9/4/2023 0 Comments Karen vs karenEight years ago, peace talks between the Kachin Independent Army (KIA) and the Myanmar national Tatmadaw miliary force collapsed and fighting has continued since, afflicting a population which is two-thirds Christian. This seems to be viewed by international public opinion as one more among countless conflicts, and yet it is no less serious than the Rohingya situation. Tension is high throughout the whole of Kachin state because of the strong military presence there. Around 100.000 are refugees confined in 140 camps, where the government maintains strict control over their basic freedoms. The Kachin people number about 1.5 million in total. The Myanmar government, at Naypyitaw, represented by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, faces further questions about other contentious ethnic groups in the country, including the Kachin, near Myanmar’s northern border with China. Photo Credit: Evangelos Petratos EU/ECHO December 2012 Suspicions have been expressed by independent fact-checkers that the serious situation of the Rohingya has been exploited – by disseminating fake news and photos – to promote other agendas, such as internal Turkish politics. The condition of many other peoples would merit similar attention from the international community and press, but some analysts have questioned whether the media’s response has always been free and spontaneous. While the situation of the Rohingya may be one of the most dramatic in the world, it is far from being the only one. This inevitably leads to increased instability of the region, making the repatriation of the Rohingya even more difficult. militants (Arakan Army), a Buddhist guerrilla faction fighting against the Tatmadaw for the independence of Rakhine State. The situation is further complicated by A.A. Some Tatmadaw soldiers are apparently being brought to justice for the alleged genocide of August 2017, but this is being seen as not enough. The international community is calling loudly for the refugees to be allowed to return to their homes in Rakhine state in the west of Myanmar, without fear of being killed by government army troops, the Tatmadaw, or by paramilitary groups. The Rohingya, who are Muslim, are considered by government and most of the predominantly Buddhist population as “Bengali”, meaning from Bangladesh, and are not recognized as part of the historical, religious and cultural identity of Myanmar. In Myanmar the Rohingya continue to be considered a “foreign” ethnic group and are not recognized among the 135 official ones within the country. Before agreeing to return to Myanmar, the Rohingya refugees demand that those responsible for the massacres be brought before an international tribunal, and that the right to citizenship is recognized for all Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh. Over recent months, the international community has been putting pressure on Myanmar’s civil government. Since 2018, the United Nations has conducted its own investigations by listening to the Kutupalong refugees, and has spoken of genocide. What happened to them has been identified as ethnic cleansing by some NGOs, eye witnesses and satellite images. They arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. The majority of these Rohingya refugees are women and children, as well as old people. Taking into consideration the 200,000 who came before 2017 and the 742,000 who arrived since 25 August 2017, it is an immense number of people confined within one area, often lacking basic services such as water, education, toilets, roads or cooking facilities. More are sheltering in another refugee camp in Nayapara, also in Cox’s Bazar, totalling around 1 million displaced people. Known as “the largest refugee camp in the world”, Kutupalong in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, contains, according to latest estimates, around 600,000 ethnic Rohingya refugees originating from Myanmar. We now take a look at just three of these groups in the region. South East Asia and China are home to around 600 different ethnic groups who do not have the right to self-determination or their own autonomous territory. On the occasion of the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, which is celebrated on Sunday 29 September 2019, we have decided to look at the phenomenon of migration globally.
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