellite images 'show Rakhine destruction'
A human rights group has released satellite images of what appears to be the destruction of a coastal Burmese district riven by ethnic unrest.
Human Rights Watch says the images show that more than 800 buildings and houseboats were burned to the ground in Kyaukpyu, in western Rakhine state.
It says the victims were mostly Muslim Rohingyas, targeted by non-Muslims.
The president's spokesman acknowledged that whole villages had been burnt down and that more troops could be deployed.
Officials say 64 people have died in recent unrest, but HRW says it fears the figure could be much higher.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the violence showed that Burma's government "urgently needs to provide security for the Rohingya" in Rakhine state, which is also known as Arakan.
"Unless the authorities also start addressing the root causes of the violence, it is only likely to get worse," said Mr Robertson
'Bodies at sea'
The US-based group compared satellite images of the Kyaukpyu district taken on 9 and 25 October.
On 9 October, hundreds of closely packed houses can be clearly seen in rows along the peninsula - which sits at the mouth of an inlet - as well as scores of houseboats along the northern shoreline.
But in the image taken on Thursday, few boats remain and the 35-acre district is almost entirely empty of houses.
HRW said many of the inhabitants are thought to have fled by boat out to sea.
A local reporter who visited the site told the BBC's Burmese service the area had been completely destroyed, with some buildings still smouldering. The reporter said the district was also almost totally deserted.
Officials said there were no new reports of violence since Friday and that they have restored order in Rakhine.
Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Burmese President Thein Sein acknowledged "whole villages and towns being burnt down in Rakhine State while we could not provide full security in some areas".
"That's why the government is strengthening security. If necessary, we will send more police and military troops in order to get back stability," he said.
At least 64 people were killed this week, officials said, in the first serious outburst of violence since June, when a state of emergency was declared in Rakhine.
At that time deadly clashes claimed dozens of lives and thousands of people were forced to flee their homes - many are yet to return.
The UN earlier warned the country's reform programme could be put at risk by continued communal violence between local groups of vigilante Buddhists and Muslim Rohingyas in the western state.
HRW said it feared the death toll from the latest unrest could be much higher, based on witness reports and "the government's well-documented history of underestimating figures that might lead to criticism of the state".
Eid plans cancelled
Non-Muslims are reporting that this time they too were fired on by government forces during the unrest, and suffered many casualties.
The government has declared a curfew in the affected areas, but its response since the violence first broke out in June is being widely criticised as inadequate, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok.
On Friday six towns were hit by clashes and a night-time curfew is in place in several locations including Min Bya and Mrauk Oo where the latest spate of violence began.
It is unclear what prompted the latest clashes. The Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims, believed to be mainly Rohingya, blame each other for the violence.
In Bangladesh, border officials said they believed several boats with Rohingyas on board were waiting to try to cross the river from Burma. One official said 52 Rohingyas had been sent back in the last few days.
Muslims throughout Burma have abandoned plans to celebrate the festival of Eid al-Adha because of the violence.
There is long-standing tension between the ethnic Rakhine people, who make up the majority of the state's population, and Muslims, many of whom are Rohingya and are stateless.
The Burmese authorities regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants and correspondents say there is widespread public hostility to them.
In August, Burma set up a commission to investigate the violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the west of the country. Authorities earlier rejected a UN-led inquiry.
blocking humanitarian aid, thats what.
This was dated July of this year.
But what about Aung San Suu Kyi, the darling of the West? Remember how that American broke her house arrest by swimming across a river or some shit to her house? What is she doing about it?Burma's monks call for Muslim community to be shunned
The Buddhists have reportedly tried to block humanitarian aid getting to ethnic group
HANNA HINDSTROM WEDNESDAY 25 JULY 2012
Monks who played a vital role in Burma's recent struggle for democracy have been accused of fuelling ethnic tensions in the country by calling on people to shun a Muslim community that has suffered decades of abuse.
In a move that has shocked many observers, some monks' organisations have issued pamphlets telling people not to associate with the Rohingya community, and have blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching them. One leaflet described the Rohingya as "cruel by nature" and claimed it had "plans to exterminate" other ethnic groups.
The outburst against the Rohingya, often described as one of the world's most oppressed groups, comes after weeks of ethnic violence in the Rakhine state in the west of Burma that has left more than 80 dead and up to 100,000 people living in a situation described as "desperate" by humanitarian organisations. As state-sanctioned abuses against the Muslim community continue, Burma's president Thein Sein – credited by the international community for ushering in a series of democratic reforms in the country and releasing political prisoners such as Aung San Suu Kyi – has urged neighbouring Bangladesh to take in the Rohingya.
"In recent days, monks have emerged in a leading role to enforce denial of humanitarian assistance to Muslims, in support of policy statements by politicians," said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan project, a regional NGO. "A member of a humanitarian agency in Sittwe told me that some monks were posted near Muslim displacement camps, checking on and turning away people they suspected would visit for assistance."
The Young Monks' Association of Sittwe and Mrauk Oo Monks' Association have both released statements in recent days urging locals not to associate with the group. Displaced Rohingya have been housed in over-crowded camps away from the Rakhine population – where a health and malnutrition crisis is said to be escalating – as political leaders move to segregate and expel the 800,000-strong minority from Burma. Earlier this month, Thein Sein attempted to hand over the group to the UN refugee agency.
Aid workers report ongoing threats and interference by local nationalist and religious groups. Some monasteries in Maungdaw and Sittwe sheltering displaced Rakhine people have openly refused to accept international aid, alleging that it is "biased" in favour of the Rohingya. Monks have traditionally played a critical role in helping vulnerable citizens, stepping in to care for the victims of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 after the military junta rejected international assistance.
Many have been shocked by the response of the monks and members of the democracy movement to the recent violence, which erupted after the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman, allegedly by three Muslims, unleashed long-standing ethnic tensions.
Monks' leader Ashin Htawara recently encouraged the government to send the group "back to their native land" at an event in London hosted by the anti-Rohingya Burma Democratic Concern. Ko Ko Gyi, a democracy activist with the 88 Generation Students group and a former political prisoner, said: "The Rohingya are not a Burmese ethnic group. The root cause of the violence… comes from across the border." Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said: "We were shocked to have [Ashin Htawara] propose to us that there should be what amounts to concentration camps for the Rohingya."
Ms Suu Kyi has also been criticised for failing to speak out. Amal de Chickera of the London-based Equal Rights Trust, said: "You have these moral figures, whose voices do matter. It's extremely disappointing and in the end it can be very damaging."
The Rohingya have lived in Burma for centuries, but in 1982, the then military ruler Ne Win stripped them of their citizenship. Thousands fled to Bangladesh where they live in pitiful camps. Foreign media are still denied access to the conflict region, where a state of emergency was declared last month, and ten aid workers were arrested without explanation.
Apparently not much
But hey, at least they get the right to vote. Vote on committing pogroms against people they don't like. I want that right.Aung San Suu Kyi loses her gloss for failing to denounce killings
Where is Suu Kyi's famous 'moral authority' as Muslim Rohingya homes are razed to the ground?
BY Edward Loxton LAST UPDATED AT 07:33 ON Mon 29 Oct 2012
CHIANG MAI - The iconic international image of Burma's charismatic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is rapidly losing its lustre as she maintains her silence on the continuing violence in her country's westernmost Rakhine State.
The violence began in June, sparked by allegations that a Buddhist girl had been raped by Muslim men. After an uneasy lull, Buddhists again went on the rampage last week, killing more than 100 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority community, who have been suffering severe state persecution for decades.
Aerial photographs taken from the region show large areas of Muslim-populated towns and villages razed to the ground. About 70,000 people have so far lost their homes in the violence.
The Rohingya policy followed by the current government differs little from the discrimination inflicted by the military junta that ruled Burma for the past 50 years. Most Rohingya are regarded as non-Burmese Bengalis and are locked out of Burma's political and social structure and denied fundamental rights guaranteed by citizenship.
"Suu Kyi has lost much of her credibility because of her silence over these appalling events," SOAS University of London researcher Guy Horton told The Week. "Her evasiveness on one of the greatest human rights tragedies in the world today has lost her the commodity she has always had in abundance - her moral authority."
Horton is the author of a report on human rights violations in eastern Burma, Dying Alive, which contributed to the UN Security Council resolution in 2007 'Burma: A Threat to the Peace'.
Veteran Swedish journalist and author Bertil Lintner explained Suu Kyi's dilemma. If she condemned the attacks on Muslims, he told The Week, "many Buddhists - her main constituency - would turn against her. But if she says nothing, she'll lose credibility in the international community.
"She appears to have chosen the latter, and, consequently, criticism against her is growing among international human rights organisations and activists. From her point of view, that may be preferable to having domestic opinion, which is fiercely anti-Rohingya, turn against her."
Lintner, author of several books on Burma, who had talks with Suu Kyi in the Burmese capital Naypyidaw earlier this month, said she was already under pressure at home. "The problem is that her silence on the clashes in Rakhine state as well as the ongoing government military offensive against the Kachins in the north have already cost her a lot of popular support."
There are few Kachins who express any sympathy for Suu Kyi these days, Lintner went on, and even the Shan leader Khun Htun Oo said in an interview while he was in the US last month that she has become "neutralised". Many young Burmese are also becoming critical of her for other reasons, arguing that she has moved far too close to the government and the military.
But does Suu Kyi have any choice, if she wants to win the 2015 election? Guy Horton believes other great leaders "would have reacted differently and grasped the nettle...
"Gandhi, for instance, went on hunger strike to try to stop exactly the kind of horror of what is being inflicted in Rakhine State today. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King - moral leaders with whom she is compared - would have shown solidarity with the victims and called for passive resistance. Instead, she has just collected prizes - including the US Congressional Medal of Honour - from a fawning world."
In Horton's view, it's no exaggeration to say that what is happening in Rakhine State is similar to the persecution endured by the Jews in 1930s Germany.
"It should be noted that a call by President Thein Sein for the deportation of the Rohingya or their forcible transfer into camps amounts to an incitement to commit a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute," Horton told The Week.
"In addition, the destructive targeting of a racial/religious group may amount to a form of genocide. The UN Special Rapporteur on Burma should renew his call for an investigation into crimes against humanity in Burma, which are not subject to the whims of political feasibility."
However, Maung Zarni, a Burma expert and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, has a different view, telling the Associated Press: "Politically, Aung San Suu Kyi has absolutely nothing to gain from opening her mouth on this. She is no longer a political dissident trying to stick to her principles. She's a politician and her eyes are fixed on the prize, which is the 2015 majority Buddhist vote."
Horton challenged Zarni's view: "If she adopts such a position of cynical Realpolitik the long-term consequences are that she will lose not only her moral credibility, but the support of most ethnic people and possibly the 2015 election itself.
