UN Special Rapporteur in official visit to assess human rights situation countrywide

Geneva, 7 August 2013 – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, will undertake an official visit to the country from 11 to 21 August 2013. It will include visits to Rakhine State, Kachin State, Shan State, Chin State and Meikhtila in Mandalay Region.

“The Government’s agreement to provide me with such wide-ranging access to different parts of the country will give me an excellent opportunity to assess how the human rights situation is evolving as the reform agenda moves forward,” noted the rights expert, who visits Myanmar at the invitation of the Government.

“In Rakhine State, I will be looking at the steps being taken to implement the President’s vision of developing a harmonious, multi-cultural society in Myanmar, which respects and protects the human rights of all. This will include measures to ensure that the perpetrators of human rights violations, including state officials, are held to account,” Mr. Ojea Quintana said. “I will also be looking for progress in addressing the long-standing discrimination against the Rohingya community there.”

“In Meiktila, I want to look at how the Government and religious authorities are working to bring about reconciliation and developing trust between different religious communities, and will highlight that accountability for the violent acts that occurred there last March is fundamental to this process,” he said.

“Visiting Chin State, Kachin State and Shan State will give me an opportunity to assess the human rights situation of other religious and ethnic minorities in Myanmar, and provide me with an insight into how peace negotiations are progressing,” he explained. “I will be encouraging the inclusion of clauses on the promotion and protection of human rights in future political agreements with ethnic armed groups.”

During his eleven-day visit to Myanmar, the UN Special Rapporteur intends to visit the remaining prisoners of conscience and the detained INGO humanitarian staff.

Mr. Ojea Quintana also hopes to engage the Government over its handling of persons involved in land disputes and protests against large development projects, and discuss his concerns over the impact on human rights of expanded business and industrial activity, including in relation natural resource extraction. He will also discuss ways to ensure that important pieces of legislation currently being drafted, including the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Bill and the Associations Bill, are in line with international human rights standards.

The independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the human rights situation in Myanmar will meet with Government officials, members of Parliament and the judiciary, the National Human Rights Commission, and civil society in Naypyitaw and Yangon.

On 21 August, at the end of his mission, Mr. Quintana will present preliminary observations at apress conference at Yangon International Airport at 1815. His full report on the visit will be presented to the General Assembly on 24 October 2013.

Rescue operation after Myanmar boats sink

Vessels with scores of Rohingya Muslims evacuating camps ahead of storm sink, leaving many dead, say UN officials.

Thousands of people have been moved from low-lying camps to safer shelter ahead of Cyclone Mahasen [AFP]

Boats carrying hundreds Rohingya Muslims who were evacuating ahead of a storm have capsized off western Myanmar, killing many of those on board, UN officials have said. Eight bodies were recovered from one capsized vessel, which was thought to have been carrying about 100 people, many of whom are still missing, feared dead. The vessels hit trouble on Monday night after leaving Pauktaw township in Rakhine state, said a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "They were travelling to another camp ahead of the cyclone," the spokeswoman added. Kirsten Mildren, who works for the same UN agency, told Al Jazeera it was a race against the clock. "The government response in the last few days, since about Monday, has been very proactive and they are doing everything they can to move as many people as they can to safe areas," she said. "They have basically created an evacuation plan and they started moving about 38,000 of the most vulnerable people." The victims were trying to escape Cyclone Mahasen which is expected on Thursday and Friday. The UN has warned the storm could lead to "life-threatening conditions". Al Jazeera's Everton Fox explains the weather impact of Tropical Cyclone Mahasen Myanmar state television said on Monday that thousands of people displaced by communal violence last year had been evacuated from makeshift camps to safer ground in the event of the storm. The report said authorities had moved 5,158 people from low-lying camps in the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, to safer shelter. But human rights groups said that the government has been too slow to act, and ignored earlier warnings to provide shelter to displaced people. "The Burmese government didn't heed the repeated warnings by governments and humanitarian aid groups to relocate displaced Muslims ahead of Burma’s rainy season," said Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch Asia director. "If the government fails to evacuate those at risk, any disaster that results will not be natural, but man-made," he said. 'Extremely vulnerable'  Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay, reporting from Sittwe, said: "The eye of the storm is not expected to hit Myanmar, but the people in camps - home to more than 100,000 - are extremely vulnerable to conditions we may see over the next few days." "These include strong winds, heavy rains and a possible surge from the ocean of up to 1.5 metres. The local government has been moving people ... but people in camps aren't trusting what they are trying to get them to do. Some say they are being asked to move to more dangerous places," our correspondent said. The state television report said displaced people were moved in 10 other townships in western Myanmar where communal violence flared last year between Muslims and Buddhists, taking hundreds of lives and leaving more than 100,000 people homeless. It did not give the number of people evacuated in those locations. Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. They face a growing anti-Muslim campaign led by radical Buddhist monks. Preparations Cyclone Mahasen is expected to hit neighbouring Bangladesh on Thursday or Friday. Images taken by NASA's Aqua satellite on Monday showed the storm's centre northeast of Sri Lanka with it packing winds of up to 50 knots (92km per hour). Those winds are expected to increase to 130km per hour as the storm moves north. The space agency said it "sees a strengthening" of the storm and forecasts an upgrade to a Cyclone 1 level by Wednesday. "The current forecast track ... takes the centre of Mahasen just north of Chittagong early on May 17 and into northern Burma," it said. A storm lights up the sky above the Yangon river early on Monday [AFP] Officials in the Bangladeshi town of Cox's Bazar near the border with Myanmar said medical teams with as many as 30,000 Red Crescent volunteers were being formed. In eastern India, authorities put 10 coastal districts on alert. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis killed more than 130,000 people in Myanmar. In 2007, Cyclone Sidr, packing winds of up to 240km per hour, left at least 3,500 people dead, levelled thousands of homes and forced the evacuation of 650,000 villagers in Bangladesh's southwest coast.

Researchers establish link between racism and stupidity

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice.

We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups.

In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology.

A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status.

Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

Myanmar's Suu Kyi says no easy answer to sectarian violence

17/04/13
Myanmar's charismatic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi made rare comments on Wednesday on sectarian violence in her nation, but said she was "not a magician" and will not be able to solve long-running ethnic disputes.

Speaking to students at Tokyo University while on a visit to Japan, Suu Kyi maintained her stand that the rule of law needs to be established in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and parties involved in the violence have to build an atmosphere of dialogue.

She did not directly refer to recent monk-led violence in the city of Meikhtila that have killed 43 people. Thousands, mostly Muslims, were driven from their homes and businesses as bloodshed spread across central Myanmar, putting the Muslim minority on edge in one of Asia's most diverse countries.

"I've said that the most important thing is to establish the rule of law...(it) is not just about the judiciary, it's about the administration, it's about the government, it's about our police force, it's about the training that we give to security forces," said Suu Kyi.

She added that Myanmar's courts do not meet democratic standards as they are "totally dominated by the executive."

The failure of the Nobel Peace Prize-winner to defuse the tension undermines her image as a unifying moral force. Suu Kyi, herself a devout Buddhist, has previously said little on the violence.

"They wanted me to talk about how to make these communal differences disappear...I'm not a magician. If I were, I'd say 'disappear' and they would all disappear. Differences take a long time to sort out," she told Japanese students.

"We have to establish an atmosphere of security in whichpeople with different opinions can sit down and exchange ideas and think of the things we have in common."

Myanmar progress 'on track': UN special adviser

(Photo: AP)

Radio Australia

April 12, 2013

United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, says the government is committed to reform and resolving the issue of Rohingya statelessness.

Myanmar's progress towards democracy has been heralded around the world, but recent violence against ethnic minorities has caused the country's human rights to be questioned. 

Despite this, Mr Nambia has told Newsline the country's reform agenda is "on track" and the government wants to address the issue of citizenship. 

"I would say that these latest developments have been a reminder of what still needs to be done, and the fragility of the process, but there is determination in the government to carry this process of reform forward," Mr Nambiar said.

"I don't know whether we can say that the entire situation in the country has been deteriorating," he said. "I think broadly the reform process is on track."

The Myanmar government has regarded Rohingya Muslims as illegal immigrants who emigrated from Bangladesh, despite living in Myanmar for generations.

Recent sectarian violence between the country's majority Buddhists and minority Muslims has exposed the distrust between the two communities, with dozens killed and thousands displaced.

In March, Myanmar's Presidential spokesman, U Ye Htut, dismissed calls that the government should grant citizenship to the thousands of Rohingya still regarded as illegal immigrants.

But Mr Nambiar says positive steps are being made to resolve the dispute.

"The government, particularly the minister for immigration, is keen on looking at the larger question of citizenship."

"I think they are conscious that they need to come out with both temporary and long term measures to address this question."

The Rohingya are widely regarded as one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in the world.

Monsoon preparations

Mr Nambiar is also confident the government has taken on board concerns that refugee camps housing Rohingya won't survive the monsoon season.

"The government seems to be keen on looking at the humanitarian aspect on the one hand, because the monsoons are going to come very soon and the shelters which have already been constructed need to be strengthened and made somewhat permanent," he said.

Myanmar's Presidential spokesman, U Ye Htut, previously dismissed UN reports that the camps sheltering 120,000 people were inadequate.

At Muslim Students event, NFL player talks plight of Muslims in Myanmar

March 28, 2013 :
Abdullah, who has played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns, and Arizona Cardinals, discussed how his religion affected his career as a football player.

Professional football player Hamza Abdullah joined Columbia’s Muslim community for a Fast-A-Thon on Tuesday evening to raise awareness for Muslims in Myanmar.

The event, at the Diana Center Event Oval, was hosted by the Muslim Students Association. Attendees pledged to fast in order to collect money for charity, and used a big name to bring attention to a lesser-known humanitarian crisis.

Abdullah, who has played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns, and Arizona Cardinals, discussed how his religion affected his career as a football player. He said he is grateful that Islam gives him “a certain structure of what I need to do and what I should be doing” in life.

In an interview after his talk, Abdullah also said he was concerned Muslims were being too reactive, not proactive, to Islamophobia. He said acts “as simple as a smile to another person” make a difference in others’ opinions of the religion.

“Islam is a religion of peace,” Abdullah said. “We have to show that in the way we walk every single day.”

Abdullah stressed the importance of understanding between religions.

“When we go to feed someone, we don’t ask that person if they’re religious or not,” he said. “The world community, the Muslim community, everyone is like a body. If one part of the body hurts, the entire body hurts. So when we look and see someone that doesn’t have what we have, we’re hurting because they’re hurting.”

That perspective was echoed in speeches by activists on the plight of the Rohingya Muslim people of Myanmar, whom the United Nations consider an oppressed minority.

Waleed Gabr, from the charity organization Islamic Relief, described the long history of oppression Muslims have gone through in the country, which is majority Buddhist. In past centuries, they were prohibited from practicing halal and were forced to listen to Buddhist sermons, he said. The conflict between the religions has been complicated by riots and killings over the years.

“They were treated worse than animals,” Gabr said, after showing a black-and-white film of harsh labor and life conditions of Muslims there. “They were burned to death ... The children didn’t have a future.”

Ammar AlShukry, a spoken-word artist, performed two poems and stressed the importance of living in the “blessing of security” and the absence of fear.

“The reason why you’re able to go and leave your house, the reason you’re able to go and work ... is because you do not have to be under the stress and anxiety of fear,” AlShukry said. Many Muslims in Myanmar have to live under that fear, he said.

“Allah says we will test you with a little bit of fear. But the reason that he mentions a portion of fear is because no one can bear total fear,” he said, “Because fear is paralyzing—fear destroys.”

Abdul Rafay Hanif, CC ’14 and Muslim Students Association president, said that the situation of Muslims in Myanmar is largely underreported by Western media.

“There is a lot of attention that wasn’t being diverted to them,” Hanif said. “For them, the Myanmar issue is not something as hot and sexy as something happening in the Middle East.”

The MSA is trying to raise awareness about the plight of Myanmar Muslims, Hanif said.

“Issues that we bring up are issues that not only the rest of the Muslim community, but other people on campus and other people in New York City are also made aware of,” he said.

Press Release of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK)

Urgent Action Needed to Save Muslims in Burma from Pre-Planned Violence

March 22, 2013

On 20th March 2013 at 10 am, a Buddhist couple from Meiktila Township entered a gold shop to try and sell some fake gold and started to threaten and abuse the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper, who tried to defend himself with a stick, suffered a head injury.

After half an hour, a crowd gathered and started stoning the shop and destroyed it. Two hours later, a big crowd came to the town and started destroying property, Muslims’ shops, mosques and houses were burnt down.

The death toll is 47, including 11 women, 28 madrassa students and 5 teachers. Security personnel are not protecting. One reliable source said the killing, burning and looting is still going on in Meiktila as well as other towns and villages. There are over a 1000 Muslims taking refuge in the football field with no food. Food cannot be sent to them because of “security”.

This was a pre-planned attack on minority Muslims of Burma. During recent weeks anti-Muslim campaigns have been getting stronger in Burma. President Thein Sein’s government has incited the attacks and ignored the growing anti-Muslim campaigns. A monk, who was arrested for similar acts in 2003 and subsequently released, has been preaching the ‘cleansing of Muslims from Myanmar’ for months now.

BROUK President Tun Khin said, “It is very clear that security forces are just watching while the mobs are destroying and burning Muslim’s houses. Cleansing of Muslims in Burma is happening under the noses of the international community. These are not communal clashes; this is not equal sides fighting. These are organized attacks to cleanse of Muslims where the vast majority of those killed and displaced are Muslims.”

We urge the United Nations, European Union and ASEAN to put effective pressure on the Burmese regime to stop the killings and violence against Muslims in Burma, to restore peace and security in the region and to allow the international community and NGOs to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to the victims.

As Burma is manifestly failing to protect its Muslim population, we also urge the international community to use the “responsibility to protect” or the duty to prevent mass atrocities. This responsibility now lies with the international community.

We call for pressure on the President Thein Sein’s government to ensure that displaced people can return to their original villages safely and freely. We call on the international community to pressure the Burmese government to stop anti-Muslim activities and racism in Burma. There should be laws on racism if the government wants to see durable peace in Burma.

For more information, please contact Tun Khin +447888714866.

ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားမွ ျမန္မာသို႔ တင္ပို႔ရန္ရိွေသာ အနုျမဴ အပူခံ ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ား ဖမ္းဆီးမိ

Centrifuge rods’ from North Korea seized from ship in Tokyo

ဂ်ပန္အစိုးရက ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားမွျမန္မာသို႔ တင္ပို႔ရန္ရိွေသာ စကာၤကူအလံလႊင္႔တင္ထားသည္႔ သေဘာၤ မွ ႏူကလီးယား အားျဖည္႔ ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းၾကီး ၅ ခုအား ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံက ေတြ႔ရိွ ရျပီး၄င္းေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္း မ်ားသည္ ႏိူကလီးယား လက္နက္ထုတ္လုပ္ရာတြင္ အသံုးျပဳႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း တနလၤာေန႔တြင္ ေၾကျငာ လိုက္သည္။

Japan has seized aluminium alloy rods that can be used to make nuclear centrifuges from a Singapore-flagged ship found to be carrying cargo from North Korea, the government said Monday.

ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ၏ ၀န္ၾကီးမ်ားအဖြဲ႔မွ ဒုတိယ အတြင္း၀န္ ယိုရွီဟီဒီ ဆူဂါေျပာၾကားရာတြင္ ၄င္းေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္း ၅ ေခ်ာင္းသည္ လြန္ခဲ႔ေသာ ၾသဂုတ္လတြင္ ဂ်ပန္ ေရပိုင္နက္မွ အဆိုပါ သေဘာၤအား ေခၚယူစစ္ေဆးရာမွ အမွန္တကယ္ပင္ အလူမီနီယံ အပူခံေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ားျဖစ္ေနသည္ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။

The five rods were discovered on the ship during its call at Tokyo port last August and were confirmed to be aluminium alloy through tests conducted over the past six months, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

ယေန႔ အတိုခ်ဳပ္ သတင္းစာ၇ွင္းလင္းပြဲတြင္ အဆိုပါေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ားသည္ ႏူကလီးယား ဆိုင္ရာ တခုခု ထုတ္လုပ္ရန္ အားျဖည္႔ေပးေသာ အားျဖည္႔ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းအျဖစ္ အသံုးျပဳရာတြင္အလြန္ အေထာက္ ကူျပဳေၾကာင္း တင္ျပသြားသည္။ယခု ဖမ္းဆီးမိေသာ ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ားသည္ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ျပဌာန္း ခဲ႔ေသာေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားႏွင္႔ ပတ္သက္ေသာ သေဘာၤမ်ားအား ရွာေဖြခြင္႔ ျပဳထားသည္႔ ဥပေဒအရ ပထမဆံုးအၾကိမ္ သိမ္းဆီးရမိေသာ ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ားျဖစ္ျပီး ဒံုးက်ဥ္နည္းပညာမ်ားႏွင္႔ႏူကလီးယား နည္းပညာမ်ားအတြက္ အသံုးျပဳရန္တင္ပို႔ေသာ ေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ားျဖစ္ေနသည္ ဟုဆိုသည္။ ၄င္းေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္းမ်ား သိုေလာင္ထားရာ ဂိုေထာင္မွတဆင္႔ အစိုးရအား အပ္ႏွင္းရန္ ညြန္ၾကားလိုက္ျပီ ဟုလဲသိရသည္။


“The aluminium alloy is extremely strong and can be used in centrifuges, which are products related to nuclear development,” Suga said at a regular news briefing.
The rods were being stored at a private warehouse and the government on Monday ordered the firm to hand them over. The items are the first to be confiscated under a special law passed in 2010 that allows Tokyo to inspect North Korea-related ships suspected of carrying materials that can be used in nuclear and missile programs.

တရုတ္ျပည္ ဒါလီယန္ဆိပ္ကမ္းမွ ျမန္မာသို႔ တင္ပို႔ရန္ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ တိုက်ိဳျမိဳ႔သို႔ေရာက္ရိွလာေသာ သေဘာၤ ကျဖစ္ျပီး ၄င္းသေဘာၤေပၚတြင္ တင္ထားေသာ ကြန္တင္နာသည္ တတိယႏိုင္ငံသို႔ တင္ပို႔မည္ ကုန္ေသတၱာျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း ဆူဂါမွ အတည္ျပဳေျပာၾကားပါသည္။

The ship was reportedly on its way to Myanmar when it arrived in Tokyo via the Chinese port of Dalian. Suga confirmed the ship arrived via Dalian but said its cargo was bound for a “third country.”

ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားအေနျဖင္႔ ၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္မွ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္အတြင္း ႏူကလီးယားဗံုးစမ္းသပ္မွဳမ်ား ၃ၾကိမ္တိုင္ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ႔ျပီး လြန္ခဲ႔သည္႔ လ အထိပင္ ဆက္လက္ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ႔ေၾကာင္းသိရသည္။၂၀၁၀ မွျပန္လည္ အေကာင္ထည္ေဖၚခဲ႔ေသာ ၄င္းတို႔၏ ႏူကလီးယာ အစီစဥ္အား ယခု ယူေရနီယံ အနုျမဴေလာင္စာေခ်ာင္း မ်ား ျပဳလုပ္မွဳအား ဆက္လက္ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနသည္။ ထိုအႏုျမဴအစီစဥ္မွလည္း ေရရွည္ အသံုးျပဳႏိုင္ေသာ ပလူတိုနီယံေလာင္စာမ်ားအျပင္ ႏူကလီးယားဗံုးလက္နက္မ်ား အဆင္သို႔ ေရာက္ရိွေစေသာ ဒုတိယေျမာက္ အဆင္႔ျဖစ္သည္။

The North has conducted three nuclear weapons tests, in 2006, 2009 and last month, and disclosed in 2010 that it is developing a program to enrich uranium using centrifuges. That would give it a second way to produce material for atomic weapons, in addition to its long-standing plutonium program.


ကုလသမဂၢမွလည္း ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယား၏ နုကလီးယားလက္နက္ ထုတ္လုပ္မွဳအေျခေနအား သံသယျဖစ္ခဲ႔ျပီး ၄င္း၏ ျပည္ပသို႔ တင္ပို႔ေသာ ကုန္ေသတၱာမ်ားအား သံသယရိွလ်ွင္ ရွာေဖြႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ရာဇသံေပးထားခဲ႔သည္။၂၀၁၁ခုႏွစ္မွ အဆံုးသတ္သြားေသာ ျမန္မာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္တို႔၏ ကာလၾကာ ရွည္ေသာ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တေလ်ာက္တြင္ ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားႏွင္႔ ႏူကလီးယားဆိုင္ရာ ပူေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မွဳ မ်ားျပဳလုပ္ခဲ႔ျပီး စစ္ဘက္ဆိုင္ရာ လက္နက္မ်ားအား ၀ယ္ယူေနခဲ႔သည္ဟု ဆိုပါသည္။
အိမ္ျဖဴေတာ္မွ ျမန္မာသည္ ဒီမိုကေရစီလမ္းေၾကာင္းသို႔ ေျဖးေျဖးခ်င္း အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္ေျခလွမ္းမ်ား လွမ္းသြားေနျပီးဟုလည္း လြန္ခဲ႔ေသာ ႏို၀င္ဘာလမွ ေျပာဆိုခဲ႔ဘူးသည္။

The North has conducted three nuclear weapons tests, in 2006, 2009 and last month, and disclosed in 2010 that it is developing a program to enrich uranium using centrifuges. That would give it a second way to produce material for atomic weapons, in addition to its long-standing plutonium program.
United Nations sanctions resolutions require member states to inspect cargo suspected to be linked to the North’s nuclear development.
Myanmar was suspected of pursuing military and nuclear cooperation with North Korea during the long rule of the military junta, which finally came to an end in 2011.
The White House said last November that the slowly democratizing nation had taken “positive steps” to reduce its military relationship with the North.
AFP
March 19, 2013

Masha Alalykina is a famous name in Russia convert to Islam

Masha Alalykina is a famous name in Russia and Russian speaking countries. Two years ago she was an attractive artist and model. Her fame reached its peak and her music group – Fabric – was at the top of the charts.

Masha, the former star
of the cinema, dancing, and music, now wears a hijab and is teaching. She says that she hates the fake façade of her past and feels that she is only now successful.

she said:A belief in Allah (swt) has changed my life. The desire to believe in Allah (swt) is in everyone’s conscience. I do not believe that Allah (swt) gave man intellect so that we live, eat, sleep, and die. Allah (swt) gave us an opportunity to live in a way that we would reach Him (swt).

she also said:I am hopeful for people who have yet to become Muslims to come to themselves and to think beyond all the trash that is presented to them in this age.

Suu Kyi roundly criticized at Oxford University forum

It has been a pivotal, some might say defining week for Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She has been the subject of harsh criticism from her supporters, the media, the international community and even her own party members, mostly over her stance on the Latpadaung copper mine.

Aung San Suu Kyi delivers an address at Oxford University on June 20, 2012, in which she recalled her student days and said that Burma's road to the future will not be easy.

Now various voices from her alma mater, Oxford University, have joined in the chants against the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The second Southeast Asian Studies Symposium at the university on March 8-10 was dominated by discussions centered on Myanmar after its recent re-engagement with the international world, said a report in the Oxford Student online.

Fellow Emeritus in Southeast Asian History Dr Peter Carey reportedly said that despite the positive press attention given to the country’s reforms, the developments in Myanmar “should be viewed with skepticism” and that “an opportunity for real change has been missed”.

“Criticism focused on Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, with concern being raised over her continuing silence on the government’s campaign against the Kachin rebels,” the report said. “It was also said that she had lost moral authority by failing to be more vocal on human rights abuses.”

Carey added: “Hopes are very much in shadow, and Daw Suu needs to say what needs to be said.”

Oxford Student questioned other attendees on whether the reforms were truly progressive in nature. Executive Director of Burma Campaign UK Anna Roberts is quoted as saying: “The intentions are not all democratically driven.”

The forum was held in the light of a delegation of Oxford students being selected for a two-week visit to Myanmar later this month following an invitation from Suu Kyi herself.

Myanmar must pursue crimes committed by the former junta

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, March 8 | Fri Mar 8, 2013 3:05pm EST 

(Reuters) - Myanmar must pursue crimes committed by the former junta but neither the quasi-civilian government nor opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi have any appetite to do so for now, a United Nations investigator said on Friday.
Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said accountability for decades of violations was crucial for healing as well as for solidifying reforms.


The military regime stands accused of having used forced labour, suppressing ethnic minorities and killings and torture by its troops and police.
Ojea Quintana, asked about prospects of a truth commission or prosecutions, said: "The reality is that in Myanmar, this is not on the agenda of any of the stakeholders. It's not on the government agenda, it's not on the other political parties agenda and it's not on the ethnic minority groups agenda."
The independent U.N. investigator, speaking to a news briefing in Geneva, held talks with senior officials in Myanmar as well as Suu Kyi during his latest visit last month.
Suu Kyi's inexperienced party began its first congress on Friday aiming to push forward positions that will become increasingly important in the run-up to a 2015 election that could sweep it into government.
On Thursday, Ojea Quintana said in an annual report that the crisis in Rakhine state, where sectarian violence erupted last year, risks spreading and endangering democratic reforms undertaken since military rule ended in 2011.
The government of President Thein Sein, a former junta general, has international obligations to face "serious crimes and systematic human rights abuses", he said.
"But in Myanmar there is not any possibility at this moment to start even a discussion on this. I think that there is a religious component in the middle as well, in terms of believing in forgiveness and looking to the future and not into the past," he said, referring to the majority Buddhist country.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST
Noting that his native Argentina had emerged from a military dictatorship in the 1980s, Ojea Quintana said:
"I really believe that at some point there will be a need for healing of what happened in the past ... We need to keep sending the message that this is also very important for any transition to become successful to learn from the past.
"To learn from the past you need to understand what happened and not just to act as if nothing had happened in Myanmar that had a military regime for more than 40 years."
Ojea Quintana said Myanmar was lobbying member states of the U.N. Human Rights Council to end his mandate, which currently goes to May 2014. He felt continuing scrutiny was needed.
Foreign investors seeking opportunities in mineral-rich Myanmar should ensure their operations have a positive impact, ranging from ensuring workers' rights to avoiding "land grabs".
"The international community is now facing a kind of tension between two kinds of interests. There is a strong interest in economics and lots of countries all over the world right now want to start doing business with Myanmar. We welcome that because it might bring development," he said.
"At the same time, the international community needs to follow U.N principles on human rights, to remember human rights are at the core of any transition, development and economic process."
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Buddhist extremist mob attacks an Islamic Religious School in Yangon, Myanmar

17 February 2013
A mob of about 300 Buddhist extremists attacked an Islamic Religious School in Thar-Kay-Ta Township, Man-Pyay region 18×19 Street, Yangon, Myanmar today 17th February 2012. The mob began the attacks around 12 PM today while some member of the NLD party and ex-political prisoners tried to settle the outbreak, however according to the Yangon local sources, the Buddhist extremist mob refused to listen to them.
Two Muslim men, U Tin Maung Than and his colleague U Zaw Min Lat were fiercely attacked by the Buddhist extremist mob and were injured. The two Muslim men were there this afternoon just to find out the situation. U Tin Maung Than is an ex-member of Rakhine Conflict Investigation Commission formed by President U Thein Sein last year.
According to local sources this evening from Yangon, five Islamic religious groups in Myanmar will held a meeting to discuss the situation in appropriate manner and to question the government on handling the mob attacks on the Religious School.
As stated by some local news sources from Yangon, Myanmar government authorities from the area are also involved in instigating these attacks and also the police and security forces failed to prevent the mob from such attacks. There were four police vehicle at the area, sources claimed.