News Report: UNHCR - Risk of Terrorism 'Very, Very High' if Rohingya Crisis Persists

Lisa Schlein

GENEVA — The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, warned Wednesday of a high risk of terrorism in Myanmar and the region if the Rohingya crisis remains unresolved.

Grandi recently visited Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, which is home to some 800,000 Rohingya refugees. Among those, 450,000 refugees recently fled violence and persecution in Myanmar, while more than 300,000 others arrived in neighboring Bangladesh before the current crisis.

Most of the refugees are women and children, and many are deeply traumatized. Grandi says he spoke to women who had been raped and children who had seen their families and friends killed.

"The combination of limited health facilities, poor sanitary and hygienic conditions, and overcrowded sites, you can well imagine, is a recipe for disaster in terms of possible epidemics," Grandi said, stressing how little the refugees had and how vulnerable they were to multiple risks.

News Report: Border Guards Stop Rohingyas From Entering India

Suhail Anjum

NEW DELHI — India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using pepper spray and stun grenades to block Rohingya Muslims, who are fleeing violence in their homeland of Myanmar, Indian officials said Saturday.

Border forces, citing security risks, have been authorized to prevent attempts to enter the country.

"We don't want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we won't tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil," said a senior official with India's Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

R.P.S. Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF, patrolling a large part of the border in the eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both what he called "chili spray" and stun grenades to keep Rohingya out of India.

About 40,000 Rohingya refugees who passed through Bangladesh from Myanmar are already inside India. On Thursday, India Home Minister Rajnath Singh called for their deportation as illegal migrants, saying they had not applied for refugee status.

India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the government about the plan to deport Rohingyas. The NHRC says it is assisting Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds because they were being persecuted in Myanmar.

This story first appeared on Voice of America & is reposted here with permission.

News Report: Explainer - Who Are Myanmar's Rohingya?

Rohingya Muslims have long been seen as one of the world's most persecuted minority groups. Despite having a long history in Myanmar, the mostly Muslim group is not officially recognized by the government, which considers them illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. They are also subject to intense societal and governmental discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

How many Rohingya are there?

More than one million Rohingya are believed to live in Myanmar - a relatively small percentage of the country's overall population of 53 million; but, that percentage is becoming smaller every day, as masses of Rohingya continue to flee violence and persecution in the country's western Rakhine state. According to U.N. figures, an estimated 370,000 Rohingya have crossed into neighboring Bangladesh since late last month, when the latest round of violence broke out.

How long have the Rohingya lived in Myanmar?

Many Rohingya can show that their families have lived in Myanmar for generations, but the government does not include Rohingya as one of its 135 officially recognized ethnic groups. It instead refers to them as "Bengalis," and pushes the inaccurate perception that all Rohingya came illegally from Bangladesh. They are, therefore, one of the world's largest technically stateless groups.

News Story: Top political advisor addresses ideological issues about Xinjiang

BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor has made a clear stance on a string of historical issues concerning Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, saying they serve as important guidelines to address ideological problems in the area.

Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks while addressing a two-day symposium on the region's historical issues, which closed Wednesday.

Yu emphasized that Xinjiang is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, and that China has been a unified and multi-ethnic country since the Qin and Han dynasties more than 2,000 years ago.

He pointed out that the various ethnic groups in the region are members of the Chinese nation, and share the common interest of realizing the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

The culture of ethnic groups in the region is rooted in the rich soil of Chinese civilization and is an indivisible part of it, according to Yu.

He further noted that promoting harmonious relations between religions can help maintain peace and prosperity in the region.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: EU Foreign Policy Head Expects Myanmar to Act on Rakhine Crisis Within 1 Week

EU foreign policy head Mogherini says that she expects the government of Myanmar to deal with the roots and consequences of the ethnic crisis in the state of Rakhine this week.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that she was expecting the government of Myanmar to make the necessary steps to address both reasons and consequences of the devastating inter-ethnic conflict in the state of Rakhine within a week.

The state of Rakhine in western Myanmar has seen a build-up of violence since the beginning of August, although the conflict itself is decades old. The government forces of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar have been clashing with Muslim Rohingya insurgents, with many civilians caught in the crossfire.

News Report: UN Security Council to Discuss Myanmar's Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Margaret Besheer, Lisa Schlein

UNITED NATIONS / GENEVA — The United Nations Security Council is holding an urgent meeting this week on continuing violence in western Myanmar that has forced 370,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, was requested by Britain and Sweden on Monday after Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the U.N.'s human rights chief, referred to the treatment of the Rohingya as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

Zeid told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva his office has received numerous reports and satellite imagery of Myanmar security forces and local militias carrying out extrajudicial killings and burning entire Rohingya villages in Rakhine state. Zeid also cited reports of Myanmar troops planting landmines along the shared border.

Speaking from Bangladesh, Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International's crisis response director, told U.N. reporters, "These people have been walking, some of them for days, escaping what can only be described as widespread and systematic abuses.

News Report: Dalai Lama Urges Aung San Suu Kyi to Resolve Rohingya Crisis

Tenzin Gyatso 14th Dalai Lama (Image: Wiki Commons)

Yeshi Dorje

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, has again called on his fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi to peacefully end the Rohingya crisis.

"May I take the liberty of writing to you once again to tell you how dismayed I am by the distressing circumstances in which the situation seems to have deteriorated further," he wrote to Myanmar's de facto leader.

VOA's Tibetan Service received a copy of the letter, in which he refers to discussions the two had a few years ago, when he urged her to use her "influence to bring about a peaceful" resolution to the problems of the Muslim community. In June 2016, he urged her to "make efforts to reduce" the tension.

"It is disappointing to observe that the problem appears to be getting worse and the violence is increasing," he wrote. The letter apparently was sent two weeks ago.

The Dalai Lama also warned Aung San Suu Kyi and other Myanmar leaders that not resolving the crisis peacefully could lead to "further unrest and destruction."

News Report: 4 Shi'ites Killed in Pakistan

Pakistani police say gunmen in Baluchistan province have killed four members of the Hazara community, a Shi'ite minority group.

"The preliminary investigation shows that it was sectarian-based targeted killings...," Amjad Ali Khan, a police commissioner from Quetta, told the French news agency.

The victims were traveling in a vehicle on the road between Quetta and the Afghan border.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. However, the Hazara community has long been a target of Sunni militants.Their distinct facial features of the Hazaras make them easily recognizable among the local population and therefore an easier target for those looking to kill Shi'ites.

Hazaras reside in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

News Story: 5 arrested for violence in central Myanmar

YANGON, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- At least five people have been arrested by the authorities for involvement in Sunday night's violence in Taungdwingyi, Myanmar's central Magway region.

A statement from the government's Information Committee said on Monday that the five confessed that they committed the crime for dissatisfaction with the extremist terrorists' attacks in the northern Rakhine state.

It said an investigation was underway to expose the remaining perpetrators.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: Turkish President Ready to Help Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya Refugees

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday at the Science and Technology Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that his country was ready to help the Rohingya, a Muslim minority ethnic group in Myanmar who are fleeing conflict.

ASTANA (Sputnik) – Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his speech at the summit, which is underway in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana, that Turkey had already notified Bangladesh, where many Rohingya refugees seek asylum, about its readiness to help.

The Turkish President also expressed readiness to work with the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar to prevent cruelty toward the Muslim minority.

The two-day OIC summit kicked off earlier in the day.

News Story: Malaysia no longer moderate, says US-based academic

Expert on Southeast Asia politics and security, says minister Shahidan Kassim's comment on atheists reflects growing intolerance within Malay community over religious matters.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is not the moderate state that it used to be, an academic based in Washington, the United States, told Channel NewsAsia.

The comment from Professor Zachary Abuza, who specialises in Southeast Asia politics and security at Washington’s National War College, followed remarks by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Shahidan Kassim that atheists in Malaysia should be “hunted down”.

“Unfortunately the minister’s comments reflect a steadily growing intolerance within the Malay community over religious matters.

“This is a reflection that many see Malaysia’s ethnic and religious minorities as a roadblock to the full implementation of shariah law (in the country),” Abuza was quoted as saying by the Singapore-based regional news network.

He added that minority groups should be very concerned over the profound societal changes that had taken place.

“Malaysia isn’t the moderate state that it used to be.”

Read the full story at Free Malaysia Today

News Story: Insurgents Won’t Win Battle To Divide Shias and Sunnis - Ghani

By Mir Aqa Popalzai

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani said insurgent groups will fail in their attempt to create a divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the country as the Afghan people remain united against terrorism and extremism.    

Speaking at a gathering of religious scholars and members of the public on the eve of the Night of Revelation of the Holy Quran in Kabul, Ghani also touched on the role of religious scholars in promoting peace and stability in the country.   

“You (terrorists) are targeting our mosques, I assure you that every Sunni Muslim is ready to safe these mosques,” said Ghani, referring to a recent attack by Daesh on a Shia mosque in west of Kabul. - See more at: http://www.tolonews.com/afghanistan/insurgents-won%E2%80%99t-win-battle-divide-shias-and-sunnis-ghani#sthash.89OhMCsL.dpuf

Read the full story at TOLOnews

News Report: Hard-line Islamist Groups Meet Official, Popular Roadblocks in Indonesia

Krithika Varagur

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — After playing a major role in Indonesian politics by influencing the Jakarta election, hard-line Islamist groups may have hit an impasse.

Although they were allowed broad leverage to organize and demonstrate across Indonesia in the past year, an effort to replicate their success outside Jakarta fell flat, and the government has taken measures to hamper two major hard-line groups.

And a new survey suggests most Indonesians don’t know about some major Islamist groups, much less support them, both domestic ones and global organizations like the so-called Islamic State (IS).

Federal crackdown

Indonesia’s government has taken a pointed stand against the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), the hard-line group that organized last year’s anti-Ahok rallies and acts as Indonesia’s unofficial moral police by helping activities like recent anti-gay raids.

Jakarta police issued a warrant for the arrest of FPI leader Habib Rizieq Shihab, who is in Saudi Arabia, on a pornography charge linked to his sexting scandal with a female social activist.

News Report: Muslims Fleeing Jihadist Violence Shield Christians in Daring Escape from Marawi

In the early morning hours of Saturday, some 160 civilians waving white flags and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” slowly walked to safety past armed extremist checkpoints in the besieged southern Philippines city of Marawi.

Muslim civilians in the group, made up mostly of women, children and the elderly, hid among them their Christian neighbors at risk of being gunned down by local jihadists aligned with the violent Islamic fundamentalist Daesh faction.

"We saved ourselves," said popular community leader and former politician Norodin Alonto Lucman, Pakistan's Dawn news agency reports.

The daring escape was initiated after text messages were received by Marawi locals warning of an imminent ground and air assault on the area by the Philippines army.

"There's this plan to bomb the whole city if [Daesh] doesn't agree to the demands of the government," Lucman added.

"We had a tip from the general commander that we should go out," stated resident Leny Paccon, who had been hiding 54 people in her home, including 44 Christians, according to Dawn.

News Report: Jakarta's Jailed Former Governor Drops Appeal in Blasphemy Case

Eva Mazrieva

The family of Basuki Tjahaya Purnama and his lawyers on Tuesday announced the recently defeated governor of Jakarta better known as "Ahok" had revoked the decision to appeal a two-year sentence for blasphemy handed down by the North Jakarta District Court.

Ahok's wife, Veronica Tan, delivered the notice to the court Monday. She did not comment on the decision, which was filed less than an hour after Purnama's legal team filed paperwork for the appeal, according to local media.

On Tuesday, she cried as she read a statement written by her husband.

"I know it's not easy for you to accept this fact, much less me," she said at a news conference, quoting her husband. "But I have learned to forgive and accept all this, for the good of the nation and the state."

News Report: Leader of Indonesia's Largest Muslim Group Calls for Secular Nation

Petrus Riski

SURABAYA, INDONESIA — Weeks after Jakarta elected a governor whose campaign called for Islam to dominate politics and society, the leader of Indonesia's — and the world's — largest Islamic organization has appealed for strengthening secular values.

The remarkable request went out to hundreds of people representing Indonesia's ethnic and religious diversity, who attended an interfaith dialog held by the Alliance of Arek Suroboyo on Thursday in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city after Jakarta.

K.H. Said Aqil Siradj, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, demanded a return to Indonesia's founding principle, now on the official seal — "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika," or "Unity in Diversity" — and maintaining the nation's philosophical roots, codified in the Pancasila, a governing document, and the 1945 Constitution. Other religious and community leaders echoed his remarks.

That Said Aqil Siradj attended the gathering was newsworthy even before he spoke in favor of secularism.

News Report: Blasphemy Conviction for Jakarta Governor Seen As Blow for Religious Freedom

Krithika Varagur

JAKARTA — Many Indonesians thought a silver lining of Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama’s resounding defeat in the 2017 election for Jakarta governor would be a lenient sentence in his concurrent trial for blasphemy. Indeed, even the prosecution suggested just one year of probation, with no jail time, after the election last month.

They were wrong.

Ahok was sentenced to two years in jail Tuesday, a shocking verdict that would entail his immediate dismissal as acting governor of Jakarta.

The Chinese-Christian politician was accused of blasphemy during his re-election campaign last year when a video surfaced of him quoting a verse in the Quran to prove to his supporters that there were no restrictions on Muslims voting for non-Muslim politicians.

Ahok said he intends to appeal the case, but his bargaining position is weak given the severity of the sentence. In the 24 hours following the verdict, his supporters have swarmed City Hall and Cipinang Prison to protest and show their support.

“He dared to work for Indonesia despite being a minority,” said novelist Okky Madasari, speaking outside the prison. “They called him a ‘dog’ and a ‘kaffir from China.’”

Supporters gathered again at City Hall early Wednesday, dressed in the national colors of red and white.

News Report: Jakarta Governor Given 2-Year Sentence for Blasphemy

Fathiyah Warada

JAKARTA — Jakarta’s Chinese-Christian Governor has been sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of blasphemy, in a case seen as a test of Indonesia’s religious tolerance.

The sentence, which is more than prosecutors sought, comes less than a month after he lost his election bid to stay in his position.

“The defendant Basuki Tjahaya Purnama, alias Ahok, proven to be legitimate and convincingly guilty of committing a criminal act of blasphemy, and imprisonment for two years,” said the judge.

The prosecutor last month called for the blasphemy counts to be dropped in exchange for a lesser charge of “spreading hate”, but the judges Tuesday appeared to have ignored that recommendation.

News Report: Contentious Jakarta Election Finally Called for Challenger

Krithika Varagur

JAKARTA — After a racially and religiously-charged election that resulted in a runoff, Jakarta finally has a new governor and Indonesia is facing the reality that political Islam has entered the public discourse in a way unprecedented in modern Indonesian politics.

Anies Baswedan, a university rector and former minister of education and culture, handily beat Chinese-Christian Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who became acting governor after his boss, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, won the 2014 presidential election.

Ahok was widely popular until September 2016, when he quoted the Quran at a campaign speech in the Thousand Islands fishing region, and Islamist hardliners seized upon a video clip of it to charge him with blasphemy. The formerly fringe group known as the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) organized two enormous protests in Jakarta, where they called for Ahok to be jailed and even killed.

Incredibly, their demonstrations pushed the national police to charge him with blasphemy in November, which means he was on trial while campaigning for re-election.

The case would have created a political quandary had Ahok won the race; could he, for instance, govern from jail? That’s no longer in question, but the final verdict won’t be delivered for another few weeks. Judges are expected to show leniency given his loss, and this week, the prosecution floated a light sentence of two years probation, without jail time. The FPI, however, is still lobbying for the maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Think Tank: Race, faith and Ahok’s defeat

Greg Fealy

After one of the most tumultuous campaigns in Indonesian history, the incumbent governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) was soundly defeated by former Education Minister and academic, Anies Baswedan, in the second round of the election held on 19 April. Most exit polls have Anies winning about 57% of the vote to Ahok’s 43%.

What made this election so significant was the role of race and faith in determining the final result. The open vilification of Ahok on religious and racial grounds has no precedent in any Indonesian election.

Eight months ago, the Jakarta election appeared to be following the familiar pattern of voting behaviour being driven by perceptions of the incumbent’s performance. A governor or mayor who was seen to having done a good job would usually be re-elected. In mid-2016, Ahok was strongly placed with opinion surveys recording some two-thirds of respondents regarding him as an effective governor who had managed the city well—most intended to vote for him, giving him a large lead over his opponents. His double minority status as a Chinese Christian didn’t greatly dent his popularity, despite the attempts of Islamist groups to discredit him.