Day: May 11, 2008

Another meatpacker/Somali love story

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a yet another article, this time from from Greeley, Co, about how great it is for a Swift meatpacking plant to have all these Somali refugee men handy, ready, and willing to work.   Yesterday’s article is here. Today’s news account begins:  

GREELEY, Colo. — The four Somalis moved into the apartment last August, six floors up in a downtown Greeley building. The living room is furnished with only a metal folding chair and small table covered in papers and a laptop computer. A Somali flag, a white star against light blue, is the only wall hanging, draped behind the table. 

Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as a bit strange?   Four Muslim men living in an apartment with not much else but a laptop computer and a Somali flag on the wall.   Hum.

Back to the article which is nothing more than the boilerplate meatpacker story we see all over the country. 

Doug Schult, who heads employee and labor relations at Swift, said refugees are coming from several east African countries. They are working at Swift plants across the nation, from Greeley to Kentucky. 

Ibraham Mohamed is a Greeley caseworker for Lutheran Family Services, which provides refugee resettlement services. He estimates that about 300 east Africans are in Greeley, and that “every day, 20 or 30 people are coming to get started at Swift, maybe 15 (a day). It depends on how they get the job.”

I just checked our archives and sure enough I wrote about the opening of this refugee office for Ft. Morgan and Greeley back in July, read especially this post on July 13th with a link to Greeley’s historical role in the origin of modern day Islamic terrorism (yes Greeley!).  Those 4 guys with the laptop and the Somali flag probably have had a private little chuckle about the irony of that.

This meatpacker/Muslim refugee marriage doesn’t come together by happenstance.  The US State Department was probably working with Swift all along and helped them get the refugee workers out to Greeley, but they needed an office there to make sure the Swift workers had all of their other needs met compliments of the US taxpayer.

New readers, use our search function and find the many many posts we have written about meatpacking plants and refugees.  Check especially Shelbyville, TN and Emporia, KS.

Rohingya: sorting out whos who and who is going to kill whom

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My title is misleading, I am not really sorting out this mess of groups, just giving you bits of information that hopefully one day will come together.    Our interest in the Rohingya is that these Burmese Muslims are agitating for third country resettlement to the West.   The recent devastating cyclone in Burma has given them an opportunity to be heard in the media.    New readers go to our category “Rohingya Reports” for background.

Today I came across a press release from something called the Rohingya Youth Development Forum appealing for humanitarian aid for the Burmese in the wake of the storm.   Checking out their website where most pages didn’t open, I came across the following list of groups that they are presumably affiliated with.

National Democratic Party for Human Rights (exile) HQ, USA

Arakan Rohingya Organization-Japan (JARO)

Rohingya Youth Development Forum (RYDF), Arakan-Burma

Rohingya Human Rights Council (RHC), Norway

World Rohingya Congress (WRC), USA

Burmese Rohingya Association in United Arab Emirate (BRA-UAE)

National Council for Rohingya (NCR) Malaysia

Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO)

Arakan League for Justice and Freedom (ALJF), Bangladesh

Union of Rohingya Communities in Europe (URCE), Denmark-Norway

Rohingya Community in Norway (RCN), Norway

Burmese Rohingya Community in Australia (BRCA)

Burmese Rohingya Association in Japan (BRJA), Japan

Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) Arakan, Burma

Burmese Rohingya Association in Thailand (BRAT), Thailand

Arakan Rohingya Refugee Committee (ARRC), Malaysia

Ittihad-Tullab Al-Muslimeen (ITM), Arakan, Burma

 

Rohingya News Groups

Kalandan Press Network (KPN)

Rohingya Information Center (RIC), Malaysia

RohingyaNet

Rohingya Yahoogroups

I’ve highlighted ARNO  because in more searching I came across this article from a group called the Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CRDB is not listed on the Rohingya Youth Development Forum list) in which its leader asserts the following and claims that his life is in danger from ARNO.  He says before 9/11 ARNO was called the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front.

Our attention has been drawn to a press release issued by a petty Rohingya communalist group led by Mr Nurul Islam, the President of Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) who changed the name of his organization into Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO), after September 11 incident.

The fall 2007 article goes on to explain.

 

In addition, one petty Rohingya communalist group have brutally killed a group of valiant Rakhine freedom fighters in the jungle which has turned majority of Rakhines against the innocent common Rohingyas and which has later resulted in the killing of thousands of Rohingya men, women and children in the communal violence. And finally we appealed to the international community to take necessary steps to stop Burmese military persecutions and genocidal operations against the Rohingyas from one and on the other hand to restore peace and communal harmony between two sister communities of Arakan – the Rakhines and Rohingyas.

These statements of ours against the communalist forces of Rohingyas who are very few in numbers, has seriously infuriated them and then they started all their attempts to exterminate us. Later, Mr Nurul Islam, the then President of Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF) made three attempts to kill me in collaboration of another Rohingya communalist so-called leader Maulan Saiful Islam, the then vice president of Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) with their armed cadres and in one such attempt, Mr Khairul Amin also participated as he was a central executive member of RSO’s student wing.

But since the existence of both ARIF and RSO was not recognised in Bangladesh being the rebel groups of Arakan, I had no chance to file any case with the police against their attempts to murder me. However, in 1994 we changed the name of the Rohingya Refugees Action Committee (RRAC) in to The Council for Restoration of Democracy (CRDB) for the greater interest of Burma and Rohingyas. Notably, on July 12.1995, we have held another press conference in the Chittagong Press Club on behalf of the CRDB which was also widely covered by different national and international media.

However, today the time we have announced our programme to hold a press conference in the national press club at Oslo with a view to let the world know the untold stories of Rohingyas’ plight and predicament as well as the Burmese military persecutions, those petty Rohingya communalist groups have been coming again forward to endanger my life. Now, the only option left for me is to produce all the evidences and witnesses of their past crimes against humanity and to seek the help of international humanitarian community to save my life from those petty communalists and their collaborators who have already endangered the life of thousands of innocent Rohingyas.

 

So, bottomline, what the heck is going on?  Are we supposed to sort these groups out in order to let the correct Rohingyas into the US?   How about if we don’t let any come to the US and let them work out their differances somewhere else.