Tag Archives: Myanmar

Other, Religion + Belief

Myanmar News | Muslims, Interfaith & the Unmarried

Myanmar president signs bills perceived as targeting Muslim minorities, interfaith couples, and the unmarried into law
  • President Thein Sein signed four “Race and Religious Protection Laws” into being in the lead-up to November elections.
  • The laws include one criminalizing polygamy and unmarried cohabitation and two laws restricting religious conversion and interfaith marriage.
  • Buddhist nationalists in the country have promoted the laws as the latest in a series of measures restricting the activities and practices of the country’s Muslim minority.

“They set out the potential for discrimination on religious grounds and pose the possibility for serious communal tension.”

Read the full story at Reuters.

(Image Credit: Toru Hanai/Reuters)

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

Myanmar News | Rohingya

Rohingya politician barred from re-election as hundreds of thousands find themselves struck from voting rolls
  • Lawmaker U Shwe Maung, a member of Myanmar’s governing party, was informed by the country’s electoral commission of his ineligibility to run for re-election.
  • The commission claimed Shwe Maung was not a citizen, the result of Myanmar’s recent invalidation of the identity cards held by the majority of the country’s Rohingya population.
  • The mass disenfranchisement of Rohingya has compromised the integrity of the upcoming November elections, which will be the first to include a democratically led party to compete with the military-backed governing party.

“This is the government really stripping them of their last right. … It suits the government’s long-term plan of compelling them to leave.”

Read the full story at The New York Times.

Ideology + Affiliation

Myanmar News | Dissident Journalists

1 Comment
Myanmar shutters media connected to ousted parliamentary speaker
  • The Ministry of Information ordered two newspapers considered the mouthpieces of parliamentary leader Shwe Mann to go dark.
  • Mann’s ousting followed his attempts earlier in the summer to limit the political role of the military ahead of the November general election.
  • President Thein Sein’s use of security forces to remove Mann has led to concerns about the government’s commitment to democratic process ahead of an election that could be Myanmar’s first free and open one in a half-century.

Read the full story at Reuters.

Gender, Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

Myanmar Feature | Rohingya Women

1 Comment

A Forked Path for Rohingya Women, with Both Roads Leading to Hell

Trapped in a desperate situation compounded by their gender, Rohingya women–already facing persecution as a Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar–find themselves forced into either marriage or prostitution by human traffickers in Southeast Asia. The New York Times profiles one of their stories and the efforts of one advocate to bring light to the issue.

View the New York Times feature on YouTube.

Gender, Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

Myanmar News | Muslims & Interfaith

Myanmar passes controversial law restricting interfaith marriage
  • The law requires partners of different faiths to register their intent to marry with the government, after which they can marry only if there are no objections following public notice of the engagement.
  • Violation of the law could lead to imprisonment, which has led to an outcry from rights organizations who slam the law as discriminatory against ethnic minorities and women.
  • Proposed by the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, the law claims to focus on the protection of Buddhist women from being coerced into interfaith marriages and losing their rights.

“This kind of law shouldn’t be issued by parliament because it is not an essential law for all ethnic [groups] in Myanmar; it is just a law that discriminates against ethnic people when it comes to religion.”

Read the full story at Radio Free Asia.

(Image Credit: AFP, via Radio Free Asia)

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief
Ahead of Myanmar elections, concerns mount over extremist tactics among Buddhist nationalists as memories of recent violence persist
  • Hundreds were killed in 2012 and 2013 in clashes between Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, particularly in the western state of Rakhine.
  • Politicians are leery of alienating Buddhist-majority constituents by condemning the violence, but face international pressure to speak up for ethnic and religious minorities.
  • Myanmar transitioned to semi-democratic rule in 2012, but with uneven rights to expression and anxiety over the upcoming elections, non-Buddhists (particularly Muslims) are fearful for their security.

More on this story at Reuters.

(Image Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Nationality + Migration
The NY Times has published a graphically enhanced look at the global migration crisis that is being called the worst since World War II
  • 38 million have been displaced within their own countries, while 16.7 million refugees have fled internationally.
  • Roughly 11 million Syrians and 3 million Iraqis have been internally displaced, while 4 million Syrians have left the country, straining the intake abilities of neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.
  • Approximately 25,000 Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants have been trafficked via sea in Southeast Asia, some finding conditional acceptance in Indonesia and Malaysia and others being repatriated.
  • To date, around 78,000 have traveled across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa and Turkey, fleeing violence, persecution, and poor economic prospects in North, West, and East Africa.
  • Finally, the conflict in Ukraine has displaced 1.3 million inside the country and sent 867,000 abroad, mostly to Russia with few European countries willing to accept them.

More on this story at The New York Times.

Age, Religion + Belief
#MyFriend campaign shows interfaith friendships in Myanmar, currently an international spectacle because of its persecution of Rohingya Muslims.
  • Hate speech and harassment online have created hostile conditions for many religious minorities in Myanmar.
  • Launched in April, the selfie Facebook campaign hopes to provide a counternarrative to prevailing discriminatory attitudes.

More on this story at Global Voices.

(Image Credit: Facebook photo, via Global Voices)

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

Local and national politics in Myanmar plays upon and is at times driven by society’s anti-Rohingya sentiment (and anti-Muslim sentiment more generally). More from Al Jazeera.

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

The Dalai Lama calls on Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out against the country’s persecution of the Rohingya. More from Al Jazeera.

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

Genocide researcher finds early signs forecasting possible future genocide in the Rohingya situation in Myanmar.  More from Public Radio International.

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Religion + Belief

New law authorizing Myanmar provincial authorities to mandate 3-year gap between births suspected by rights groups as attempt to inhibit Muslim population growth.  More from The Guardian.

The Rounds

The Mid-week Rounds

Leave a comment

Protests in Saudi Arabia following the anti-Shiite suicide bombing, assisted suicide debates in the U.K., Myanmar’s anti-Rohingya protests, Russia’s community for parents and their gay children, immigration reform’s stumble in the U.S., Dubai’s motorcycle women, and 45 other stories in this week’s news rounds… Continue reading The Mid-week Rounds →