Category: Rohingya Reports

Australian report: 13,507 refugees to Australia this past year, 100 are Rohingya

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a report from the Australian government about its refugee resettlement record this just-ending fiscal year.

Refugees from Iraq and Burma comprised about 40 per cent of the 13 507 refugees and other people in greatest humanitarian need who were granted visas to start a new life in Australia in 2008-09, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said today.

[….]

Iraqis were the largest group in the 2008-09 humanitarian program with 2874 visas granted – including 500 additional refugee places that were reserved for this group last program year in recognition of their critical resettlement needs,’ Senator Evans said.

Australia now joins Canada and some European countries (including Ireland) in resettling Rohingya Muslims.  So far the US has officially not resettled Rohingya, but I bet that will soon change.  And, as a matter of fact, some may have already come in with the Burmese Karen Christians.

The second-largest group resettled were Burmese, most of whom had been living in camps along the Thai-Burma border for more than 20 years. This group also included more than 100 Burmese Rohingya who have been living in the Cox’s Bazaar region of Bangladesh since 1992.

See my first post on Rohingya and Cox’s Bazaar here.  Our whole Rohingya category is here (this is the 80th post on the subject!).

Wanting to be sure to be good humanitarians, the Australian government says they will take even more refugees this coming fiscal year.

The minister said Australia remained a world leader in humanitarian resettlement, both in terms of numbers resettled and the services provided to help them rebuild their lives.

‘The program will continue to grow in the year ahead, with an increase of 250 places building on the 2008-09 increase, to bring the total program to 13 750 for 2009-10,’ Senator Evans said. ‘Our ongoing efforts to help vulnerable populations are a clear demonstration of our nation’s compassion for those in need.’

For information on Australia’s problems with refugees, visit our category for that country, here.

Rohingya hoping for resettlement in the Czech Republic

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I came across this month-old article (probably from the UNHCR) but just today published at a Rohingya website.   If the Czech Republic is interviewing prospective refugees in Malaysia to come to their country, they will likely be Rohingya Muslims.

With the wrap-up of a selection mission to Malaysia this week, the Czech Republic is on its way to becoming the first former Eastern Bloc nation to become a resettlement country for refugees.

Henrik Nordentoft, acting UNHCR representative in Malaysia, said that while the Czechs have a history of receiving refugees, this is the first time a resettlement programme is being formalized where the Czech government selects refugees to start a new life in the country. The small Central European country is initially to take about two dozen Myanmar refugees from Malaysia.

“The Czech Republic joins a small group of countries who offer resettlement to refugees and UNHCR is grateful to the Czech Republic for responding to our call to countries to offer this vital assistance to refugees,” added Nordentoft. “For many refugees, being offered a new home in another country can mean the difference between life and death. It offers refugees both protection and a lasting solution to their plight.”

A Czech delegation is completing a mission to Kuala Lumpur to interview some 40 refugees for selection and to provide cultural orientation. The Czech pilot programme is aimed at helping vulnerable refugees, so top consideration was given to survivors of trauma, refugees with serious medical problems, or protection needs.

The following information must be inaccurate because the US alone will be taking between 70,000-80,000 refugees this fiscal year, and who knows how high the Obama Administration will set the ceiling for FY2010 which begins October 1st.

The Czech Republic joins the ranks of some 19 countries worldwide that open their doors annually to refugees through formal resettlement programmes, and is the eighth European Union country to have established such a programme. Some 70,000 refugees are accepted for resettlement worldwide every year.

See our category on Rohingya here.

Burmese scholar questions claims of Rohingya

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I found this fascinating blog post just now from a Burmese scholar who says there is really no ethnic group called ‘Rohingya’ with a longtime claim on the Arakan region of Burma.    Here is the conclusion of Khin Maung Saw’s post:

If one carefully scrutinizes all available authentic historical and etymological facts it comes out clearly that there was no ethnic group called “Rohingya” in Arakan as well as in Burma, and it is only an invented name in the 1950’s. All claims of the “Rohingyas” are baseless and found out to be incorrect.

Boat People came direct from Bangladesh and not from Arakan. They were caned by the human traffickers. Just to get asylum in an ASEAN country they have to fabricate some tragic stories and had to claim to be ‘Rohingyas’.

In any case, I have to be very careful to present this article in a very neutral way so that the paper does not read either as an attack on “Rohingyas” or as a polemical piece aimed at “Rohingyas”, nor be seen as a racial writing. The biggest worry for me is: This article might be misinterpreted as an indirect support for the position of the very brutal Burmese Military Junta.

Here, I sincerely suggest to the “Rohingyas” to change their tactics. Instead of attacking all people who do not support their dishonest claims they should attack the Burmese Military Junta only. In the mean time they should learn to speak, read and write Burmese, especially the Rakhaing Dialect, and make friends with other ethnic groups of Burma, particularly with the Rakhaings who are the natives and majority of that state. Instead of demanding for the rights of an indigenous ethnic minority of Arakan by inventing fabricated and fanciful histories and trying to turn the traditional Buddhist land of Arakan into a Muslim state, they should be honest and just request to be granted the right to permanent residential status and then the right to be naturalized citizens of Burma step by step to which the Arakanese people (Rakhaings) will have no objection. [Edit: Emphasis mine]

Why do we have an entire category on the Rohingya?  It is because they are using their claims of persecution to get resettlement in the West and they are succeeding.

Rohingya sued to get into Japan; control-freaks advance agenda

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a follow-up to my post last night updating our Rohingya Reports category.   B.L. sent this old story that brings two important issues together—Japan’s reluctance to dilute its unique culture and Rohingya Muslims agitating to get into first world countries.  It also allows me to vent again on my theory of what drives all this.

Here is the information from The Japan Times in 2007.  By the way, although RRW was up and running in the fall of 2007, we were not aware of the Rohingya campaign until January 2008, here.  Now we have over 70 posts in the Rohingya category if anyone wants to see how a public relations campaign of this sort evolves.

Seven members of a Myanmar ethnic minority appeared in court Wednesday to ask for asylum, saying they face severe persecution if forced to return there.

The people from the Rohingya ethnic minority are seeking in their lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court that the government revoke its denial of refugee status and grant them asylum in Japan. 

[….]

Taro Takahashi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said many Myanmar natives seeking asylum in Japan have at times been detained for more than a year before obtaining provisional status. Winning recognition as a refugee has been difficult as well.

Myanmar people have filed 535 applications for refugee status since 1992, but only 132, including some Rohingyans, have been granted asylum, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

Recently I told you how Japan is being badgered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to take significantly more refugees and asylees.

So who is driving nations to give up their unique cultures—mixing people up in a giant human blender?  It is a cabal of very powerful people who want to erase boundaries and govern the world with an authoritarian hand.   They are elitists and control-freaks who think they are smarter than the rest of us.

In order to demolish boundaries they need to dilute cultures, wipe out patriotism and move people around the world like so many herds of cattle.  One can’t possibly think that this little handful of Rohingya illegals found powerful legal representation on their own.   This is all orchestrated and Japan is a hold-out—a nation that hasn’t gotten with the program.

The puppeteers in all this are also statists (like Obama) who want to concentrate economic power into the hands of a highly centralized government.   UN bigwigs are probably licking their chops figuring they will be the all powerful dictators of all of our lives.   The immigrants (refugees and asylees) themselves are being used — friends of Obama, like Wade Rathke founder of ACORN and the SEIU, don’t give one minute of thought to the real needs of immigrants and the poor, they are only the pawns, the means to an end.  The angrier and poorer the immigrants are, the better.   The ends justify the means.

Two final points I want to make:

The statist control-freaks know how to use our desire to be decent humanitarians to cover their real agenda.    Have pity for the immigrant pawns, but don’t fall for the strategy.

And, in their collaboration with Islamists they make a grave error—Muslims want their own one world borderless government, but it is a very different one then the Leftwing/elitist/statist cabal hankers for.

Muslim Bangladesh tells Burma (Myanmar) to take its Muslim Rohingya back

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You gotta laugh (well, at least I do) that here we have just another example of so-called Muslim charity.  Bangladesh, a Muslim country, is telling Burma to be neighborly and take its illegal immigrants, the Rohingya back.   From Reuters:

BANGLADESH has sought help from the UN refugee agency to repatriate thousands of Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar and stop the flow of illegal immigrants, officials said today.

Dhaka says there are about 28 000 living in camps near the Myanmar border, and another 400 000 scattered outside.

“The continuous flow of illegal entrants was causing huge damage to our scarce land, forest and other resources,” [Edit:  Interesting that even Bangladesh understands that large numbers of immigrants strain resources when even our own Sierra Club hasn’t figured that out yet!] Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said after a meeting with Raymond Hall, regional representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Rohingyas, not recognised as an ethnic minority by Myanmar, allege human rights abuse by its authorities, saying they deprive Rohingya of free movement, education and rightful employment.

Moni urged the Myanmar authorities to take back the Rohingyas in the interest of good neighbourly relations.

Meanwhile, do you know what is even funnier?   Bengalis are coming to the US in large numbers—-illegally!  And becoming Jihadi terrorists to boot!

I haven’t had a Rohingya update in awhile.  For new readers we have a whole category on Muslim Rohingya since there is a lobbying campaign within the refugee industry to bring them to the US.  Some have already gone to Canada, the UK and Ireland.