Myanmar Asylum-Seekers & Refugees in Malaysia

Giving Refugee Youth a Second Chance at Life

2012-01-30T19:49:00.000-08:00

Education, Computers, Personal Development

About 39, 462 Burmese refugees call Malaysia ‘home’ as of December, 2011. However, due to their refugee status many can’t access proper education and are forced to accept jobs with no securities and no rights.

UNHCR and SOLS 24/7 are offering Burmese refugees an opportunity to receive training that could change their lives:

A FREE and comprehensive training program, educating Burmese youth in academics and life skills.

Do you know Burmese organizations or know/ seen people who could benefit from this initiative? One small gesture of sharing could change their life!

We are seeking people like you to reach out to the ‘invisible’ people in our society. Make a pledge and share this information… if only with one person!

Click here for the PDF of SOLS 24/7′s ‘My Training Centre’ Brochure: UNHCR SOLS ‘My Training Centre’ Brochure

For more details, contact Project Manager, Jessy Francis: +6019- 6898442

Immigrant students get a taste of American of dining, politics

2012-01-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

BY TAMMY GRUBB, Correspondent

CARRBORO - The students in Laura Campagna's ESL class have lost classmates to war, survived refugee camps and forged a home in a foreign land with a different language and customs.Hser Ku, Eh Say Paw and Baso Gay Paw have lived in the United States for only a few years. Their English is improving, but it's hard when they speak primarily Karen - an ethnic Burmese language - at home and at Carrboro High School.
The girls, who are planning for college, say education is very important, and so is family. When not in school, they study or help at home with chores or younger siblings. Friday nights are sometimes for friends, and they also do homework together, they said.
"Our parents want their children to be educated and hope our future will be beautiful," Ku said.
Only about half of Campagna's 11th- and 12th-grade students - 12 are from Myanmar (formerly Burma), two from Mexico and one from Russia - have ever been to a restaurant. A class field trip for lunch this month at Panzanella gave them the experience of dining out and a short lesson from restaurant manager Paola Cisarano in local vs. corporate businesses and why organic food is important.
The students studied the restaurant's menu the day before, so they were familiar with many items. Most chose salad or soup; pizza or pasta were popular choices, too.
A few students sampled each other's plates; all were quiet, and there were few leftovers.
Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton joined them for lunch, sharing his thoughts about government and environmental and consumer issues. If they ever see a need in the community, let him know, he said.
As they became comfortable with Chilton, the students began to ask questions about his job: Does he like it? Why did he choose to be mayor? Where did he come from? They snapped group pictures with him before heading back to class.
The experience was a good one, they said. In their own countries, political leaders are not accessible. They came to this country knowing very little about democracy or the rights they have here, Campagna said.
"When you don't have rights, you don't have any idea what they are," she said.
Myanmar is run by a restrictive military government, and Campagna said those who live in the Thailand refugee camps subsist on U.N. food aid dropped from helicopters - fish paste, beans, oil and rice. They are forbidden from growing their own food, although some risk being attacked and killed to grow a few crops outside the camps.
Thwang Khoi, 21, and his family were refugees in Malaysia before coming to America. They are Chin, an ethnic group largely from western Myanmar who speak a language by the same name. He does not speak Karen and finds it hard sometimes to communicate with the other students, he said. He practices his English through writing, reading or on the job at UNC's Lenoir Dining Hall, where he makes sushi. One day, he would like to be a professional writer, maybe for a magazine, he said.
Khoi had seen Chilton before, in televised Board of Aldermen meetings. He also saw him walking down the street a few times. That would never happen in his homeland, he said.
There, people with power or authority are afraid to go out without armed bodyguards, and most people would be afraid to approach them, because they risk being thrown in jail or losing everything they have, he said.
"If you have power, you have to be careful," he said, because someone may try to kill you. "They don't like government at all."
Education also is limited in Burma to those who can afford it, Khoi said. Many of Campagna's students said they're getting a better education in Carrboro. Plus, people here are nice and seem more comfortable with them than in other places, they said.
A few have American friends with whom they spend time and do homework; it's a good way to learn about each other's culture and to practice more English, Hu said. It's hard to make American friends though, and they mostly stick together, she and the other girls said.
Campagna tells her students they may have to take the first step.
"(Other students) don't want to make you feel bad. They don't even know if you speak English. You may have to say hi first," she said. "It's as simple as that to make a connection."

Source : www.chapelhillnews.com

Senator Mitch McConnell visits with Louisville's Burmese refugees

2012-01-24T01:22:00.000-08:00

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., greets Sharon Moo after speaking to several hundred Burmese refugees Saturday at Crescent Hill Baptist Church. / Sam Upshaw Jr.;The Courier-Journal/Sam Upshaw Jr.

Less than a week after returning from Myanmar, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke to several hundred Burmese refugees in Louisville Saturday, praising the country’s fledgling democratic reforms but saying it was too soon to lift sanctions.

McConnell, long a leading critic of Myanmar’s military junta and a chief sponsor of sanctions aimed at halting political repression and ethnic persecution, told the mostly ethnic-Karen refugees that his first-ever visit left him cautiously hopeful that real change is imminent.

The Kentucky Republican cited the recent release of hundreds of political prisoners, a cease-fire with Karen separatist rebels, new laws allowing peaceful assembly and an upcoming election expected to bring democratic leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi into parliament after more than a decade of house arrest.

“For a long time I’m sure many of you wondered if anything would change in Burma,” he said, using the old name for the country as his words were translated. “But clearly change is in the air.”

But many of the refugees who came to hear McConnell at Crescent Hill Baptist Church — which has become a gathering place for some of the nearly 2,400 Burmese refugees resettled to Kentucky since 2006 — met his optimism with deep skepticism.

While grateful for having such a powerful ally in Congress, the refugees during a question-and-answer session questioned whether the strides toward democracy would be real or lasting and asked McConnell how the U.S. would verify changes.

Several said they did not trust the regime, which has fought for years against Karens and other ethnic groups, pushing hundreds of thousands into refugee camps on the Thai border. Some cited recent news reports that the government was again battling another ethnic group in the north of the country.

“I welcome change, but the government can say they change, and yet the people on the ground are still suffering and the people still have to live in fear,” said Ka Waw, who came to Louisville last year with his three children from the camps and now works at a factory. He said the Karens should have an autonomous state.

(Page 2 of 2)

Mahn Saing, a Burmese refugee who has lived in Louisville for years and runs a restaurant, said he thinks that the government is motivated by sanctions that hurt government-owned businesses — not by a desire for democracy.

Mya Zaw, who hasn’t been home to Mandalay since fleeing in the wake of a bloody crackdown on 1988 democratic protests, said much more progress is needed before he would feel safe going home.

“I’m not comfortable to return right now; I don’t trust them,” he said.

McConnell said the United States, which plans to upgrade diplomatic relations with Myanmar, would work with reformers inside the country and track whether the April 1 elections are fair and that all political prisoners were released and that the Army halts attacks on ethnic groups.

During McConnell’s trip, he met with Suu Kyi, President Thein Sein, ethnic leaders and two recently released political prisoners. He said he’s working with Suu Kyi to form a list of prisoners to be released and will rely on her advice in deciding on sanctions.

“We have an American saying that talk is cheap, and I understand that,” McConnell said. “They say all the right things. Our job is to verify.”

He also said more efforts toward a comprehensive reconciliation between ethnic groups and the government are needed before the changes benefit refugees. As a result, it will take time “before large numbers of Karen are dumped out of refugee camps and go home,” he told reporters afterward.

Jason Abbott, director of the University of Louisville’s Center for Asian Democracy, who attended Saturday’s talk, agreed that it’s “way too early to expect a direct effect on the refugee problem.”

McConnell said he came to speak because he’s sensitive to the plight of the refugees, who spent years fleeing the government or in camps before being resettled. Many have little education and face struggles finding jobs and adjusting to the culture, according to resettlement officials.

At the end of his talk, he took time to shake hands with several hundred of the refugees.

“I sympathize with their situation,” he said.

Don’t Forget the Children in Burma

2012-01-24T01:07:00.000-08:00

Things are moving fast with Burma. Today it was reported that 651 high-ranking political dissidents had been released by the Burmese government, a move that comes after the government struck a rare ceasefire with the ethnic minority group, the Karen, after 60 years of civil war.

The government in Burma appears to be making some progress on human rights. Hillary Clinton should take the chance to press it over the country’s forgotten minority children.

Since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to Burma, the civilian government there has clearly taken its first significant steps on human rights with certain ethnic minorities. However, just last month, thousands Burmese ethnic minorities fled to neighboring countries including Thailand because the Burmese government continues military abuses and persecution of ethnic minorities. Of these refugees, many are Burmese ethnic minority children – orphaned, separated from their parents, or hidden with their families in neighboring countries hostile to Burmese refugees. Clinton therefore needs to not only press the Burmese government, but also the neighboring Thai and Malaysian governments to help lost generations of Burmese ethnic minority children.

Minority Burmese children aren’t allowed access to free, good quality government schools in either Burma or neighboring countries, making it imperative that Secretary Clinton push the new Burmese government to open its door wider to non-governmental organizations eager to help educate ethnic Burmese children.

For years, NGOs have been blocked by the Burmese military government from offering much-needed development of the minority education system in Burma. The new Burmese civilian government has undoubtedly made some incremental progress on this, such as allowing World Vision to support the creation of a limited number of preschool programs. But the government didn’t give World Vision a much-coveted “Memo of Understanding” to help any elementary school students, much less those from ethnic minorities. In the Burmese schools I saw this past summer, it was clear that the education of ethnic minority children ranges from mediocre to nonexistent, and their education system is in desperate need of outside help.

Given that an etimated over 500,000 Burmese ethnic minorities are internally displaced due to military attacks, and all their children go uneducated, a call has been made by human rights groups for the new Burmese government to improve access to isolated ethnic minority areas to help those internally displaced. In a hopeful sign, the government has recently allowed unprecedented access for a small group of U.N. workers to help internally displaced Kachin ethnic minorities in areas controlled by the rebel Kachin Independence Army, but those displaced need more substantive help from organizations like UNICEF. However, UNICEFs wings have been clipped by the Burmese government, and it was not able to set up temporary schools and health systems for these minority groups. Not only does the Burmese government need to allow international NGOs to help rebuild minority education systems, but it also needs to allow domestic NGO’s to be created, after years suppressing internal NGO development.

As part of my Fulbright research in Burma, Malaysia, and Thailand, a Burmese ethnic minority boy told me how he held on tight to his father’s back, as his father carried him through Burmese mountainous war zones to Thailand, leaving him alone in a refugee camp across the border. Why? Because the boy’s father saw how the Burmese government military had repeatedly torched his ethnic villages, schools, and never built them new schools. The only help any minority students have gotten in Burma has been from illegal forays by the Free Burma Rangers into Burma, risking their lives to take ethnic minority educators safely through dangerous conflict zones to be trained to start schools. Burmese minority educators shouldn’t have to risk their lives trying to educate their children.

Source : http://the-diplomat.com/

Without hope, without reason

2012-01-24T00:59:00.001-08:00

Endless detention ... the mother of Atputha, 7, and Abinayan Rahavan, 4, is considered a security risk by ASIO.

Legitimate refugees, including toddlers, are imprisoned indefinitely. Only ASIO knows why and it will tell no one, writes Kirsty Needham.

'I live like a dead man walking,'' says Suvenran Kathirdamathambi, or ''Sutha'', 32. ''This is supposed to be the golden period in anyone's life - your 20s and 30s. But I can't even say when the day starts.''

Sutha is married, but his wife lives alone in Sri Lanka, unable to tell anyone she has a husband who has spent 30 months locked up in Australia. The former paramedic sleeps in short spurts, sharing a room at Villawood detention centre with men who sporadically wake at different times, miss breakfast, smoke heavily, shun exercise and mope around under trees.

''No one is in their right mindset,'' he says by telephone. ''To pass one day is a massive effort. Sutha has been homeless since his father and two brothers were killed by the Sri Lankan army. His mother had to keep moving with her son, disrupting Sutha's education but surviving.

During the civil war, he worked for an international non-government organisation then fled with a huge wave of Tamil asylum seekers when the conflict ended. ''I thought this country would give me protection.''

A year ago, the Immigration Department did indeed tell Sutha it accepted he was a refugee. The same day, he was also told ASIO had labelled him an ''adverse security risk'', for reasons the agency has refused to explain.

''It was agonising,'' Sutha recalls, still unable to believe such a profound decision could be made after just one interview. The secretive ASIO ruling blocks him from setting foot in the suburban Sydney streets outside. ''OK, we are safe, but it is a terrible life,'' he says.

Mirnalini Sasikumar, 27, travels daily by public transport to Villawood to see her husband, another Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. The separation is devastating for their five-year-old son, Sharthi. When the boy is at home, he continually runs to the door and cries, ''Daddy is here''. But he is not. His father, labelled an adverse security risk by ASIO, faces indefinite detention, yet the entire family are approved refugees.

A Tamil widow and her four-year-old child joined the ranks of Villawood's dispossessed ''security risks'' before Christmas. She was plucked from a community house in Melbourne when the dreaded ASIO decision arrived - an adverse finding and she wasn't told why. She cries continually.

Her neighbours at Villawood, the Rahavan family, have seen it all. But the government is doing its best to make the Tamil family of five, and the problem created by ASIO's verdict that the mother, Sumathi, is a security risk, disappear. One-year-old Vaheson may be the only infant in Australia to grow up without constantly being photographed by proud parents - no photographs of detainees are allowed, even toddlers, under department rules. His brother Abinajan, 4, was forced off the stage at his preschool graduation by guards keen to enforce the photo ban.

A few months earlier, the children's playmate ''Shooty'' Vikadan, a friendly 27-year-old neighbour, killed himself by taking poison. Refused permission to leave Villawood for a day to celebrate the Diwali Hindu festival with friends - an interim ASIO security assessment was cited - the uncertainty of endless detention became too much for Vikadan.

Lawyers are now fighting in the federal court to save a suicidal Kuwaiti Bedouin teenager, locked up for a year and repeatedly taken to hospital, from the same fate. Just before Christmas, Ali Abbas was the first minor deemed a security risk by ASIO. It means the boy, who arrived by boat as an unaccompanied 16-year-old, will never be released.

What is happening to these refugees is an aberration internationally. Fifty-four refugees, mostly Sri Lankan and Burmese, have been blocked from permanent visas since January 2010 because ASIO has labelled them a security risk. Another 463 await security assessment, often living for years behind wire in uncertainty. And the boats keep coming.

Subjects cannot challenge ASIO decisions or even be given an explanation. A standard letter outlines five broad possible grounds: suspicion of espionage, sabotage, threats to defence, promotion of communal violence and border integrity. Their lawyers have no idea what they are charged with, let alone the federal politicians now examining the issue. Only once has the Immigration Department asked ASIO to rethink a verdict, and ASIO upheld its decision.

The refugees cannot be sent home, because this would be a breach of the United Nations Refugee Convention, which Australia has signed. But no other country, so far, has offered to take them, largely because of the ASIO security insinuation.

The Australian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says it simply does not believe the ASIO decisions are warranted, and its own assessment has found the refugees don't reach ''that serious level of threshold'' that would exclude a person from refugee protection on security grounds under the refugee convention.

The UNHCR is urging the federal government to introduce some oversight to ASIO's decisions on refugees. It has provided details on how New Zealand, Canada and Britain allow a court or special advocate to review security assessments and give the subject a summary of the case against them. This is basic fairness, which can be balanced with national security and the need to protect classified information, says the UNHCR's regional representative, Richard Towle. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal could act in this role, UNHCR has suggested.

The push to rein in ASIO appears to be gathering political weight.

The Labor MP Daryl Melham, the chairman of the parliamentary inquiry into immigration detention, recently told the department head, Andrew Metcalfe: ''I have a philosophical problem with 'who guards the guard while the guard guards you' … I am not comfortable with people remaining in detention without charge, technically for the term of their natural life, and saying, 'There is not one person in the whole of Australia who can safely review an initial assessment from ASIO.'''

Labor's national conference passed a resolution calling for the National Security Monitor, a position within the Prime Minister's office held by Bret Walker, SC, to investigate ways to provide an independent review mechanism for refugees with an adverse security findings. The federal government has said it will make a statement soon on the matter.

But a spokesman for the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Stephen Blanks, who is also the Rahavans' lawyer, is concerned such a review will only delay action. He argues it will take too long to set up an independent monitor and says the existing system available for Australian citizens to seek review of ASIO decisions through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal could instead be expanded quickly to include asylum seekers.

ASIO is resistant to any independent scrutiny of its refugee decisions, with its director-general, David Irvine, arguing not only national security but also ASIO's ''sources and methods'' could be at risk. The system was last reviewed in 1977, the agency argues, and it was decided then that appeal rights shouldn't be given to non-citizens.

But this was before the modern era of asylum seekers arriving by boat facing prolonged mandatory detention. And the problem isn't solved by the federal government's recent policy shift to release new boat arrivals into the community on bridging visas. Those failing ASIO security checks are excluded from community release, the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, has said.

Blanks has called for the Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, to sack Irvine, claiming his evidence to the parliamentary inquiry showed a failure to appreciate basic democratic principles.

If there is no change, the judiciary, which last year scuttled the government's Malaysia refugee swap, is likely to make its own challenge. The law firm Slater & Gordon has been approached by several refugees in detention and the legal community is considering a class action.

''We are dealing with a government agency woefully under-resourced, required to conduct complex assessments of large numbers of people held in detention, where the length of detention is creating mental illness,'' the firm's Ben Phi said.

No one knows exactly what ASIO looks at when it ''checks'' a refugee, and Irvine refused to tell the parliamentary inquiry when asked, saying if he divulged to the politicians the criteria for security checks, refugees would find ways to evade them.

But he gave a hint, saying ''the particularly relevant'' issue is politically motivated violence, specifically the potential to support terrorism from Australia and ''the financing of terrorism overseas''.

Many Tamils fled to Australia by boat after the Tamil Tigers (or LTTE) were crushed by the Sri Lankan army, fearing persecution after thousands of displaced Tamils were herded into huge military camps by the Sri Lankan government.

The Tamil Tigers are listed as a terrorist group in Australia. But Bala Vigneswaran, the refugee co-ordinator for the Australian community group the National Tamil Congress, says the LTTE ran a ''shadow government'' in the north of Sri Lanka during the war. ''If you were there and you worked, you had some involvement,'' says Vigneswaran.

Sumathi Rahavan was a clerk in the LTTE court. Other refugees in Villawood are believed to have known people in the LTTE or were said to be ''open sympathisers''.

''But we are open people. We talk,'' protests Vigneswaran. ''If someone says, 'These people are always talking about Tamils needing freedom', well, so do I. Does it make me a terrorist?''

He says ASIO needs to have actual proof of terrorism, not an opinion.

Rohingya Burmese, an ethnic Muslim group persecuted by the Burmese junta, are another cohort being held for years in detention on security grounds, with at least four Rohingya given an adverse ASIO finding.

Sayed Kasim spent 14 months in detention waiting for ASIO. Unable to work, he couldn't send money to his wife stuck in Malaysia to support their four children. She became suicidal after she was forced to put their eldest son in an orphanage.

Kasim fled Burma after being bound and threatened with execution by soldiers. Living in Malaysia as an illegal immigrant, he established a school for Rohingya refugee children and became politically active. Harassed by Islamic religious extremists, he was again forced to run.

His story has a happy ending. Kasim was finally cleared by ASIO late last year, and now works at a coffee cart in Liverpool. ''I didn't know what freedom meant until the day I was released from detention,'' he says. Kasim counts himself lucky, and is trying to bring his family to Australia.

But he puzzles over why ASIO took so long. It was only after Kasim took the initiative to write to ASIO and invited them to visit him that officers interviewed him. ''They asked me about terrorism. I said, 'We are simple people in Burma, we can't do anything. We are Muslim but I have never heard of a Rohingya involved in terrorism.'''

Burma-Myanmar progress contends with continuing human rights violations

2012-01-24T00:57:00.000-08:00

Lynn Yoshikawa – WNN Opinion

Stateless Kachin women try to find gold by paning the Irrawaddy river near the controversial (and recently cancelled) Myitsone dam project in the Kachin State of Northern Burma/Myanmar August 2007. Burma's Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, along with many Burmese environmental activists, organized to ask that the project be halted due to the likelihood the diverted water would cause environmental devastation and vast human displacement in the area. Image: Frédéric Gloor

(WNN/RI) Burma/Myanmar: Traveling in Burma last month, it wasn’t hard to see that things really are changing in this beautiful but troubled country.

Posters of Aung San Suu Kyi filled market stalls and hung proudly in the offices of local civil society groups – a remarkable change from the past, when possessing just one was a cause for arrest. Activists of all backgrounds spoke openly about politics, even in public spaces, without the usual hushed tones and glances over the shoulder.

Sadly, however, human rights abuses and corruption also continue in this “new Burma”. In the ethnic areas we visited – Kachin in the north, and Karen and Mon in the east – the optimism we heard in Yangon was muted.

In Kachin, we visited church compounds where women and children sheltered in crowded assembly halls after military attacks destroyed their homes. In the east, we met a Baptist pastor running aid programs for displaced communities, who had been ordered by authorities to give up part of the church’s land to a private company.

These contradictions reflect the continuing tension between those who are leading Burma’s reforms, like President Thein Sein, and hardliners who see rapid change as a threat to national security. This struggle within the country’s ruling class will take time to resolve, and it will take decades before high-level reforms reach the people. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. can sit back and wait for change to be realized; quite the opposite is true.

To capitalize on this opening, and lend support to these progressive voices, the U.S. must engage the Burmese government at all levels. High-level diplomacy will be important, but meeting Burma’s humanitarian needs will also be vital. In 50 years of isolation, Burma has been wracked by conflict, hit by devastating natural disasters, and plagued by underdevelopment. USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance must, therefore, expand its humanitarian aid program to meet the needs of Burma’s half a million internally-displaced people and 800,000 stateless.

For the Burmese government to succeed with any reforms, it will also need significant technical assistance from the international community. The U.S. must loosen aid restrictions on Burma, which prohibit any aid to the government, to engage reform-minded leaders and civil servants – particularly teachers and health workers. Decades of “brain drain,” coupled with an archaic and inadequate education system, has left local capacity extremely low.

All of this is not to say that longstanding U.S. sanctions on Burma should be completely lifted. Indeed, the country’s continuing rights violations and unresolved civil conflicts show that reform will not happen overnight, and the U.S. should not withdraw pressure prematurely. But the steps outlined above show that there are other ways to meet the immediate needs of Burma’s people, and make reform real at last.

Lynn Yoshikawa is a staff writer for Refugees International.

Source : http://womennewsnetwork.net/

USCRI Applauds Proposed Rule Helping Families Stay Together

2012-01-11T21:12:00.000-08:00

Under current immigration policy, U.S. citizens and their undocumented family members can face long separations – often years – while their immigration applications are being processed. The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday a proposal to reduce the amount of separation time currently faced by families. The U.S. Committee for Refugee and Immigrants (USCRI) supports this reform which will diminish the hardship experienced by citizens and their spouses and children.

"The purpose of the new process is to reduce the time that U.S. families remain separated while their relative proceeds through the immigrant visa process," U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in its announcement. Presently, many children and spouses of U.S. citizens who qualify for immigration status but who have been unlawfully present in the U.S., are required to travel abroad to complete the immigration application process. This process can last years and it often results in U.S. citizens being separated from their family members for an extended period of time. The proposed regulation would allow eligible spouses and children of U.S. citizens to apply for a provisional family unity waiver before going abroad to complete their legal immigration process, significantly reducing the amount of familial separation.

“This is a common-sense, practical solution to a process that previously often kept children from their U.S. citizen parents” said Tricia Swartz, director of USCRI’s National Center for Refugee & Immigrant Children.

USCRI’s President and CEO, Lavinia Limón, commended the intended policy reform saying “The reform is a humane, sensible approach. USCRI and its partners are hopeful of additional future practical improvements to the immigration system.”

USCRI is a Washington, D.C. area-based nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the needs and rights of persons in forced or voluntary migration worldwide by advancing fair and humane public policy, facilitating and providing direct professional services, and promoting the full participation of refugees and immigrants in community life. Its program, the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, is the only program providing pro bono legal and social services to immigrant children nationwide.

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2231 Crystal Drive Suite 350
Arlington, VA 22202-3794, (703) 310-1130
www.Refugees.org

Karen to hold peace ceremonies worldwide

2012-01-11T20:56:00.000-08:00

(Mizzima) – The Karen National Union (KNU) and ethnic Karen refugees worldwide will hold traditional peace ceremonies outside Burmese embassies and other venues on Thursday, coinciding with renewed cease-fire negotiations with Burma’s military-backed government.

Karen refugees who have fled the fighting between government forces and the Karen Independence Army. Photo: Mizzima

Events will take place in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Norway and Netherlands, according to a press statement.

The peace ceremonies are being held to call on the military-backed government to agree to a cease-fire and to engage in dialogue to solve the political problems behind the decades-old conflict.

The current cease-fire talks are the sixth effort in the past 63 years that official talks have taken place. There have also been many informal discussions. Past negotiations have failed because the Burmese government has always effectively demanded surrender, and has refused to seriously discuss the political problems that are the cause of the conflict, according to the statement.

A cease-fire alone tackles the symptoms, not the causes, said a Karen spokesperson, who added that the military backed government says it wants to talk peace but it is still attacking Karen villages, still executing unarmed villagers, and recently jailed Mahn Nyein Maung, a senior KNU leader.

A traditional peace ceremony involves Karen standing or sitting in a circle. A village head pours a drink, usually a traditional wine made from rice, makes a wish for peace on whatever issue is important, and then passes the wine to the person on their right, who then does the same. They then pass on the drink until everyone in the circle has drunk from the cup.

For information about the ceremonies and events, contact Mahn Denis Saw Htoo +60197778303 (Malaysia); Saw Lat Thein +66816204486 (Thailand); Mahn Thaung Tin +1315368 4315 (USA); or Saw Lwin Oo +614123 44009 (Australia)

Malaysian school targets undocumented children

2012-01-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

Undocumented children can finally attend school in Sabah

On the island of Borneo in Malaysia, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant children are not allowed to go to school. But efforts to change this are underway and a school just for these children has been built.

Visiting the refugee village of Kampung Numbak, in the Malaysian state of Sabah, is a gut-churning experience. The tin-roofed wooden houses in this fishing community are built on stilts to prevent them from being submerged by water. When the waters recede during low tide, a muddy bed covered in garbage is revealed. Wooden bridges, some with rotten or missing planks, connect the village streets.
At the end of the main road is the Kampung Numbak Education Center. Earlier this year it was opened for some 300 children who previously had been barred from attending school because they lacked the proper papers. The community built the school, with support from the United Nation's Children's Fund, UNICEF, and the participation of the Malaysian government. Officials hope to replicate this model in other communities throughout Sabah.
Teachers hope to educate children of the Kampung Numbak refugee village"In this school, there are only children that are undocumented. There were parents who wanted to have their children here in this school, which happened to be in the middle of the community, but they were not admitted if they had documents," said UNICEF's representative to Malaysia, Hans Olsen.
Kampung Numbak's population of some 8,000 people is a mix of Malay nationals, refugees and undocumented migrant workers, mainly from the Philippines. Malay children can go to government-run schools, Olsen said, where children without birth certificates or other proof of legal residency are not allowed to attend.
"The children that are here had not been to school before. They were left behind when the other children went to the government schools."
No official status
Malaysia has achieved near universal primary education for its children, while tens of thousands of refugee and immigrant children who lack birth certificates have been left behind. They have no official status and are denied the most basic services, including education.
Nearly 2.5 million legal and illegal immigrants, mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia live in Malaysia. Families that fled the Moro Islamic rebellion in the southern Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s are still categorized as "refugees," despite having lived in Malaysia for decades.
Officials likely underestimate the number of undocumented children out of schoolNur Anuar Muthalib, a UNICEF monitoring and educational officer, says refugee children born in Malaysia with no documents are marginalized - even later in life.
"When they grow up, they cannot even open a bank account. They are basically nonexistent in a way."
A 2009 study by the country's ministry of education found nearly 44,000 undocumented children aged seven to 17 not enrolled in school. This figure is believed to be grossly underestimated. Children who do not go to school are easily exploited. Many are prone to child labor. Others wind up on the streets, get into drugs, petty crime and are exposed to abuse.
Anuar says education may not be a panacea, but it can help children avoid many of these pitfalls.
"From our view, children are children. Their place is in school. It is not the children's fault that they are in our country and not able to attend schooling. It is their right," said Anuar.
The teachers here are young, generally inexperienced and poorly paid. But they take their jobs seriously and are committed to helping their pupils learn. One teacher, Amira Binti Asen Abdullah, says she's proud of the progress her students have made in such a short time.
"Before this, the children were just hanging around and playing," she said. "After this, because they have this school, they come here every day and study."
Activists say education is key to keep children from exploitation"They sometimes come in the evening and study in the library," she added. She said her students very much love to come to school.
And that's not a teacher's wishful thinking. Before coming to this school, 11-year-old Normida says she couldn't read or count. Now, she says, she likes going to school. She especially likes Islamic studies and wants to be a teacher when she grows up.
Azali, who is 13, had never attended school before. He's excited to be in class. He says he's learning a lot and wants to be a soldier.
A model for other communities
UNICEF officials say their aim is to replicate the Kampung Numbak model in other disadvantaged communities in Sabah. They say they have a project ready to go in another refugee village near the city of Sandakhan on the east coast of the island.
Kampung Bahagia, as it is called, bears many similarities to Kampung Numbak. But the school is in a horrible state. The flimsy structure is falling apart, with floorboards missing. The children sit on plastic chairs and have no desks. Classes have as many as 80 pupils. The teachers are few and school supplies and money are short.
UNICEF officials say the new school will accommodate about 1,000 undocumented children. This will be a vast improvement over what currently exists. They note, however, that it will provide no solution for some 2,000 other children in the community who would like to go to school. There's just no room for them.

Author: Lisa Schlein, Sabah, Borneo
Editor: Sarah Steffen

Source : www.dw-world.de

Kachin in Singapore and Malaysia raise $20,000 for humanitarian relief

2012-01-11T20:50:00.000-08:00

Kachin dancers perform during a benefit concert in Singapore on Jan 2. The Singapore concert and a similar event held in Malaysia on Dec 26 raised $20,000 to aid refugees affected by fighting in Kachin and northern Shan state.
Overseas Kachin living in Singapore and Malaysia raised more than $20,000 to support Kachin refugees in northern Burma, by holding two special charity concerts over the Christmas season.

The donations will be split, with half going to help internally displaced people (IDPs) sheltering in government controlled areas and the other half going to help those who have fled to territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), according to Tangbau Awng Di, secretary of the Singapore Kachin Culture and Literature Body.

“The shows were organized by Kachin people in each country and other people from Burma also joined the concerts’, said Awng Di during a phone interview Saturday.

18 popular Kachin singers including members of the newly formed “Yak Tim Pyaw Tim Rau” group, traveled from Burma to take part in the shows. On December 26 a fund raising concert was held in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. According to concert organizer Nhkum La Seng, the Malaysian concert had an attendance of more than 1,000 people.

The second concert was held in Singapore on January 2 and was attended by approximately 300 people. A Chin organization in Singapore also donated funds for the Kachin relief effort.

Both Malaysia and Singapore are home to large numbers of refugee and migrant workers from Burma.

The majority of workers from Burma living in Malaysia work in farm plantations, factories, fishing or construction. Burmese labour activists in Malaysia estimate that more than half a dozen workers from Burma were killed in industrial accidents during the construction of Kuala Lumpur's famed twin towers, the headquarters of Malaysia's national oil firm Petronas.

[B]More refugees expected[/B]
Doi Pyi Sa, who heads the KIO’s IDP and Refugee Relief Committee told the Kachin News Group that his organization had a list of more than 50,000 refugees in both government and KIO-controlled areas as well as inside China. He believes however that the total number of people displaced by the fighting could be as high as 70,000. More refugees are expected as the fighting continues.

There are an estimated 40,000 refugees sheltering in KIO run camps along the China border. According to volunteers working on the ground refugees in the KIO area are in dire need of vital supplies. On December 12 the UN sent five Burmese staff and a small aid convoy to visit refugee camps located at Laiza, the KIO's headquarters. Nearly one month later the UN has yet to make good on its promise to return with more aid.

More than 15,000 people are thought to have taken shelter in government controlled areas like Manmaw (Bhamo), N’Mawk (Momauk), Manje (Mansi), Myitkyina, Waimaw (Waingmaw), Putau (Putao) and Hkawnglanghpu, according to Kachin relief groups. Most of these people are staying in Kachin churches or with relatives.

Source : www.kachinnews.com

Burma: Unraveling the paradox

2012-01-11T20:44:00.001-08:00

By Lynn Yoshikawa, Refugees International

Traveling in Burma last month, it wasn’t hard to see that things really are changing in this beautiful but troubled country. Posters of Aung San Suu Kyi filled market stalls and hung proudly in the offices of local civil society groups – a remarkable change from the past, when possessing just one was a cause for arrest. Activists of all backgrounds spoke openly about politics, even in public spaces, without the usual hushed tones and glances over the shoulder.

Sadly, however, human rights abuses and corruption also continue in this “new Burma”. In the ethnic areas we visited – Kachin in the north, and Karen and Mon in the east – the optimism we heard in Yangon was muted. In Kachin, we visited church compounds where women and children sheltered in crowded assembly halls after military attacks destroyed their homes. In the east, we met a Baptist pastor running aid programs for displaced communities, who had been ordered by authorities to give up part of the church’s land to a private company.

Unlike in Burma’s previous regime, progressive voices are now emerging from within the government, ranging from parliamentarians to ministers to regional leaders. More importantly, there is a nascent, but growing, civil society in Burma – from groups providing humanitarian assistance in conflict areas, to human rights advocates pressing the government on military abuses and environmental threats.

To capitalize on this opening, and lend support to these progressive voices, the U.S. must engage the Burmese government at all levels. High-level diplomacy will be important, but meeting Burma’s humanitarian needs will also be vital. In 50 years of isolation, Burma has been wracked by conflict, hit by devastating natural disasters, and plagued by underdevelopment. USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance must, therefore, expand its humanitarian aid program to meet the needs of Burma’s half a million internally-displaced people and 800,000 stateless.

For the Burmese government to succeed with any reforms, it will also need significant technical assistance from the international community. The U.S. must loosen aid restrictions on Burma, which prohibit any aid to the government, to engage reform-minded leaders and civil servants – particularly teachers and health workers. Decades of “brain drain,” coupled with an archaic and inadequate education system, has left local capacity extremely low.

All of this is not to say that longstanding U.S. sanctions on Burma should be completely lifted. Indeed, the country’s continuing rights violations and unresolved civil conflicts show that reform will not happen overnight, and the U.S. should not withdraw pressure prematurely. But the steps outlined above show that there are other ways to meet the immediate needs of Burma’s people, and make reform real at last.

Lynn Yoshikawa is an advocate with Refugees International, a Washington DC-based organization that advocates to end refugee crises and receives no government or UN funding. Refugees International’s report, Burma: An Opportunity to Expand Humanitarian Space, was released today.

Sri Lankan refugee returning home falls in 2011

2012-01-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Colombo: The number of Sri Lankan refugees, mostly from India, returning home has seen a marked drop in 2011 when compared with the previous year, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.

The latest UNHCR statistics has shown that a total of 1,728 Sri Lankan refugees had returned under UNHCR?s facilitated voluntary repatriation programme in 2011.

In 2010 UNHCR helped some 2,054 Sri Lankan refugees come home. In 2009, UNHCR facilitated the voluntary return of some 818 individuals.

In October 2011, UNHCR opened up the return of Sri Lankan refugees from India to Colombo by ferry, adding a new dimension to its voluntary repatriation programme.

Until then, all returns took place by air.

However the ferry service was suspended one month later. Apart from those who returned from India, a small numbers have also returned from Malaysia, Georgia and the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia.

A majority of the returns are taking place to eastern district of Trincomalee. A substantial number is also going back to the Mannar and Vavuniya districts in the country’s north while small groups are returning to Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Batticaloa, Colombo, Ampara, Puttalam and Kandy.

UNHCR's most recent statistics show that as of end-2010 there are some 141,063 Sri Lankan refugees in 65 countries, with a majority -some 69,000 in 112 refugee camps and another 32,000 living outside camps in Tamil Nadu, India.

The other main countries with Sri Lankan refugees are France, Canada, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Australia, Malaysia, the United States and Italy.

Source : zeenews.india.com

Refugees form groups to conduct gotong-royong and night watch

2012-01-11T20:40:00.001-08:00

IT IS past 8am and the sun is slowly rising with a lazy drawl, waking up Malaysians from their slumber but walking under the heat with glee is a group of young children with shovels and a wagon eager to begin the day’s work.

The children are young refugees who once wreaked havoc in their community since they had no other activities to occupy their time.

In Malaysia, a large concentration of refugees live in the Klang Valley.

Leaving behind their home, friends and family, these refugees come to Malaysia, seeking asylum, a job and a life. However, most of the time they are shunned by society.

“Often in an area where locals, refugees and immigrants live together, it is easy to blame the foreigners,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) external relations officer Yante Ismail.

Chipping in: A group of children carting away the rubbish they have collected.

In Loke Yew, Kuala Lumpur, where a large number of refugees reside, littering was a common problem.

Residents then decided to discuss the issues they faced with the refugees, hoping to find a solution.

“The refugees care about Malaysia and wanted to be a part of the solution. They decided to have a gotong-royong to get rid of the mess,” said Yante.

They also set up night watch groups to help curb loitering, being mindful of the local population.

Enthused from the success of Loke Yew, the UNHCR decided to hold similar gotong-royong in other refugee areas in the Klang Valley and came up with the Jom Gotong Royong contest.

Yante said they decided to have a contest as an incentive for refugees.

Each group is given a small amount of seed money and so far they have succeeded in recruiting 23 community groups in three months.

Lending a hand: Kachin community cleaning up their neighbourhood.

The winners will be decided by a panel of judges and the first prize winners will receive RM3,000, followed by RM2,000 and RM1,000 for the second and third place respectively.

“The money will be put back into the society for other projects they can undertake,” added Yante.

One of the groups involved is the Kachin Refugee committee which is based in Genting Klang.

They plan to meet three times a month for four hours with 40 volunteers for each session.

Another group is the Tedim Community Malaysia which has made Segambut their home.

They planned to meet once a week for a clean-up session.

Each session so far has 10 volunteers.

“They have noted that between each consecutive session there has been less rubbish compared with the previous week,” added Yante.

The third community, which has entered the contest, is the Zomi Innkuan Malaysia from the Hang Tuah area. They meet twice a week with about 20 refugee volunteers per session.

One of the more laudable communities is the Chin community in Taman Mewah, Koperasi Quepecs in Kajang.

The refugees have come under the Chin Diamond Learning Centre umbrella, where the children are studying under head teacher John.

“Our residents’ association had always engaged us in their discussions.

“The school is important because the children used to cause a lot of problems before,” said John who has been with the centre for two years.

Having solved the children’s issues, the residents’ association turned to John as a spokesman and mediator.

John said the community had already started their own clean-up session before the contest started.

“We feel like we are in our country so we feel responsible for it,” he said.

John has managed to recruit more than 40 people for each clean-up session that has been conducted regularly almost every week.

Taman Mewah Cheras Management Corporation treasurer Muhammad Basir said they took their hats off to the refugees.

Initially there used to be a lot of fights, drinking and trouble in the neighbourhood when the refugees get together in the evening.

“We could not blame them because they were frustrated and didn’t know what to do or where to work.

“However, after talking to John and engaging in this gotong-royong, things have changed,” he said.

He added that it was great to see so many of the refugees taking part in the clean-up.

“Even the children are eager to help their parents and we have not had many locals doing the same let alone the children.

“We respect them for this hard work they have put in,” added Basir.

Those interested in seeking information on ways to help the refugees can email infomalaysia@unhcr.org

Source : TheStar

Is democracy finally coming to Burma?

2012-01-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

With elections and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, Burma's brutal military regime seems to be loosening its grip. But can the generals be trusted?

A supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi holds up a card with her picture. Photograph: Soe Than Win

At around 10am one morning earlier this week, a dazed and haggard man in surprisingly clean blue convict's fatigues walked out of Insein jail on the outksirts of the Burmese city of Rangoon. Tang Naing Oo had been in prison – held for the most part in a cell measuring 30ft x 50ft that he shared with 110 other inmates – for 14 months. He had originally been sentenced to three years in jail, back in September 2010, for distributing pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi, the famous Burmese pro-democracy campaigner and Nobel prize laureate, on a Rangoon pavement. Now, he was walking past the noodle sellers, the watermelon hawker, a crowd of waiting passengers at the ramshackle bus stop, to a form of freedom.Tang Naing Oo had learned he was to be released only a few hours earlier. When he woke in the fetid cell at 5am, he saw "hope" on the faces of his fellow inmates, he says. His release came the day before the national celebrations commemorating the independence of Burma from Britain 64 years ago, and some kind of amnesty had long been expected from the government. However, the hopes of most inmates in Insein, and the vast network of other prisons and interrogation camps around the country, were disappointed. Of the between 600 and 2,000 political prisoners estimated to be in detention, only a couple of dozen were released. None were senior figures."If the government are serious they will release all the other detainees," Tang Naing Oo says, slumped against the grubby wall of a nearby shop-cum-home-cum-cafe. "This is just for getting more interest from the international community. It is not real change."The international community arrived in Burma today (thurs)today in the shape of William Hague, the British foreign secretary. He is the first UK official of such seniority to come to the country since the army took over in 1962. In December Hillary Clinton, the first American secretary of state to visit for a similar period, flew in and Hague is following her exact itinerary. He arrived in Naypyidaw, the new capital hacked at huge expense out of swamps and scrub in the centre of the country, where he met Thein Sein, the retired general who was named president and head of the new, nominally civilian government last year by the dictator Than Shwe, following the latter's supposed retirement from public life. Hague then flew to Rangoon, the bustling city on the Irrawaddy delta, where he met representatives of civil society and ethnic minorities before having a private dinner with Aung San Suu Kyi herself. Tomorrow, as per Clinton's itinerary, there will be further meetings, some photo calls, a walk around a pagoda, and then it will be home in time for the weekend. Prisoners are released from Insein prison in May 2011. Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun The visit, British officials in Rangoon say, has been prompted by the reforms recently made by Burmese rulers and the desire of Her Majesty's government to encourage further progress on the path to democracy, stability and prosperity. Even 18 months ago such an ambition would have been laughable. Successive military regimes have won deserved reputations for brutality, corruption and human rights abuses. Burma, renamed Myanmar by one of those regimes, has been repeatedly shaken by uprisings, most recently in 2007. One of the world's longest running civil wars has pitted ethnic groups against the national army, creating a vast refugee crisis and reports of forced labour as well as systematic rape and torture. The nation is, despite considerable resources and a prize strategic position on the Indian ocean seaboard, currently one of the poorest in the world. A clique clustered around the top generals and their relatives live in great luxury, while only one in 10 villages has electricity. The government response to the catastrophic Cyclone Nargis in 2008 was a toxic mixture of cynical disregard for human suffering, secrecy and incompetence. Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who assumed the leadership of a popular pro-democracy revolt in 1988, has spent most of the subsequent 23 years in prison or under house arrest.Things started to change in March 2010 with the appointment of the civilian government. Few analysts can say exactly why the notorious Than Shwe decided on this move. Some argue that the motivation was purely economic, as only improved relations with the west will allow Burma to join the ranks of the Asian tiger economies. Others point to a resentment at China's growing role in the country. Nay Zin Latt, the political adviser to the president, says that the decision was simply the result of a realisation that "for capitalism and the free market to flourish, democracy was necessary"."We need western investment, technical knowledge, the art of management. If the country doesn't grow economically then there will be big problems, big unrest. The people with Mercedes cars won't be able to drive them around the streets!" Latt explained.Aung San Suu Kyi, or "The Lady" as she is known locally, was released from house arrest in November 2010 and elections that she and her party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted, were held the same month. These were deeply flawed but many were surprised that they were held at all. The release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1991 after the regime cancelled elections that her party had won, was seen as extraordinary.Since then there have been other reforms. Many, such as new labour laws or legislation allowing protests, have had little practical effect on the ground. Others have had more impact. A handful of foreign journalists have been allowed in, surveillance of democratic activists is marginally lighter and work on a very unpopular Chinese-funded dam project, which would have generated huge amounts of cash for the regime while displacing tens of thousands of locals, has been suspended.Local journalists have tracked the reforms through the degree of censorship to which they are subjected. "Before, printing any image of Aung San Suu Kyi was unthinkable. Then we could use pictures of her on the inside pages no bigger than 5 x 7in. Then suddenly we could put them on the front page," said Thi Ha Saw, editor of the Myanma Dana magazine.It is not just the press. As all visiting reporters have remarked, there are posters of the Lady now on sale on street corners and her picture on mobile phones, walls and cars. The latest development is that Aung San Suu Kyi herself will lead her party in contesting byelections in the late spring. This is a risky and controversial decision that risks fracturing the fragile unity of the democratic campaigners in Burma. It will almost certainly result in the NLD entering parliament in some numbers – even if they will still be heavily outnumbered by soldiers in the assembly.The government is considerably more enthusiastic about the prospect of the Lady in parliament than many of her supporters. "We need an opposition here. We need a strong NLD. The reforms will continue. Sometimes they will go slowly. Sometimes quickly. But they will continue. This is democratisation and that is the mission of the government," insists Latt, the presidential adviser.This then is the process Hague has come to reinforce. If his visit is largely welcomed by pro-democracy campaigners – and Aung San Suu Kyi was sounded out first, as she was before Clinton's trip – others are more wary. There are many in the country who are concerned that the very adulation lavished on Aung San Suu Kyi, particularly in the west, could be something of a trap. These people know to what extent the Lady incarnates Burma's struggle for democracy for the international community, especially with a biopic about her on release, and they see her cult status as a potential danger. The worry is that the sight of their leader taking a seat in the Burmese parliament will be taken to mean that the problems in the country have been solved. Aung San Suu Kyi with Hillary Clinton, December 2011. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Normal relations will be established – not least because Burma is an important element in the ongoing effort to roll back Chinese influence in the region. Trade will follow the flag. The current American and European Union sanctions on Burma will be lifted and businesses will begin to move in to exploit an untapped market and a country with fantastic natural resources. As long as Aung San Suu Kyi remains in parliament, the argument goes, the authorities will have the figleaf they need. Shyan Saran, a former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to Burma, puts it bluntly: "Aung San Suu Kyi is the regime's passport to legimitacy in the international community."Yuza Maw Htoon, a Rangoon-based activist, politician and head of an NGO who stood as an independent in the 2010 elections, is more delicate. "The international community gives recognition only to the Lady and that makes the government happy," she says. "There is a need for other interlocutors too, both for the authorities here and for our friends overseas."Even within the senior ranks of the NLD, there are those who fear that the focus on their leader could backfire. U Win Tin, 82, is one of the founders of the party. He remembers the dark days of the Japanese occupation of Burma during the second world war, as well as the freedom struggle against the British. He is deeply sceptical of the government's desire for "democratisation" and concerned that the west might let itself be deceived.Speaking in the crowded, untidy offices of the party, he said he could "not accept this so-called change" on the part of the government. "I cannot trust it. There are still two motorbikes from military intelligence outside my home, like there have been for decades. There are still many friends in prison," he says. "If the west put the whole focus on [Aung San Suu Kyi] that could be very misleading. We trust in her and her intuition but this is all happening very quickly."Another common fear, voiced by U Win Tin, is that strategic considerations will blind the international community to the problems that continue in Burma. "I have lived through periods when there was a real struggle in the region between the west and its enemies. There was the cold war, when Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia were under communist rule and anyone who was the communist's enemy was the west's friend. Now I am concerned that Burma will become a pawn in the effort against the Chinese," he says.Aung San Suu Kyi appeared this week at the NLD headquarters for the celebration of the country's independence. Looking tired and drawn, she called for further efforts on the road to freedom. She smiled very little, though stood patiently to be photographed with group after group of party workers and spoke briefly with the half dozen low-level foreign diplomats who were present. Songs were sung about the political prisoners still in jail but the Lady did not mention them directly in her short speech. This disappointed some. Others spoke of "necessary compromises".U Win Tin had a message for the British foreign secretary. "Hague should keep in mind that, yes, we have found a light in the tunnel here in Burma," he says. "But we are still in the tunnel. Maybe we can reach the light, maybe we can make it brighter, maybe we can even leave the tunnel. But we don't know yet. And meanwhile, we are still in the dark."Source : www.guardian.co.uk

Booming Burmese population brings new business to Waterloo

2012-01-11T20:32:00.000-08:00

WATERLOO, Iowa --- As the ethnic makeup of Black Hawk County changes, so does the diversity of the business climate.
About a year-and-a-half after the first Burmese refugees came to Waterloo for work, the first Burmese business has opened its doors.
Zaw Min Thant, 28, owner of Lucky Brothers Asian Food Market in downtown Waterloo, first arrived in the U.S. in May 2010 from a Burmese refugee camp in Malaysia. Around the same time, the first Burmese refugees arrived in Waterloo to take jobs at Tyson Fresh Meats plant.
Thant went to Marshalltown to work at JBS Swift & Co., a meat processor there. In Marshalltown, Thant befriended, Win Kyaw the owner of a Golden Land, an Asian food store that served the growing Burmese population there. The two saw other business opportunities with the continuing influx of Burmese workers into Iowa.
"He had the idea," Thant said.
Kyaw loaned Thant some inventory, helped him apply for a license to sell food and with other details. He opened the business in November.
"This is my first business," Thant said.
Since the 1990s, thousands political dissidents and Karen and Chin ethnic minorities have fled Myanmar, as Burma is now called by its military government.
Since 2010, hundreds of refugee Burmese workers have moved to the Waterloo area to take jobs at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant. Thant said he anticipates the Burmese workers will want a taste of home. He also plans to carry items for Filipino, Vietnamese and Thai customers.
"They say every week they go to Cedar Rapids (to shop)," Thant said, adding he wants to stock the items people leave town to find.
"Let me know; I'll order it," he said.
Thant faces some obstacles in getting established. He admits he has a limited English skills right now and doesn't have money to advertise.
"A lot of people come in, they don't know I'm here," Thant said.
In the last three years, other businesses in the location, at the corner of Sycamore Street and Fourth Street have not lasted beyond a few months.
Business is slow during most weekdays with most of his customers coming on Sundays, he said.
Burmese refugees have been resettled into Iowa since 2007 with 128 arriving in the Des Moines metro area that year. A couple years later, Burmese businesses opened there.
"It really doesn't take that long for the need to be met," said Valerie Stubbs, director of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants Des Moines field office.
Chin residents have established a pair of restaurants in the Des Moines area and Karen residents have opened a couple of food stores, Stubbs said.
She said such businesses help create a cohesive community for the immigrant population.
"It's a challenge for them," she said, adding the new businesses show their resilience.
"You can really see and appreciate their survivor attitude," Stubbs said.
That attitude isn't new to Waterloo. The city has a long history of immigrants settling here. Thousands of Bosnian refugees came to the area in the 1990's. Since then, Bosnian restaurants, stores and bakeries have opened and been successful over the last decade.
Thant said he hopes to duplicate that success. Stubbs said that success would benefit everyone in the community.
"Burmese food is tasty," she said.

Source : http://wcfcourier.com

Refugees have rights, too

2012-01-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

ON Dec 10, 1948, these words were adopted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Myanmar refugee children enjoying a magic show hosted by St Francis Xavier Church in Petaling Jaya

How we treat those who flee from danger and persecution and seek help at our doorstep is a reflection of the morality and humanity of our society.

Malaysia's refugee story began in 1975 with the arrival of Indochinese refugees by boat. A majority of them were resettled to other countries and some returned home safely.

During the same period, Malaysia offered local integration to some 13,000 Muslim Cham refugees from Cambodia. And in the 1970s and 1980s, Malaysia witnessed the arrival of some 50,000 Filipino Muslims from Mindanao who fled to Sabah.

These refugees were received and eventually locally settled into Sabah by the government with the support of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Since then, we have received refugees from Bosnia, Aceh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Somalia.

UNHCR reported that as of end October last year, it had registered 95,300 refugees and asylum-seekers: 87,300 are from Myanmar and 8,000 from other countries, including some 4,300 Sri Lankans, 1,100 Somalis, 740 Iraqis and 440 Afghans.

Some 29 per cent of refugees and asylum-seekers are women and there are also 19,500 children below the age of 18.

There are also a large number of "persons of concern" to UNHCR who are still waiting to be registered -- a process that can take some time as the organisation is restricted by limited resources to quickly register all new asylum applications. Refugee communities estimate the population of unregistered refugees and asylum-seekers to be 10,000 persons.

Because they are not given work permits, asylum seekers in Malaysia can become victims of exploitation at their workplace, with very low pay, unsafe conditions and without any form of insurance coverage.

Children form around 20 per cent of the estimated total population of asylum seekers. Less than 40 per cent of them have access to any type of education -- mainly informal classes are conducted by non-governmental and faith-based organisations -- but children attending these classes cannot take any recognised examinations and receive internationally-accepted qualifications.

It is a selfish society that says to those fleeing from danger and persecution and seeking help at our doorstep that we cannot shelter and feed them until our own people are comfortable and well-fed, we cannot clothe them until our own people are well-dressed, we cannot give them jobs because we already have too many foreign workers in our midst, and we cannot educate their children because that would divert precious resources from our own children.

International attention focused on the plight of asylum seekers in Malaysia when on Aug 31, the High Court of Australia ruled that the refugee swap deal was invalid.

The principal reason is that Malaysia is not legally bound to provide the access and protections required under Australian law in order for Malaysia to be validly declared as a country to which asylum seekers could be sent for processing of their asylum claims.

In June, then deputy secretary-general (Registration and Immigration) of the Home Ministry, Datuk Raja Azahar Raja Abdul Manap (who has since retired), told the New Straits Times that even though Malaysia was not a signatory to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, it wanted to establish itself as a country that was raising the standard of treating asylum seekers.

In fulfillment of the prime minister's Malaysia Day pledge to transform Malaysia into a modern and progressive nation, and consistent with our international obligation as a member of UN Human Rights Council, Malaysia must provide protection by law to asylum seekers and refugees to guarantee their access to employment, education and healthcare.

A Year in Review: Important News & Events that Mattered to the Chin in 2011

2012-01-02T02:56:00.000-08:00

New Report Shed Light on Abuse Against Chin: In January US-based Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights released a hard-hitting report on the Chin. Titled “Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma’s Chin State”, the report was covered in more than 250 media outlets around the world. The first quantitative research on human rights among the Chins, and collaborated by six Chin civil society organizations, the report found that the Burmese authorities had subjected nearly 92 percent of the Chin people to forced labour while 14 percent of people surveyed reported religious persecution on the basis of their Christian identity. Physicians for Human Rights legal analysis concludes that the systematic and widespread nature of the violations may constitute Crime Against Humanity under the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and called a United Nations-mandated Commission of Inquiry into international crimes committed by State actors in Burma.

Chin Participated at Burma’s First Rights Review: The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) was among members of a delegation of Burma Forum-UPR, a coalition of 13 human rights organizations working on Burma at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in January, where Burma’s human rights record for the previous four years was reviewed by the world highest rights body. As part of the advocacy efforts to convince world governments participating at the Universal Periodic Review on Burma, CHRO met with ambassadors and diplomats from over 30 countries around the world. Jointly with Physicians for Human Rights and Burma Forum-UPR delegation, CHRO also provided briefings to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the various special procedure mechanisms within the UN human rights system.

Special Rapporteur Tomas Quintana Visited Chins in Malaysia: The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Burma Tomas Quintana visited Malaysia in February to speak to and hear from Chin refugees in Malaysia as part of his field trip to gather information on the situation of human rights in Burma. Having expressed his interest to visit Chin State during two previous private meetings with the Chin Human Rights Organization, the UN rights investigator decided to visit the Chin community in Malaysia instead after his request to visit Burma was refused by the Burmese government. Following the visit, Quintana used the Chins as a case study for his official report to the UN Human Rights Council.

International Labor Organization Visited Chin State: The International Labor Organization (ILO) made an official visit to Chin State’s capital Hakha in May and conducted an awareness-raising workshop with more than 160 local officials, including civil servants, judges, police and military personnel. The ILO’s visit came at a time when a new report had found that over 90 percent of Chin people had been subjected to forced labor by the Burmese authorities.

Religion & Society:

Two Christian Crosses Destroyed & Desecrated in Kanpetlet: Six members of local authorities ordered 15 local Chin Buddhist youths to destroy two wooden Christian crosses planted on both sides of the Mung River suspension bridge in Kyindwe village, Kanpetlet Township of southern Chin State on 28 July 2011. The destruction sparked outrage among local Christians, who wrote a letter of complaint to President Thein Sein, signed by more than 200 Christians. No known action has been taken as of the end of the year.

Global Zomi Alliance Formed: The Global Zomi Alliance (GZA), initiated during the Cope Centennial Jubilee Celebration held in Tedim Town of Chin State in November 2010 with the aims of establishing a common ground for the betterment of Zomi people in the future, was formed at a meeting in Singapore on 27-29 April 2011.

Sports & Entertainment:

Chin athletes At SEA Games: Chin athletes Mai Nilar Htwe as a striker for the Burma women's football team, Mai Nelly Bawi Nei Sin as a boxer (54kg), Salai Kyaw Min as a bodybuilder, Ms Aung Ngeain as an archer and Mai Yinhwa Thawng Luai as a karate coach participated as members of sports teams representing Burma at the 26th Southeast Asian Games in November 2011. Ms Aung Ngeain, from Khimpuang Village, Mindat Township of Chin State, won a gold medal in archery.

Chin Tennis: Mr. Thawng Za Lian, 24, from Chin State Tennis team, won prize for Burma's best player in the 48th State-and-Region Tennis Tournament, jointly organised at the Thein Phyu tennis courts in Rangoon by Sports and Physical Education Department and Myanmar Tennis Federation from 11-18 February 2011.

Chin Education Network (CEN), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting education for Chin youths, organized 17 Chin and Burmese singers to perform a live concert in Rangoon to raise fund and awareness in support of education initiatives in Chin State.

Humanitarian:

Chin State Named Poorest in Burma: The United Nations study on poverty released in June concluded Chin State was the poorest among Burma’s 14 States and administrative regions. The report found that as many as 73 percent of the population of Chin State live under the poverty line, which far exceeds the national average. Rights groups attribute the extreme poverty to decades of government neglect, compounded by militarization and widespread human rights violations against the Chin people, especially during the last two decades.

India Donated for Chin State: In an unprecedented move, the Indian government in August announced that it will give an 8-million donation for development in Chin State. The announcement followed the visit to Chin State by Mandalay Indian Consul General Dr. Madan Mhohan Sethi. While the donation was largely welcomed, some had cautioned that the donation could be ‘sweetener’ money meant to ‘hush’ Chin people ahead of the potentially controversial development project supported by India in southern Chin State. Started in late 2010 and set to complete by later 2013, The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transport Project, a joint India-Burma project will see the dredging of the biggest river in Chin State and the construction of an inland water terminal and a multi-lane highway in Southern Chin State that will link with India’s Mizoram State.

‘Chin Future’ Seminar: On 20 October, more than 200 Chin academics, religious leaders, youths and politicians gathered in Rangoon to discuss the ‘Chin future’ in an attempt to find solution to various problems facing the Chins in the face of growing poverty, increasing number of youth migration out of Chin State.

Chin Response to Displaced Kachins: Despite the extreme poverty at home, the Chin people quickly and generously responded to the plight of Kachin people displaced by conflicts in northern Burma following the breakdown of a 17 year-old ceasefire between the Burma Army and the Kachin Independence Organization. In total, not less than 50,000 US dollars was donated by Chin churches and communities from both inside and outside the country.

Protests:

Chin Students Protest in Kalay: In a rare public protest against Burmese authorities, over 500 Chin students studying at various universities in Kalay, Sagaing Division staged a demonstration in January to protest against 100 percent increase in bus fare, which they said was discriminatorily unfair to Chin students, who largely live off campus. The students refused to take the bus and formed a human chain by walking to the universities on foot. The protest ended when the authorities responded positively to the students demand by cutting back the bus fare to the original charge.

Chin in Delhi Protest on World Refugee Day: 3000 Chin refugees and their supporters from the Indian civil society groups took to the street in New Delhi on World Refugee Day on 20 June, demanding protection and improved services from the Indian government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The largest such protest organized by the Delhi-based Chin Refugee Committee, the protest resulted in widespread media coverage around the world, which helped raise the profile and plight of about 100,000 Chin refugees living in India.

Celebration & Awards:

CRC Celebrates 10th Anniversary: 2006 Suaram human rights award winner Chin Refugee Committee (CRC) based in Kuala Lumpur celebrated its 10th founding anniversary to coincide with the 63th anniversary of Chin National Day on 20th February. Founded in 2011, the CRC has provided crucial and life-saving services to more Chins who have resettled to third countries such as North America, Europe and Australia during the last ten years.

Zomi Independence Hero Award: Veteran Chin politician Pu Cin Sian Thang MP, and leader of the Zomi National Congress (ZNC) was awarded Zomi Independence Hero Award by the Wolrd Zomi Congress in honour and recognition of his relentless commitment to working for the freedom of his people. A former political prisoner whose son and nephew remain behind bars in Burma for their political belief, Cin Sian Thang is a highly respected figure nationally in the Burmese political scene.

Tragedy:

A series of fatal road accidents in Chin State in 2011 had claimed more than 40 lives and caused over 120 injuries. Treacherous road conditions, a tragic result of Burma’s longstanding neglect of Chin State for infrastructure and economic development, were largely blamed for the tragedies.

Source : Chinland Guardian

Burmese are newest immigrants to settle in Dubuque Archdiocese

2012-01-02T02:48:00.000-08:00

WATERLOO, Iowa (CNS) -- The newest group of Catholic immigrants to come to the Dubuque Archdiocese won't take for granted the opportunity to attend Mass in public. Since May 2010, more than 200 refugees from Myanmar (also known as Burma) have moved to Waterloo and its surrounding areas. They are being recruited to work at the Tyson Fresh Meats packaging plant. Many of them are Christians -- Catholic or Baptist -- who came to America as refugees fleeing government oppression. "On Sunday, we wanted to go to church," said John Lazum, 40, one of the refugees. "They didn't allow us. They had forced labor camps." The father of six lived for years under a military regime, which was hostile to ethnic, racial and religious minorities in a society of mostly Buddhists or atheists. Lazum, his wife and their children spent seven years in a Malaysian refugee camp before being authorized to enter the United States about a year and a half ago. Like many of the newcomers in Waterloo, they settled in other American cities first before coming to Iowa. The Lazum family was in Louisville, Ky., before coming to Waterloo a few months ago. They are now members of Sacred Heart Parish with about 200 other Burmese. That parish and school have been an essential lifeline for the immigrants. "We love America because America has freedom to go to school or work," Lazum said.

Source : www.georgiabulletin.org

Wrestling helps Burmese refugee transition to life in Syracuse

2012-01-02T02:46:00.000-08:00

By Donnie Webb / The Post-Standard

The left toe of Tial Thang’s wrestling shoe is held together by several sweeps of white athletic tape. The soles are so worn down, they are bald and discolored. Socks peek through the black shoe material around his toes.

Thang said he’d get new wrestling shoes except for one thing — he doesn’t deserve them.

When Thang wins a wrestling tournament, he said, then he’ll be shoe worthy.

It’s a small window into the uber-competitiveness and drive of Thang, a refugee from Burma and a junior at the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central. He is also a member of the combined wrestling team for the Syracuse city schools. Thang is The Post-Standard’s honor athlete of the week.

Thang, whose name is pronounced tee-EL tung, wrestles at 152 pounds and is 11-4 this season. He hopes to win a Section III championship and wrestle in the state tournament. Two of Thang’s losses came in overtime. He avenged an early season loss by winning a rematch. In a victory last week against Fayetteville-Manlius, Thang wrestled up and defeated an opponent weighing 170 pounds.

Thang’s homeland of Burma, also called Myanmar, is a military-ruled country of 56 million people. It has been consistently criticized for human rights violations by the United Nations and other rights organizations. The Washington Post called it “one of the most isolated and repressive regimes in the world — a government responsible for killing thousands in a quest to silence dissent.”

Thang and his family fled their Burmese home of Chin Hakha and spent two years in Malaysia before coming to Syracuse in June 2007. Gone was a life of growing corn and rice and raising livestock. Thang’s duties had been tending the family’s five cows.

With the army cracking down on personal and religious freedoms, the family made the most difficult of choices.

Thang’s father (Tawk Cem) escaped first to Malaysia. It took five more years before Thang, his mother (Mang Si) and sister (Holy Sung) could follow. The family reunited in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and lived there for two years.

“I don’t want to remember,” Thang said of his time in Burma. “It makes me sad.”

After applying through the United Nations for refugee status, the family was resettled in Syracuse, a city that has taken in about 1,500 Burmese refugees, according to Stone Saw, a case worker and interpreter at InterFaith Works of Central New York. Thang said he regularly sees the casualties of the Burmese civil war in Syracuse, the ones without arms, legs, eyes or ears.

“It’s sad. I don’t want to be refugee,” he said.

While learning to deal with Central New York snow and the English language, Thang found comfort in a new athletic endeavor — wrestling. He was a seventh-grader at H.W. Smith School when he was encouraged to give the sport a try. From the first day, he said, he was hooked.

Syracuse city wrestling coach Matt Cosgrove said Thang was pulled up to the junior varsity team and started as a ninth-grader. As a freshman, Thang wrestled with the varsity and finished fifth in the Section III tournament.

A back injury suffered during the Empire State Games in 2010 sidelined him for all of last season. It was a devastating setback. Thang is back, though not particularly happy because he’s got four losses. He is a team captain and continues to work through back pain and occasional confidence issues.

“Every time when I hurt my back, I cried,” he said. “But my father told me, you have to heal it by your heart, not by the doctor or anybody. There’s nobody going to heal up for you. You have to do it by yourself. And I did it.”

Rick Spicer is the athletic director at ITC and calls Thang “a solid student” and one of the school’s nicest kids. Spicer sometimes wishes Thang would be a little less nice in some of his wrestling matches

Thang, who dabbles in muay thai and mixed martial arts, used to bow before matches as a show of respect to his opponent. But he said he’s out there on the mat to take his opponent’s head off because he loathes losing.

That doesn’t happen often. He sends text messages about the outcomes of his matches to relatives around the world, from Norway to Malaysia, Texas and Indianapolis.

Cosgrove said Thang has a unique style. He uses more throws, which comes from the Burmese style of wrestling Thang called “paih.” And at times, Cosgrove said, Thang incorporates movements that “aren’t just pure wrestling movements. When kids wrestle him, it’s a little difficult for them.”

Thang said life has changed since his arrival in Syracuse. He has friends. He has a car. He likes his school. And he has “found something he likes to do,” which is wrestling.

But when his wrestling career ends and he graduates from school, Thang hopes to return to Burma. He doesn’t know when, but he feels the pull of his country and wants to be part of change.

“They need help,” he said. “Maybe I can help somebody down there.”

That’s all down the road. For now, Thang is eyeing the team’s next big meet — the Richard New Memorial Tournament in Canastota on Jan. 7. Who knows, Thang might treat himself to new wrestling shoes if things work out.

“I don’t see myself losing again until the states,” Thang said. “I don’t see myself losing again. That’s my goal, from the first day of wrestling, I want to be the champ.”

Donnie Webb can be reached at 470-2149 or dwebb@syracuse.com.

Source : blog.syracuse.com

Undocumented 2 Burmese Refugees Arrested in Malaysia

2011-12-28T03:02:00.001-08:00

by Theng,

Undocumented 2 Burmese refugees were arrested in Jeeteh of Terengganu state, Malaysia on 15 Nov 2011.

They both are Rohingyans and identified as Mr Sultan from Kyauktaw township and Mr Shamshu Alam from Maungdaw township of Arakan state, western Burma.

According to their friends, the raid was conducted by immigration and police authorities followed by Rela forces. The authorities entered into the home construction site at around 9:30am of the day and lifted 2 undocumented Rohingyans when the rest of UNHCR card holders were not arrested.

They both are detained in Ajil detention camp of Terengganu state and still await for UNHCR’s intervention.

Area based Rohingya representative in Terengganu said that there are about 500 Rohingyan refugees in Ajil, Tenah Merah and Juru detentions. Possibly only about 50 persons could be UNHCR card holders and the rest are undocumented including newly enterers.

A Rohingya leader in Kuala Lumpur said, "for this year no refugee has been deported nor sold out to trafficker. But a few were canned. UNHCR card holder detainees were able to get release within 3 months while undocumented refugees have to wait up to 3 months in order to complete registration with UNHCR. All undocumented refugees are unable to register with their refugee agency UNHCR due to limited or some often registration."

"However, the abusive conditions inside the detentions are still seen-able that include overcrowding up to 10 fold, malnutrition food providing, insufficient food and drinking waters providing are still taking place." He added.

Burmese Refugees Get American Style Christmas Thanks To Volunteers At A Greensboro Church

2011-12-28T02:55:00.000-08:00

NC -- Burmese refugees were able to enjoy an American Christmas thanks to volunteers at a Greensboro church on Christmas day.

Close to 150 Burmese refugees attended a service and dinner at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church on Horse Pen Creek Road.

The Christmas mass started at 11:30 a.m., which was followed by a huge Christmas dinner.

About 50 people volunteered to help serve dinner and give gifts to the children.

"There are so many people here, who have shown up to volunteer, on Christmas Day, when they could have been home with their families and things, but they came here," said organizer, Liam Stapleton.

Stapleton called it heartwarming.

"We're trying to integrate them into the communities here. And this is kind of that first step towards that. So, we just want to make sure that they're welcome," he said.

Santa Clause was also in attendance to help distribute gifts to the refugees.

"It's wonderful. It's what Christmas is all about, being with people, helping them and just sharing the joy," said Freda Mandarano, who volunteered to help.

The refugees had to escape from Burma, which is now Myanmar, more than a decade ago. They were forced to leave by the government. Before they came to the U.S., many of the refugees spent 15 to 20 years in refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia.

Source : http://www.digtriad.com/

Malaysiakini brings cheer to refugee children

2011-12-28T02:43:00.000-08:00

Dozens of bags filled with toys were delivered to a Burmese refugee learning centre in Kuala Lumpur by a videographer-turned-Santa Claus from Malaysiakini yesterday.

Maran Perianen, project director at Malaysiakini's citizen journalism programme, who doubled as Santa Claus for the first time in his life, described the event as "a joyous moment".

"I have seen Santa dishing out presents before, but this is the first time I had a chance to become Santa and give out presents," he said. "The experience was definitely out of this world."

Maran was accompanied by Malaysiakini editor-in-chief Steven Gan and 10 team members.

The toys were donated by Malaysiakini staff, while the contact to the Burmese refugee centre was established through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Two UNHCR interns helped the Malaysiakini staff carry the bags up steep stairs lined with small shoes leading to a large classroom with brightly coloured walls and a crowd of 70 audibly and visibly exhilarated children.

Santa, to his alter-ego's relief, was immediately recognised by the children, most between four to 10 years old. The toys were given out one at a time as they queued up in orderly anticipation.

Learning centres such as this are run by the refugee communities themselves as well as by several NGOs.

For the refugees, these centres are vitally important. Without them, it is highly unlikely that the refugee children would receive any education at all.

According to the UNHCR, at least 70 schools for refugees exist in Malaysia providing basic education to over 5,000 children.

The UNHCR provides funding, training and equipment to the community learning centres.

Bringing smiles to children's faces

"The children should look forward to this kind of excitement in their lives every day, not only during Christmas or other festive season," Maran said.

"This will make them feel loved and cared for."

Gan said that Malaysiakini encourages its staff to also raise funds for a number of worthy causes.

For example, it has a strict policy of not accepting gifts of any kind from individuals and companies, and all journalists are required to declare them to the office.

These gifts are later auctioned off among Malaysiakini staff and the money raised subsequently given to charities.

"It's great to be able to help bring a smile to the children's faces. Indeed, we did more than that - the kids were squealing with delights on receiving their raised subsequently given to charities.

"It's great to be able to help bring a smile to the children's faces. Indeed, we did more than that - the kids were squealing with delights on receiving their toys," he said.

Source : http://www.malaysiakini.com/

Myanmar refugees indulge in traditional fare during Christmas

2011-12-28T02:39:00.000-08:00

WHILE many celebrate Christmas with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, fruitcake and pudding, it is not the same at the Myanmar refugee community in Kepong.

For the Yuletide season, their traditional delicacy comprises boiled wild boar, stir-fried potatoes, diced cucumber and wild boar soup.

To some, it may sound repulsive but this is what brings the Zo people of Myanmar together.

David Mung, 31, is the head teacher at Zo Children’s School, a day school for Myanmar refugee children, in Taman Wangsa Permai.

“Boiled wild boar is a delicacy in Myanmar during the holiday season. There is nothing fancy in cooking it. It is just boiled with some salt and pepper and we eat it with rice. For us, it is important that we preserve our culinary heritage despite being in a foreign country,” said Mung.

“In Malaysia, you have many different cultures, not to mention the wide array of local and international cuisines. We cannot afford to splurge on food. This is what unites us as it is a reminder of what we had back home,” added Mung, who fled Myanmar in 2008 with his mother and sister because of religious persecution and the economic crisis. He has been living in Malaysia ever since.

The Zos form a group of Tibeto-Burman people inhabiting the Chin Hills in Myanmar.

Belting it out: One of the kids at the Zo Children School singing along to “We Are The World”.

“Our people who are good at hunting will be in charge of catching the wild boars in the Chin jungles during Christmas. It was fun for us as a community to take home the wild boar, cook it and eat it together.”

Mung’s mother, Mary, 55, was the one in charge of preparing the home-cooked delicacies.

“It is not easy to cook the wild boar. The meat has to be boiled overnight so it will be tender,” she said.

Before the meal, the children sang along to We Are The World — not the 80’s version but the latest one produced in 2010, via YouTube.

“It’s my way to teach English in a fun way. I also teach them songs from Boney M and Abba, which are my favourite bands,” said Mung.

The tiny Christmas tree at the school, situated on the first floor of a shophouse, was decked with mini-twinkle lights.

“We cannot afford a big, new Christmas tree so ours was donated,” said Mung last Saturday during their annual Christmas party.

Used toys comprising stuffed animals, cars and other items were laid on the floor where each had a number.

“Just like previous Christmas parties, we will include a lucky draw for the children to win some toys, donated by the public.”

There is no air-conditioning at the school which is no bigger than 900sq ft, but that doesn’t stop the festivities from taking place.

While many of us list high-tech gadgets and smartphones on our Christmas wishlist, the Zo children are over the moon to receive any toy, even though wrapped in recycled magazine pages.

Grace, 21, also from the Zo tribe, who works as a waitress at a nearby restaurant, volunteers her time at the school to help Mung.

“I’ve been in Malaysia for the past one year. Being at the school is like being at home for me,” she said.

The setting up the school was not an easy task for Mung.

“It was challenging because we didn’t have any money to buy books and basic school supplies. F,urthermore the parents questioned my qualifications as a teacher.

“But eventually they began to trust me with their children. Many of the parents are uneducated and work as odd-job workers. They needed someone like me to provide their children with the basic education,” said Mung, who runs the school with seven other teachers and volunteers.

The children, aged between three and 14, are taught Bahasa Malaysia, English, Science and Mathematics as well as music from 9am to 1pm. After they go home for lunch, they return in the afternoon to the school for computer lessons.

So far, the school has about 50 children. Mung is also a musician and learned his skills at a church in Myanmar.

“We cannot afford to buy new musical instruments so most of what we have like guitars and keyboards are donated,” Mung said.

Three years have gone by and Mung feels happy and tired at the same time.

“I stuck through the odds and hardships. As the head teacher, I feel it is important to teach the children good values. I look forward to many more happy Christmas occasions like these in future,” he added.

Hotel brings festive joy and cheer to Myanmar Chin refugees

2011-12-28T02:33:00.001-08:00

HOTEL ARMADA Petaling Jaya paid a visit to a community of Myanmar Chin refugees who are currently living at a rundown flat in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

The visit from the hotel’s staff was to shed some “festive light” while spreading Christmas cheer and joy to the refugees who have to live on the margins of society most of the time.

With the majority of the Myanmar Chins being Christians, it is also an early Christmas celebration for them.

Having left Myanmar to flee persecution, the Myanmar Chin refugees have found an uneasy transit point here in Malaysia.

Sharing joy: Hotel Armada employees posing with the refugees.

Travelling discreetly across Thailand’s forests and borders, risking their lives to get to a place where they can call “sanctuary”.

Originally from a small state called Chin in Myanmar where the majority of the population are Christians, they have run for their lives from forced labour, military rape and torture, religious persecution, and other severe human rights violations.

Being refugees, the majority of them do not have proper documentations to apply for a proper job.

With what minimal income they can bring in, they are forced to share a one-unit low-cost flat with a minimum of three families.

To help enlighten their burden, Hotel Armada Petaling Jaya donated in bulk basic necessities such as rice, instant noodles, biscuits and cooking oil.

Food aid: Hotel staff with the donations rice and food items for the Myanmar refugees.

Apart from presenting the food donation, the visit was also aimed at showing care and support to the refugees and to remind them that they too were cherished and respected in the spirit of Christmas.

The refugees received the donated goods from the hotel’s general manager Hoon Tai Chee, heads of departments and personnel.

A volunteer who looks after the Myanmar community in Cheras — Vincent Chen from the Church of St. Francis of Assi — was put in charge of distributing the rest of the donation among other refugee communities in the area.

Source : The Star

Refugees clean up neighbourhood

2011-12-21T22:36:00.001-08:00

MYANMAR refugees have cleaned up playgrounds and back alleys of shop lots in Jalan Khoo Teik Ee as a part of a competition under the Jom Gotong-Royong programme.

Myanmar Refugees

1 / 3

The event, organised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is also an effort by the foreigners to give back to the local community.

        The clean-up was carried out by members of the Chin Disciplinarian Action Committee (CDAC), which was formed to discipline the tribal group and maintain peaceful relations with the local community.

      About 25 people were involved in the clean-up, which included sweeping the roadside and drains, as well as collecting garbage from 8am to 10am.

       UNHCR external relations officer Yante Ismail said the competition began last month and will end in January.

      She said UNHCR will evaluate conditions at the site of the clean-up before and after to determine the winner.

      "The prize money will be channelled to the refugees' committee," she said.

      The grand prize is RM3,000 while second and third place winners will receive RM2,000 and RM1,000, respectively.

     CDAC chairman Lalsiammawi, 35, said although there are some bad apples, who had fought when drunk and caused trouble, not all the members were the same.

     "We've been cleaning up this area even before the competition. A lot of us wish to live peacefully during our stay here," he said, adding that they are grateful for UNHCR's support.

      He said previously, City Hall helped them during the clean-up.

    "Some local residents gave a thumbs up when we were cleaning," said Lalsiammawi.

      Chin Refugee Committee medical coordinator Patrick Sang Bawi Hnin, 26, said the refugees' effort is a show of thanks for the shelter that the country has provided during their troubled times.

     "This is our way of showing our appreciation," said Sang.

     Restoran Soo Kee worker, Kok Ming, 54, said apart from the clean-up, the foreigners should also stop the habit of spitting all over the place after chewing betel leaf.

    "It is a horrendous habit that makes customers feel uncomfortable," said Kok Ming

Jalan Imbi 7-Eleven store manager Noorazilah Zakaria, 26, said CDAC has been a great help.

     "They have stopped fights among their people," she said on the effectiveness of the committee members.

       Yante said it is hoped that clean-up efforts by the CDAC will help iron out misconceptions about refugees and reduce negative sentiments towards the foreigners.

    "Unlike migrants, refugees are here because they could not go back to their countries for economic opportunities," she said.

             Yante said some were allowed to perform menial jobs by the Home Ministry as a humanitarian gesture by the Malaysian government.

      "However, there are no distinctive laws to properly govern them yet."

There are about 95,000 refugees in Malaysia, with about 86,000 coming from Myanmar

Karen immigrants find viable employment option

2011-12-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) — Sixty-one Karen refugees from Myanmar are now helping Molded Fiber Glass meet its employment needs

The Karen (pronounced ka' ren or kuh-ren) began immigrating to the United States about 20 years ago after fleeing persecution in their native land. Most spent months and sometimes years in refugee camps in Thailand before immigrating to primary settlement sites in the U.S.

Many of those now making wind turbine blades at Molded Fiber Glass previously lived in Huron, a primary settlement city, where they worked at the Dakota Provisions turkey processing plant.

Other Karen have come to Aberdeen from St. Paul, Minn., Spokane, Wash., and other primary settlement sites, said Dave Giovannini, Molded Fiber Glass general manager.

The workers that have been hired so far have been excellent, said Giovannini said.

"They have performed exceptionally well," said Travis Sexton, shift supervisor. "It has been an easy transition. All four of the gentlemen I work with have been quick learners and hard workers. Once they get going, it is hard to get them to stop."

Molded Fiber Glass, which employs 390 workers, needs to hire more because there is a strong demand for wind turbine blades, Giovannini said.

"We have an immediate need for 60-70 workers, and with low unemployment in the region, there were just not enough people available," he said. "We have not been able to meet our employment needs. So we had to look outside the box and look at the model used by Dakota Provisions."

Saw Khu Thar, 31, was one of the first Karen hired by Molded Fiber Glass four months ago. Previously, he worked at Dakota Provisions.

"I used to work in the turkey plant, but it was very cold inside," he said. "I wanted to work in different place."

Thar spent time in a refugee camp in Malaysia before immigrating to Dallas. There he was able to get only part-time employment for minimum wage. He moved to Huron to get a better paying job and now has moved to Aberdeen.

"I am happy for my job here," he said.

Baw Htoo Khet, 29, was also in the first group of Karen hired four months ago. He moved from Spokane to Aberdeen with his wife and two children. He and his family are renting an apartment, and their children attend May Overby Elementary School.

"This job gives me a better future," he said.

In Myanmar, which most Karen refer to as Burma because of their opposition to the ruling dictatorship, life for Karen was dangerous.

"We could have been killed if we stayed there, Khet said.

His family fled the country to a refugee camp in Thailand before immigrating to the U.S.

Khet speaks English well and translates for his friends when needed.

About half of the Karen at Molded Fiber Glass can converse in English, while half have little or no English skills, Giovannini said.

The Karen are legal immigrants who receive resettlement assistance from agencies such as Lutheran Social Services and qualify for government assistance for eight months until they find employment. Debra Worth, associate director of the Lutheran Social Service South Dakota Refugee and Immigration Center in Sioux Falls, is one of those helping Karen in the area.

Molded Fiber Glass has dedicated many resources to helping the Karen, Giovannini said.

The Human Resources department including director Rebecca Duke, Dawn Vaux and Tammy Spellman work with Karen to find housing, transportation and other essentials needed for their settlement in Aberdeen.

Giovannini said the Karen have been through difficult times and are committed to making a good life for themselves in this country.

"They want to make it," he said.

Nu Pay, 42, a Karen worker, moved to Aberdeen from Spokane, where he worked as a lay pastor with Karen in the Baptist Church. He is married and has one child. He had attended Bible school in Myanmar. Many Karen are Baptists, having first been exposed to the religion by missionaries in the 1800's, according to Friends of the Karen of Burma website.

Pay said he would go back to his country if he could, but that is not possible as long as there is no freedom there.

Saw Aung Lwin, 40, another Karen worker, said most Karen are sad they had to leave their country.

"We hide our feelings sometimes," he said. "But we try to do the best we can do."

He previously worked as a foreman at the turkey plant in Huron, but he said the cold temperatures began bothering his arthritis. He prefers manufacturing wind turbine blades, he said.

"I can find more opportunities to be myself here," he said.

Information from: Aberdeen American News, http://www.aberdeennews.com

Greensboro parish welcomes Burmese refugees

2011-12-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

GREENSBORO — For about 100 Burmese refugees living in the Triad, Christmas Day will be more than a celebration of Jesus' birth. It will be a chance to worship freely, in their own language.

A Mass at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Greensboro will be said in Burmese and will include liturgical elements that are traditional in the Southeast Asian country. Afterward, St. Paul parishioners will celebrate with the refugees over a Christmas dinner and gifts. For some of the refugees, most of whom spent years in refugee camps before coming to the U.S. in the past few years, it will be the first time in years they have been able to receive the Eucharist or hear a Mass in their own language.

"It makes it so meaningful to them when the celebration is in their language," said Redemptorist Father Vang Cong Tran, a priest in residence at St. James the Greater Church in Concord, who will celebrate the Mass. He works with Asian refugee communities across the diocese, including a more established Burmese community in Charlotte. "The Mass is very important ... when the Mass is in their culture, in their language, in their history – it makes it real to them."

Pictured above: A young Burmese refugee prays at a Mass in Winston-Salem recently. "They long for the Eucharist," said Father Vang Cong Tran, who ministers to Asian refugee communities across the Diocese of Charlotte.

The journey to this precious Christmas gift began in 2010, when parishioners from St. Paul Church visited a refugee camp in Malaysia and spent time with refugees.

"Two of my former students (at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Ohio) are now ordained and serve as priests in (Burma)," said Father John Allen, St. Paul's pastor. "I wished to learn about their experiences as priests but knew that a personal visit in their country would be impossible."

Father John Allen, pastor of St. Paul Church in Greensboro, addresses Burmese refugees during a parish trip to Malaysia last year. The parish is working to help Burmese living in refugee camps in Asia and those who have come to the U.S. (Photos by Liam Stapleton) Burma, now called Myanmar, has been under the rule of a military junta since the 1960s and only recently has begun showing signs of liberalization. The United Nations has condemned the government for human rights violations, and ethnic and religious minorities including Catholics have been systematically persecuted. The government's harsh rule has caused thousands, most of them indigenous people, to flee across the border to Thailand or Malaysia.

Among them is Mark Khup, who now works with Catholic Social Services in its Charlotte refugee resettlement office. He came to the U.S. in 2008 after spending three years in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Burmese are forced to labor for the military, he says, doing tasks such as putting up tents. Church communities are often not allowed to use their buildings for services; a church in his community was decommissioned and the land slated for a Buddhist temple.

Indigenous communities are often forced from their homes and resettled, said Liam Stapleton, a St. Paul parishioner who was part of the Malaysia visit. "When they get displaced out of their communities ... they've lost their identity," Stapleton said. "The mainstream people in Burma burned their houses down and they had to run over the hills into Thailand. (But) a lot of times life is not better over there."

St. Paul parishioners hope to help the Burmese on two levels: those in refugee camps and those who have emigrated to the U.S. Health care and education are two key needs in the camps, and St. Paul is working to establish a scholarship fund for children there. And here in North Carolina, the parish is offering a faith home and working with Father Tran to help refugee communities across the state. New arrivals need housing, furniture and household goods, clothing, and often lessons in English.

The needs are great, and parishioners are still figuring out how best to help. It's a puzzle, but "the jigsaw is coming together," Stapleton said.

After years of upheaval, the safe haven of a Mass in the refugees' own language is a balm to the spirit.

"They long for the Eucharist," said Father Tran. "They know that the Church loves them and encourages them."

Settling into a new life in the U.S. is challenging, Father Tran said, but having a nurturing faith community helps. "People appreciate the welcoming hearts."

Source : news.charlottediocese.net

Refugee agency aids newcomers

2011-12-21T22:24:00.001-08:00

By Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporter

December 22, 2011

Four years after government persecution pushed him to flee his family's farm in Myanmar, Thangtung Pau found himself flying from Malaysia to Chicago on his 32nd birthday.

Pau arrived at O'Hare International Airport in July without much more than his refugee status and the English he had taught himself from a book. Five months later, Pau has a job as a maintenance worker at a Gold Coast gym, a small Edgewater apartment and a strong grip on conversational English.

He credits RefugeeOne, a nonprofit in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, with helping him find his way in a new country.

"RefugeeOne is I feel like my parents since I arrived in Chicago because they help me in my everything," he said. "They taught me not only speaking English but also they taught me job class. That is awesome."

The agency, which changed its name last year from Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, opened its first office in Chicago in 1982. It helps settle 400 to 500 refugees each year. Over the years, it has assisted waves of newcomers from Iraq, Sudan, Cambodia, Nepal and Haiti, meeting each one at O'Hare with a case manager who speaks their language.

Once here, the agency provides refugees with a furnished apartment, job training, mental health and wellness services, and help procuring a Social Security number and other documents. Refugees arrive already in debt — they are obligated to repay the U.S. for the cost of their plane tickets — and the goal is to help them become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.

"They're survivors. They made it here. They made it through thick and thin to come to the United States," Executive Director Greg Wangerin said. "They have the energy, they have the enthusiasm, they have the desire to get their feet on the ground — and we're just here to help unlock a few doors."

Wangerin said most of the refugees now arriving in Chicago are Myanmar coming out of Thailand and Malaysia and Bhutanese from Nepal, along with Iraqis and a smaller number of African refugees from Somalia or the Darfur region of Sudan.

On a recent weekday, arrivals from Myanmar, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea worked through an exercise about English past-tense verbs in one classroom while a handful of students in a neighboring computer lab puzzled out sentence structure.

Earlier that day, a group of Sudanese men met with Aimee Hilado, a clinical social worker, for group therapy. Some discussed fleeing Darfur and living as nomads for two years before settling in Kenyan refugee camps.

Hilado said a large number of refugees arrive in Chicago with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

"Some are also grieving for the people they left behind," she said. "We want them to be able to feel that emotion but still be able to engage."

Government agencies provide about 75 percent of RefugeeOne's $2.5 million budget, with the rest coming from private donations. RefugeeOne is one of many area nonprofits to receive financial support from Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving, a campaign of Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Foundation Fund.

The agency gets a one-time payment of $1,850 per refugee from the federal government, which is typically used up just setting up an apartment, Wangerin said. Gentrification in North Side neighborhoods where cheap apartments were once abundant has made it more difficult, he said.

Refugees apply for the same public aid available to Illinois residents, which expires after eight months, so the pressure is on to quickly find work, an obvious difficulty in today's job market.

"(We make it work) by hook or by crook with chewing gum and baling wire," Wangerin said.

Though some refugees arrive with an overly sunny view of America's job market, Pau, who spent several years in Malaysia applying for asylum, quickly learned differently.

"The United States is very different from Malaysia or Burma to get a job," he said. "So when I saw that point, I tried to improve my English faster."

Pau now plans to begin studying to earn a truck driver's license and hopes that his wife and 7-year-old daughter will be able to join him in Chicago, perhaps even next year.

"I'm very excited to get a job that I love," he said. "I gave thanks to God."

Please donate now to Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving. Give online at holiday giving or call 800-217-3190.

Refugee Monologues

2011-12-16T03:20:00.000-08:00

Refugee Monologues

By: Diana van Oort

Give them a face, a name and let them tell their story, By: Diana van Oort

Give them a face, a name and let them tell their story and refugees will be seen as people, not as numbers and be ignored. This is what The Actors Studio in cooperation with the UNHCR did in October. ‘Life Sdn Bhd 7: refugee’, shows you a glimpse into the lives and challenges of some of the refugees living in Malaysia. Honest and compelling stories that often go unheard, told by seven refugees: Khampi, Ngun Siang, Raine, Sharifa and Trasia (Myanmar), Theepika (Sri Lanka) and Ahmed (Somalia). They talked about fear, death, isolation and being homesick, but also about hope and happiness.

Burmese Refugees in Malaysia

Most of the almost 95.000 registered refugees in Malaysia are from Myanmar (formerly called Burma) and most are members of one of the minorities. They fled their country because of political or religious prosecution or the sheer terror of the regime. Some were professionals, like nurses, teachers or pharmacists, many others just farmers caught in a dirty war.

It’s a challenge to start over in a new country, especially since refugees in Malaysia don’t have an official status and don’t have access to legal employment. Therefore many are almost condemned to do dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs. Some employers pay them a decent wage, others don’t keep their promises and pay them too little or nothing at all. The children can’t go to a normal school, but some are able to attend community school.

There are no refugee camps in Malaysia. The refugees just live among the Malaysians, more often than not in small, overcrowded apartments. They are almost invisible. Not speaking English they feel isolated, because they are stuck at home, just not doing anything, not being able to work or go to school. The refugees try to help each other: who has a job supports the others who don’t. Learning English so they can find a job or go to school is what the refugees did. Especially the younger ones long for a good education so they have a change of a better life.

...and refugees will be seen as people, not as numbers and be ignored, By: Diana van Oort

Refugees Take the Stage

Theirs is a heart wrenching story of detention, abuse, fear, neglect, and humiliation. But there are stories of resilience, courage, hope and love as well. The stories are complemented by songs. Deborah Priya Henry, Miss Universe Malaysia 2011 and refugee rights advocate shared her experiences in working with refugees. So did Susheela Balasundaram who ran a mobile clinic for refugees and worked for doctors without borders. She now works for the UNHCR.

Songs complementing the stories, By: Diana van Oort

It was impressive to see the emotions that were just lying below the surface. You felt so much more pain and suffering than they were telling. Having read many stories especially about Myanmar, I could fill in the blanks easily.

If you’re new to the subject, the stories are a nice introduction, but less and longer stories maybe could have given more depth and understanding to the plight of the refugees.

Source : http://latitudes.nu/refugee-monologues/

The cold realities of life in Malaysia as a refugee

2011-12-16T03:15:00.000-08:00

Having returned recently from working with refugee communities in Malaysia, I was shocked to see headlines stating that the government was again talking up the supposed benefits of the now defunct Malaysia agreement.

Vulnerable people are still being detained. Conditions in Malaysia's detention centres are still cramped and appalling. UNHCR is still regularly visiting the centres in order to get people released, but the ability for any other organisation to get in to see what is really happening is almost non-existent.

Children as young as three are still being detained, rounded up, without their parents.

I spoke with a 14 year old girl, Yasmeen* who had only recently arrived from Afghanistan. Facing violence in her home country she was sent by her family, on her own, to stay with family friends in Kuala Lumpur. While she had been able to register with UNHCR she was told it would be 7 months before they could interview her to determine whether or not she was a refugee.

Yasmeen chatted to me happily until her friend started talking about how the police had stopped and questioned her mother and how she managed to get away. Yasmeen’s smile rapidly disappearing, frantic questioning ensued, the cold realities of living in Malaysia as a refugee being to dawn on her.

Right now Malaysia is starting to register "undocumented migrants" including refugees under the 6P programme. So far approximately 1.3 million undocumented workers have been registered. With an estimated further million still unaccounted for it appears the Malaysian government is gearing up for another major crackdown on anyone it deems 'illegal'.

"It appears the Malaysian government is gearing up for another major crackdown on anyone it deems 'illegal'."

What will they do if they find 14 year old Yasmeen? With only a letter from UNHCR to protect her, will she be allowed to contact them to get her out of detention? How long will that take?

Equally disturbing about the Australian government’s statement, at the recent ALP conference, was the linking, again, of an increase to our offshore humanitarian program (from 13,750 to 20,000) with the successful implementation of the Malaysia agreement. UNHCR and others were quick to again highlight the fundamental differences between our obligations to protect those seeking asylum here, as opposed to an immigration resettlement program designed to show solidarity with poorer countries hosting the vast majority of the world's refugees.

As the government continues to advocate Malaysia as a 'solution', my visit showed me that the country's authorities have a very different idea for refugees. If the government believes we can take 20,000 people, then should do it and not link it to an arrangement that undermines international human rights law and our obligations under this legislation

Graham Thom is Refugee Coordinator for Amnesty International Australia

*The name and photo above have been changed to protect identities

Source : www.amnesty.org.au

Sanctions On Burma Must Be Maintained – OpEd

2011-12-16T03:12:00.000-08:00

Written by: Kanbawza Win

December 13, 2011

Sanctions and other punitive actions on Burma should be maintained by the US and Western nations for the simple reason that the current regime is not interested in political solutions and is mounting an all out war against the Kachin ethnic nationalities, practicing ethnic cleansing and committing gross human rights violations on all other ethnic nationalities. It even continues to use chemical weapons to wipe out this particular ethnic race. One could not comprehend of why there is a cacophony of calls to drop the sanctions and let Burma into the community of civilized nations when it is still a rogue state.

By whatever barometer it measured, be it a capitalist or a communist, the DNA of the Burmese regime is fundamentally brutal and one should mot reward such a capricious regime just for making some superficial changes as releasing just a mere one tenth of the political prisoners and continue to lie the very concept of truth by uttering that there is no political prisoners. Maintaining its rapist army and relying and encouraging the narco related companies to run the economy, not to mention child soldiers, exporting refugees and killings its own people..

The crux of the Burmese Crisis is that its army better known as Myanmar Tatmadaw wants the Myanmar race to be a perpetual colonial power over the ethnic nationalities and not the Pyidoungsu Myanmar Naing Ngan the Union of Burma, which the architect of modern Burma Bogyole Aung San envisaged. The Tatmadaw wants to reign supreme in perpetuity. What more proof is wanted when you join the army, you can never resign, indicating its attempt to hold perpetual control and attract the young people as “The Triumphant Elites of the Future.” a motto that hung on the gates of the Burma Military Academy. Congressman Joseph R.Pitts remarked that “The brutality of Burma’s generals against the ethnic minorities has not stopped, even during this time when they are allegedly making democratic reforms. It has used the advanced light helicopters bought from India on the ethnic nationalities.”

Obama’s willingness to promote democracy around the world – a mission that hark back to Woodrow Wilson days fell short when George W. Bush took on to Iraq, is now back on its track, complimented with its foreign-policy move that the US is a Pacific power and will act with forcefulness required of a superpower’s presence. In this scenario, Burma is but one nation now wary of too close an embrace by an ambitious and aggressive China, and anxious for a balancing relationship with America. Obama’s America needs to add Burma to a list of countries – Vietnam, Philippines, India, Australia, and most of the ASEAN countries that recently sought stronger ties with the United States.

Lying next to India and under the giant belly of China, Burma would be a key plank in the US strategy to reassert influence in Asia, hence the visit of Hillary Clinton to Burma. President Obama, who grew up in Indonesia, seems to understand that the wielding of power in Asia isn’t always the visible kind – besides guns, ships, money, trade, natural resources, norco drugs (in Burma and Mexico) not to count the psyche and rationale of the generals are included in the deciding factors. Perhaps, Burma will test American concepts of power. Two decades of US-led economic sanctions against Burma have done little to loosen the military’s grip or to help the beleaguered the ethnic nationalities.

Factually, t he US has looked to Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as the champion of democracy and rights in Burma. Obama called Ms. Suu Kyi by phone to gain her approval for Mrs. Clinton’s visit. But the US also needs to see more of where Suu Kyi looks for her legitimacy. It isn’t just enough that she is the daughter of Burma’s founder or that she helped rally protesters in the 1988 demonstrations, house arrest for one and half decade and spends time as she can with the behind-the-scenes power in Burma i.e., the Buddhist monks. The much-revered monks were on the front lines of the 1988 protests and again in 2007.

Hundreds, if not thousands have been killed or jailed. Burma’s robed clergy play a powerful role as stewards of a common faith for the Burmese majority. In Burmese history, they have often bestowed or withdrawn legitimacy to a ruler. Their power flows from their followers’ reverence for the way monks display spiritual qualities, such as compassion, humility, and pacifism. The monks’ daily walks among the people to collect alms helps make them moral leaders and identify themselves with the people. That compels the military to fear their influence – and to co-opt or suppress them. China now on the defensive sees the writings on the wall and had sent a Buddhist relic – an alleged tooth of the Buddha – to Burma in November. The tooth was carried by an elephant in high-profile processions in various cities, which delighted the strong man Than Shwe who pulls the strings from behind. It was under his directions that the ruling party and military MPs oppose the adoption of releasing the political prisoners and instead introduce new restrictive laws designed to limit political participation. This is just but one example and hence what rational can we consider to lift the Western Sanctions.

Knowledgeable Burmese who have contact with the regime had warned that far from true changes what the regime really wanted was to follow a path of development perfected by China. The Chinese model, at first glance, is an attractive one for repressive, autocratic leaders: by applying one foot on an economic accelerator and another on a political brake, a regime can bring a better standard of living to citizens without threatening its grip on power. The story of China’s rise over the past two decades has been one of both exuberant growth rates and non-existent political change. The regime is stealthily following this path without much ado.

But the crucial difference between Burma and China is that the Chinese government has unleashed economic reforms that have enriched the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Around 130 million of China’s 1.3 billion citizens may live under the official poverty line (an assessment of $1 a day, which is lower than the World Bank’s $1.25 a day), but one-third of Burma’s 50 million-plus people subsist in poverty. In a single generation, the economic trajectory of many Chinese lives has gone from grim to upbeat.

Elderly Burmese, however, remember how their country used to be one of Asia’s richest and wonder when the real change will come.But the Burmese people are committed to the superiority of the Western-style democracy rather than the proud Chinese whose 5, 000 year old civilization construe that a wise and benevolent ruler with a mandate from heaven. No doubt the new quasi civilian administration of Thein Sein can bring much needed political and social reforms only if he managed to throw off the shackles of Than Shwe whose right hand man Tin Aung Myint Oo is the Vice President. So actions should remain in place as long as the semi-authoritarian regime controls the legislative, administrative, and judicial functions of the new government.

On the other hand the regime is cynically observing the downfall of dictatorships around the globe and is moving before Burma’s long despotic reign comes to the same ugly end. The pragmatic reason for this sudden accommodation with the US is because of the bad breath of the Chinese. From their perspective Burma is placed between the devil and the deep sea and obviously if given a choice they prefer America. These hybrid military-civilian rulers are growing increasingly wary of Beijing’s geopolitical sway—not to mention China’s economic dominance over Burma’s natural resources. No doubt they are endeavoring to find a counter-balance to China. Hence an American charm approach of market reforms, release of political prisoner, stop an all out war to the ethnic nationalities compound with modicum of political liberalizations, should be enforced without any compromise.

Surely the new US engagement policy in the Southeast Asia in general, and Burma in particular, is based on a smart public diplomacy and must be calculated a policy of fairness that support the existing foundation to win the hearts and minds of the people to utilize its role in the region. The US should be highly sensitive to the development of a wider East Asian community, and its policy should not only deal with governments only but the people in the region. It must be people-centered, people-driven and people-oriented that sends an important message to the world that people in the region have the right to freedom and the right to respond and interpret what is understood as fair and unfair as appropriate to them. The people of Burma will surely agree with the WikiLeaks of how US Charge d’Affaires Larry Dinger sent a cable to Washington, “The most senior generals are looking for an escape strategy, they are getting old and want an assurances that, they and their families will retain their assets and will not be prosecuted”.

Even though “Freedom from Fear” was written by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the people of Burma, unlike the Arabs still could not conceptualise that this freedom from fear was the basic human rights. The story of the Tunisian vegetable vendor so humiliated by police that he lit himself on fire, showing the world that his right to human dignity was more precious to him than life itself was not much admired in Burma, even though Phone Maung episode of 1988 sparked that nation’s protests is still fresh on them. Compared with those of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen etc. Burma’s revolution has not been so successful because its soldiers are willing to shoot demonstrators and the monks. For now, the Burmese must continue to “live like free people in an un-free nation,” and perhaps wait for a new generation to achieve liberty. Then and only then, America should think of releasing sanctions.

Source : www.eurasiareview.com

This Christmas, Rossland gives the gift of freedom to six Burmese refugees

2011-12-16T03:02:00.001-08:00

by Andrew Bennett on 14 Dec 2011

The Mi family: grandmother Mya, daughter Layi Pon, and mother May.

Two families of Mon refugees from Burma will soon move to Rossland thanks to the efforts of the West Kootenay Friends of Refugees (WKFR), a community group formed this summer by Rossland residents. Now WKFR will focus on raising funds to support the families for one year after they arrive in 2013.

"The families' applications for sponsorship have been accepted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada," WKFR member Rachael Roussin wrote in a recent press release. "Now the families will undergo extensive background checks, health exams and personal interviews," a process that is expected to last 18 months.

"Because Rossland is a family friendly community," Roussin wrote, "we wanted to sponsor a family rather than an individual. It was important to WKFR that the new residents would choose to stay in Rossland and contribute to the community. With their kids in school, there is a greater probability that the families will want to stay here as opposed to moving to an urban centre."

The Mon are a minority group with ancient roots in Burma. They are among several ethnic minorities who have suffered extreme persecution since a corrupt and brutal military dictatorship took control of Burma in 1962. Nearly fifty years later, the regime still adds daily to its long and bleak list of human rights abuses.

Gross mismanagement by Burma's despots led to student protests in 1988 that were repressed with bullets and beatings that took the lives of hundreds of civilians. The violence triggered widespread protests and the military killed thousands more "communist infiltrators." Martial law was declared and the 1974 Constitution was swept away under the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), an acronym that now conjures images of murder and torture.

In 1989 the military government changed Burma's name to "Myanmar" and moved towards restoring a revised constitution. Multiparty elections were held in May, 1990, and the National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory despite having its two leaders, U Tin U and Aung San Suu Kyi — the daughter of national hero Aung San — held under house arrest for a year prior to the election.

But the military wouldn't allow the People's Assembly to convene and kept the NLD's leaders under house arrest. Since that time, little has changed: the military use fear and violence to exert their power as they sell Burma's rich resources to foreign investors. Many people have fled the terrible regime and live in refugee camps in Thailand or Malaysia.

Both families the WKFR have sponsored currently live in refugee camps in Malaysia. The Mi family has been there since October 2006, and the Ma family arrived in December, 2010.

Life is not easy as a refugee, even beyond the day-to-day difficulties of any refugee camp. Malaysian gangs target refugees and there is no chance of settling in Malaysia. Returning to Burma, a land of thousands of political prisoners, is impossible for fear of arrest and further persecution based on ethnicity.

"These families need to find a new country for asylum," said Kathy Moore, who orchestrated the 40-page bureaucratic dance to apply for sponsorship of the refugees through Canadian immigration.

Mi Mya was born in 1956 and worked as a street vendor. She married and had a daughter, Mi May, in 1981. May gave birth to a daughter, Mi Layi Pon, in 2002, the year Mya's husband died. May's husband also died under suspicious circumstances, but no more details were provided. May was forcefully conscripted to cook in a slave labour camp for road construction and a military officer subjected her to "personal violence," Moore said.

Fearing for their safety and the threat of persecution, grandmother Mya, mother May, and daughter Layi Pon fled Burma in 2006. They took ten days to cross the Three Pagoda Pass to Thailand where they were granted refugee status by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

The Ma family have a similar, but more recent story. Ma San Maw was born in 1966, married, and gave birth to a daughter, Banyae Oo, in 1995, and to a son, Nyan Htaw, in 1997.

On Dec. 17, 2010, the military arrested San Maw's husband. Three days later, San Maw was also arrested and put in a detention centre where she endured personal violence at the hands of a military officer. She had a hearing on Dec. 21 and was told to return on Dec. 28. She didn't wait to find out what the charges would be and fled with her two children across the Three Pagoda Pass.

There has been no sign of San Maw's husband, and he is presumed dead. Meanwhile, San Maw has been waiting for a refugee interview with UNHCR — The UN puts claimants for refugee status through a stringent process before officially recognizing them as someone who is outside their country and unable to return due to a "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."

While San Maw awaits the UN's scrutiny, all six refugees will soon be subject to Canadian scrutiny, a process that is expected to last 18 months. In the meantime, WKFR will focus on raising donations and community awareness to support the families when they arrive.

"As refugee sponsors," Roussin explained, "WKFR is responsible for covering all living expenses for the first year or until they become financially self-sufficient, whichever comes first. WKFR’s fundraising goal is $20,000 by the time the families arrive in Rossland."

To help reach this goal, they have started an innovative fundraising strategy: people can sign up at the Nelson and District Credit Union to make monthly contributions of any size, with tax receipts provided by the East Kootenay Friends of Burma (EKFB).

The EKFB is a registered charity and society that has sponsored refugees to come to interior BC for 27 years and is the umbrella organization for WKFR, the Nelson Friends of Burma, and the Calgary Friends of Burma. The EKFB is entirely voluntary and all funds collected are put toward refugee sponsorships.

"No donation is too small," Roussin said. Small, automatic monthly donations "make it easy and painless" to contribute to the sponsorships, she said. Moore emphasized, "I'm really hoping people will sign up for five bucks a month, ten bucks a month, forty bucks a month, whatever it is."

The WKFR began soon after a group of Rossland residents were inspired by a presentation given by the EKFB at the home of Kate Mahoney this summer. Mahoney is herself an inspiring Rosslander with 12 years of international experience in post-conflict relief and development, but she is not directly involved with WKFR due to her work with UNHCR.

"I am really pleased with how fast the WKFR have come together," Moore said about the group that also includes Susan and Marty Shaw, Jan Micklethwaite, Jana O'Brien, Christine Demarco, Dave Cornelius, and most recently, Nicola Everton.

"It's really exciting, here's something we can do," Moore said. "There are so many big problems in the world. It's small, but hugely meaningful for the people we're helping. We have so much and yet so many people have so little."

"I also think this is a fantastic opportunity for Rossland," Moore added. "We're excited to welcome these kids to Rossland while they're still young enough to go to our high school. It's a great learning opportunity for cultural expansion for the whole town."

To donate or set up monthly contributions, visit the NDCU and reference the account for West Kootenay Friends of Refugees (NDCU #40005710). For more information or to get involved with the West Kootenay Friends of Refugees contact Kathy Moore at 250-362-3319. For more information about refugee sponsorship in general, visit www.ekfriendsofburma.org and www.calgaryfriendsofburma2.com.

Burma jails Rohingya on immigration charges

2011-12-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

By FRANCIS WADE

Rohingya fishermen pull a boat near a refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh. In 1982 Burma passed a law that made it impossible for Rohingya to get full citizenship (Reuters)

A group of Rohingya refugees attempting to reach Malaysia have been given prison sentences of one and a half years each by a Burmese court after their boat ended up on the shores of southern Burma.
The boatload of 63 had travelled from Bangladesh, where up to 300,000 Rohingya reside having fled decades of persecution in their native Arakan state in western Burma. A BBC Burmese report says they were left stranded at sea by their broker 16 kilometres from the coastal town of Kawthaung in Tennasserim division.
Despite the hazardous nature of the journey, hundreds of Rohingya attempt the nearly 2,000-kilometre voyage from Bangladesh to Malaysia each year in search of work. The 63 however are thought to be the first Rohingya jailed under immigration charges in Burma, signifying how government policy works to ensure they are not considered Burmese citizens.
A law passed in 1982 made it impossible for the Muslim minority group to gain citizenship in Burma. The Buddhist government there claims they are of Bengali origin and thus should not be afforded the same rights as Burmese. Various Rohingya advocacy groups argue however that their roots in western Burma can be traced back to before the spread of the now-dominant Theravada Buddhism in the country.
Of the hundreds of thousands living in Bangladesh, only around 28,000 are registered by the UN. Dhaka is concerned that offering official support to all refugees would create a pull-factor for those still living in Arakan state, meaning that the majority eke out a perilous existence in unofficial camps and slums on the edge of Chittagong in eastern Bangladesh.
Following talks in Naypyidaw this week between Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Burmese President Thein Sein, however, the Dhaka-based Financial Express claimed Thein Sein had agreed to take back the refugees “after verifying them and as per the agreed criterion between the two countries”.
Kitty McKinsey, regional spokesperson for the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), said that while in principle she would welcome any positive solution for the Rohingya, “we will wait to see an official government statement confirming this” before drawing any conclusions from the meeting.
Chris Lewa, head of The Arakan Project, which advocates for the rights of the Rohingya, said she doubted whether Hasina’s visit prompted a breakthrough in the protracted issue of whether the Burmese would accept the refugees back, many of whom have been living in Bangladesh for decades.
The issue of the ‘boatpeople’ shot to global attention in January 2009 when a large group that washed up on the Thai coast were towed back out to sea by coastguards and left to die. Thailand last month intercepted another boatload but later released them.

Source : www.dvb.no

M’sia overly dependent on foreign workers

2011-12-10T22:43:00.000-08:00

Malaysians are relying more on foreign workers and a change of mindset is needed, says Human Resources Minister Dr S Subramaniam.

PETALING JAYA: We see them everywhere – in restaurants, foodstalls, homes, gardens, construction sites, just to name a few places. We are talking about the ever-present foreign workers.

There are about 3.1 million documented illegal and legal immigrants in the country, and probably more still under the radar screem. The consensus is that Malaysia is facing the problem of having too many foreign workers.

Admitting that this was the “biggest issue” faced by his ministry, Human Resources Minister Dr S Subramaniam said efforts by the government to reduce the numbers have been met with difficulties, including opposition from employers.

“Malaysians have become too dependant on foreign workers. The way forward is for the employers to have a change in their mindsets,” said Subramaniam.

This mindset change, he said, must translate into employers being less labour dependent and more skill dependent.

Subramaniam said many developed countries have gone through this phase and have been able to transform themselves by using less manpower and more machines. He believes Malaysia can change, too.

He said the country is caught in a “vicious cycle” where wages are low and locals don’t want to work.

“And because locals don’t want to work, foreign workers come in, and the more they come in, the more wages won’t increase,” he said, adding that he hopes wage increases would help alleviate this problem.

Subramaniam was speaking to FMT in a recent interview about the foreign worker situation in Malaysia. During the interview, he also spoke about what he thought about cases of foreign maid abuses and how the government was addressing the issue as well as the status of asylum seekers in the country.

Below are excerpts of the interview

What are some of the plans the ministry has for foreign workers?

Ideally, we should be in a situation where we can manage with the minimum number of foreign workers. Unfortunately in Malaysia now, too many sectors have become dependent on foreign workers. Any attempt by the government to reduce it at any stage is met with objection and opposition from employers. And this is the ministry’s biggest issue.

After the 10th Malaysia Plan, the government said, ‘we’ll be able to reduce foreign workers to 1.1 million.’ That was our expectation. Initially, it went to 1.1 million during the economic crisis, but after that, it slowly went back to 1.8 million illegal workers.

If you see the recent registration, we’ve registered 1.3 million illegal workers, along with the 1.8 million legal. This means, we already have 3.1 million foreign workers. And there are also fears that some are still undocumented. As far as we’re concerned, these numbers are huge.

So, how are we dealing with this huge number?

There are two parts of this argument. On one side are the non-employers, whose argument is that ‘we should stop them from coming in’. There is also this concern that the unusual number of foreign workers has led to suppression of wages. Wages are not high in Malaysia, and because wages are low, locals don’t want to work… and because locals don’t want to work, foreign workers come in, and the more foreign workers come in, the more the wages don’t increase. So it becomes a vicious cycle. That is one view.

The other group, the employers, says that ‘we cannot get locals, we’re willing to pay locals higher, but they don’t want to come’. This is is true in particular categories of industries. We are really critically dependent on foreign workers, like plantations; some 90 percent of the harvesters and tappers are foreigners. And the estates are not able to draw the younger generation to take part in this activity.

Likewise in construction, except for locals who are probably independent contractors, foreign workers are the mainstay. Likewise in domestic maids, there are a lot of people who say you can train locals and give opportunities, but nobody wants to go for such training. It’s the nature of the job itself; locals don’t want them.

So we are caught in a bind. These three sectors alone employ nearly 1.2 million people. So we would not be able to reduce (the number of workers) in these three sectors. Then we have the manufacturing sector and service sector, restaurants. When we tell restaurants we are freezing the intake of workers, they say they have to close shops.

By the way, would minimum wage also affect foreign workers?

Yes, the law is such that it would.

How do we enforce these new guidelines for the protection of maids?

To be able to visit these 280,000 homes (with maids) will not be possible. So to a great extent it would be the self-empowerment of the maids themselves. So we will give them all the information needed where they would generally would be able to communicate and contact us for help in case they are being abused. Once we receive such a report, we can take things seriously.

What kind of protection can we offer Myanmar amnesty seekers?

Well those already come under the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and given official recognition as refugees. Our policy is that we allow them to be here with the hope that they will be resettled in some country (willing to take them) as soon as possible.

But they are not allowed to work and they are constantly harassed by the police.

Well, the police shouldn’t be doing that. I have discussed this problem with the Home Ministry and told them that the asylum seekers need to work to live, otherwise it’s a stress on them. I think the Home Ministry is sympathetic, but they are concerned that by allowing the refugees to work, they would end up staying longer.

Source : FreeMalaysia

International Human Rights Day, 2011

2011-12-10T22:41:00.000-08:00

A practice increasingly employed throughout the world

Rome, 7 December 2011 – In its latest report, Safe and Secure: How do Refugees Experience Europe's Borders?, the Jesuit Refugee Service finds ample evidence that European governments actively hinder refugee arrivals. JRS field offices confirm these deplorable practices are not limited to Europe; they are rapidly becoming the norm throughout Asia and Africa.

As the world commemorates the anniversary on 10 December of this poignant document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Jesuit Refugee Service urges states to:

respond swiftly to all migrants and refugees in distress at sea and offer all those apprehended, including at land borders, access to procedures to determine whether they are in need of international protection; and
end the practice of forcibly removing migrants to third countries where their human rights cannot be effectively protected.

"Sixty years after the formal adoption of the 1951 UN refugee convention, many governments are still inventing new excuses to justify the closure of their borders to asylum seekers instead of working to find durable solutions to forced displacement. This approach leads to tremendous human suffering while ignoring the universal obligation to protect the fundamental human rights of forced migrants", said JRS International Director, Peter Balleis SJ.

The experience of one Eritrean refugee, published in the report, is far too familiar. The boat on which he was fleeing was intercepted by Greek state officials, who then confiscated the engine and abandoned its occupants. Although he was rescued by fishermen, more than 15,000 other people have lost their lives trying to reach safety in Europe since 1994. Countless others face risks of other serious human rights violations, as recent events in Libya have shown.

Even those who make it to Europe cannot be considered safe. Research demonstrates that the EU policy of returning asylum seekers to the member state of first entry overlooks wide variations in national asylum practices in terms of quality, access and safeguards. Consequently, many refugees risk abuse, and may be returned, directly or indirectly, to their countries of origin – in violation of international refugee and human rights law.

Numerous states in the Asia Pacific region routinely engage in illegal practices denying forced migrants access to their territories and expelling those arrivals without considering their asylum claims. The Thai authorities forcibly interdict ethnic Rohingya asylum seekers at sea. Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand have all returned ethnic Uighur asylum seekers to China before their asylum applications could be considered, and Australia has recently sought to return boat arrivals to Malaysia. Although this policy has been abandoned for now, it represents a growing exclusionary trend.

In recent years, many African countries – which continue to bear far more responsibility for refugees than do developed nations – have sought to prevent more displaced persons from crossing their borders. For instance, Kenya has repeatedly closed its borders with Somalia to refugees fleeing conflict, exposing refugees to arbitrary arrests, beatings and other human rights violations, including forced deportations.

Both Angola and South Africa arbitrarily prevent refugees who have travelled through a transit country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, from entering their territories, maintaining that they could have applied for asylum in that country. Unfortunately, as recently found in a study by the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights, mechanisms to provide protection in these countries do not exist, leaving refugees at a high risk of persecution and exploitation.

"We call on European and other industrialised states to help developing nations hosting disproportionate populations of forced migrants. This could be achieved, at least in part, by resettling more refugees to richer nations and by allocating more technical and financial resources to poorer host countries", added Fr Balleis.

Notes to the editor

This JRS report highlights the difficulties asylum seekers face gaining access protection on European territory. EU polices that hinder refugee protection in favour of stronger border control are a key factor. Readmission agreements with neighbouring countries enable EU states to send migrants back to countries with poor protection records, such as Ukraine.

The report includes contributions by:

Two refugees: the first, Somali refugee Sayeed Mujadadi, describes his failed attempts to find protection in Belgium and his repeated detainment in Hungarian facilities; and the second, Afghan refugee Hakima Marina, details her harrowing journey from Afghanistan, the family's separation followed by their detention in Ukraine.
Two guest authors: Guy Goodwin Gill, a distinguished refugee scholar, who argues that EU policies contravene fundamental global refugee protection law; and Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Vatican representative, frames refugee protection as a core Christian principle and urges states to cooperate for the benefit of refugees.

The report will be released on 8 December at an event in Brussels. Speakers include:

Guy Goodwin Gill;
Archbishop Marchetto;
MEP Barbara Lochbihler (Germany/Greens); and
Andrea Vonkeman from the UN refugee agency (UNCHR) Europe Bureau.
Three refugees will be present to provide their testimonies.

The Jesuit Refugee Service is an international Catholic organisation with a mission to accompany, serve and advocate for refugees. JRS works in more than 50 countries around the world. The organisation employs over 1,200 staff: lay, Jesuits and other religious to meet the education, health, social and other needs of 500,000 refugees and IDPs, more than half of whom are women. Its services are provided to refugees regardless of race, ethnic origin or religious beliefs. The 14 JRS offices in Europe provide direct services to forced migrants and their families, including material help such as food or shelter, as well as legal advice and social support.

For further information contact

James Stapleton,
Communications Coordinator
Jesuit Refugee Service (International Office)
Tel: +39-06 68977468; +39 346 234 3841
Email: international.press@jrs.net; www.jrs.net

Phillip Amaral
Advocacy and Communications Officer
JRS Europe
Tel: +32 2 250 3223; +32 485 173 766
Email: europe.advocacy@jrs.net; www.jrseurope.org

Source : www.trust.org

Baseline Study: Family Planning Among Burmese Refugees in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2011-12-07T01:49:00.000-08:00

A Study Conducted by UNHCR,Women’s Refugee Commission and CDCJune – August 2011

WHO ARE WE?

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) leads and coordinates international action
to protect refugees and their rights worldwide.The Women’s Refugee Commission is an advocacy
organization based in New York, United States (U.S.).It advocates for changes in laws, policies and programs
to improve the lives and protect the rights of refugee and internally displaced women, children and
young people. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) isa U.S. government agency. The CDC has a Division of Reproductive Health that addresses the reproductive health of refugees and internally displaced persons in emergency and post-emergency settings.

FAMILY PLANNING AND REFUGEES

Family planning is the ability of individuals and couples to anticipate and have their desired number of children. It is also the ability for them to choose the space between their children through use of contraceptive methods. Under international human rights law, access to family planning is a human right. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) says all individuals and couples have the “right to decide on the number, spacing and timing of children.” The Programme of Action from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development also notes the right of couples and individuals “to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so.”

WHY DID WE COME TO KUALA LUMPUR?

We visited Malaysia to examine the extent to which Burmese refugees use family planning services in Kuala
Lumpur. We wanted to learn about what the Burmese people think about family planning and whether they
are able to obtain contraceptives; how many people use them; and what family planning services are available
to them in health facilities.

WHAT DID WE DO DURING OUR VISIT?

One member of the Women’s Refugee Commission visited Kuala Lumpur for eight weeks in June and July
2011. She and a team of 8 community members interviewed 422 women of reproductive age (15-49
years). They also met with 64 men, women, and adolescent girls and boys in group discussions, and interviewed refugee community leaders to learn about their thoughts on family planning. They also visited three
health facilities and interviewed providers about the services they offer. By listening to people in Kuala Lumpur, we learned directly about their thoughts and experiences. We are grateful to have met with them and for their permission to let us share the information and stories in a responsible way.

WHAT DID WE LEARN DURING OUR VISIT?

We learned that 42.2% of women of reproductive age currently use a method of contraception; 32.7%
of Muslim women, and 65.9% of Christian women. The most commonly used methods of family planning
are oral contraceptive pills, pills a woman takes every day; withdrawal, a method by which the man removes
his penis before ejaculation; and the male condom, a method used by men. Most people are aware of the benefits of spacing births, including the health benefits to the mother, the economic benefits of raising fewer children, and the desire to wait to have children because of the more difficult living situation
in Malaysia. While most community members have heard of family planning, we learned that community members do not know a lot about different methods of contraception and their side effects. While family planning services are mostly good at health clinics in Kuala Lumpur, we learned that access to theclinics is difficult for many members of the community. We also learned that the community needs more information about where to get services.

WHAT WILL WE DO NOW?

The Women’s Refugee Commission and UNHCR will share these findings and recommendations to improve
family planning services for Burmese refugees. Some of the recommendations are:

Hold training and find a way to supervise the community health workersnity health workers, community health coordinators and peer educators. Community members like to get information from these people, but they need more knowledge so they can be more effective and communicate where services are available to the community.

WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK?

To learn more about family planning in Kuala Lumpur,
go to:
Buddhist Tzu-Chi Free Clinic:
221, 4th Floor
Wisma LTS, Jalan Pudu
55100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03.2142.1567

Selangor/ WP Family
Planning Association:

22M, Jalan Sungai Besi
57100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03.9222.1858

2B, Lorong Syed Putra Kiri
Off Jalan Syed Putra Kiri
50460 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03.2274.3489
35-2-1, Jalan 3/50
Diamond Square
Off Jalan Gombak
53000 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03.4021.9103

Klinik Kesihatan Ibu & Anak
(Mother and Child Health Clinic, Ministry of Health):
Jalan Hang Tuah
55200 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03.9221.4445

Or contact Chun Ting Wong, Individual Assistance Department,
UNHCR Malaysia, at +603.2141.1322.

To learn more about the Women’s Refugee Commission’s
advocacy on behalf of displaced women, children
and youth, visit www.womensrefugeecommission.org or contact us at info@wrcommission.org.

This report was written by Erin McCoy.

Source : <http://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/resources/doc_download/790-baseline-study-family-planning-among-burmese-refugees-in-malaysia>

JOY AS REFUGEES REUNITE WITH FAMILY

2011-12-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

Tears of happiness flowed from Tial Cem Van Hram at Nelson Airport yesterday as he and his wife welcomed the grandchildren they had never met.

Mr Hram, a former refugee from Myanmar, arrived in Nelson in 2007 and his wife and two sons joined him two years later.

Mr Hram's daughter, her husband and their two young children were among a group of 16 new Nelsonians – two Chin and two Kayan families – that arrived yesterday, greeted by Nelson Refugee Services.

Two more former Chin refugees are arriving next week.

Mr Hram, who spent 11 years as a refugee in Malaysia before coming to New Zealand, said the last time he saw his daughter was when she was 15 years old.

He said he cried tears of joy when he saw her at the airport, with her husband and two young children.

"I was so happy," he said.

Mr Hram's son Van, 13, said it was five years since he had seen his sister.

"She looks different," he said.

Nelson Refugee Services volunteer programme co-ordinator Brittany Smith said Nelson welcomed about 60 to 80 former refugees a year, which was 8 to 12 per cent of New Zealand's annual quota – 750 people.

Ms Smith said yesterday was an emotional day.

"There were a lot of tears at the airport. You can feel the emotion of the families," she said.

Ms Smith said Nelson Refugee Services had done a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare for their arrival "and now is where the volunteer teams kick in".

The volunteers support new arrivals for a minimum of a year, helping them with things like education, health and

The volunteers support new arrivals for a minimum of a year, helping them with things like education, health and tenancy matters. The Nelson Mail

Mom weeps at photos of Wheaton yard where she abandoned child

2011-12-06T02:35:00.000-08:00

By Josh Stockinger

An imprisoned Burmese refugee fighting to be reunited with the son she abandoned at birth in Wheaton testified Friday that she intended to go back and get the child after leaving him alone and naked in a neighbor's bush.

Nunu Sung said her plans changed when she returned home to learn worried relatives had reported her missing hours earlier. She said her family didn't know she was pregnant, and she feared the consequences of police finding out.

“She planned to go back and get the boy, but when she got home things changed,” Sung's Chin interpreter told DuPage County Judge Robert Anderson. “She was not able to tell them she had a baby outside.”

Sung, 27, pleaded guilty last year to obstructing justice for lying to police about the child's birth on June 12, 2009. On Friday, she was the first witness called at a trial to determine whether she's a fit mother and, if not, whether it's in her child's best interest to terminate her parental rights.

Sung's attorneys maintain she was traumatized escaping a violent regime in her native Burma, where unwed mothers can be shunned. But the child's court-appointed guardian contends she abused and neglected the boy as soon as he entered the world — and shouldn't be trusted to care for him now.

“I can't think of anything more cruel than what she did to a newborn infant,” said guardian and attorney Kathleen Anderson. “She's not the victim. She's the victimizer.”

Sung gave birth in the early morning hours near a row of garages behind her cousin's studio apartment on the 700 block of Crescent Street. As she viewed photos of the blood-soaked lawn Friday, she buried her hands in her face and wept.

Sung acknowledged the child fell on his head during delivery. She said she then moved him — his umbilical cord still attached — to a “safe place” under a neighbor's bush, where he remained for at least 90 minutes, according to Anderson.

By the time neighbor Joe Logan found the child about 7:40 a.m., the boy was “dirty, naked and sticky,” he said, and whimpering faintly from under a “jungle” of bush and brush along his driveway.

“It wasn't weeping, it wasn't crying. It was just a noise very faint, very low,” Logan testified. “I brushed aside some leaves and looked and immediately saw the baby.”

Logan's wife, Margarita, said she wrapped the baby in a blanket and cleaned a bug out of his mouth. “He was bluish in color,” she testified. “He was cold.”

After giving birth, Sung said she returned to her cousin's apartment, cleaned up and fell asleep on the floor. When police arrived, she initially denied delivering a child and declined medical treatment, Wheaton police Cmdr. James Volpe testified. He said Sung also showed no concern for the baby and did not ask about him.

“She was very quiet, very withdrawn,” Volpe said. “She seemed frightened. She seemed tired.”

Anderson said the boy spent 12 days in a hospital recovering from injuries sustained while being “violently dropped.” She said his heart rate and body temperature also were dangerously low at the scene.

“The child victim … had a body temperature so low it wouldn't register,” Anderson said.

Sung said she fled Burma in 2005 and, after living in Malaysia for about three years, came to the United States as a legal refugee. She said she became pregnant in Texas but the father “distanced” himself from her after learning she was expecting. She then moved in with her cousin and cousin's husband in their one-room apartment in Wheaton.

Sung said she received no prenatal care and never consulted a doctor about the pregnancy.

Attorney Charles Rohde, who represents the foster parents caring for Sung's son, said it was a “miracle” the child was even found.

“The fact that this case, this child even exists is a miracle, miraculous,” he said.

The trial, which could go through mid-January and include nearly 50 witnesses, resumes Tuesday. Sung is slated for parole in January.

INTERVIEW: THE LADY’s Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis Talk Political Struggles, Love Stories, & Prosthetic Ears

2011-12-06T02:32:00.000-08:00

On the surface, audiences may think French director Luc Besson’s new film, THE LADY, is an unusual project for his resume. Considering he’s known great success in the high-charged, shoot-em-up action genre (and has produced quite the roster of protégés in the last few years), a story about one Burmese woman’s political struggle seems like an odd choice. However, that’s where you’d be wrong. While the story may be small in scale, THE LADY’s scope is large and cinematic.

Actress Michelle Yeoh is probably best known worldwide from her Hong-Kong style action films. Now she, just like Besson, has changed gears to show her fans she can also handle drama quite adeptly. And she is hoping American fans embrace her will embrace her work in THE LADY.

Of course you would like that your audience gets a variety of your performances. So they won’t only be stuck with you doing one kind of film, or one kid of genre. So when they walk into the cinema, they are not quite sure what I’m going to present to them. This time with THE LADY, it’s very close to our [motions to Thewlis] hearts. There is a very important message. There’s an awakening. I hope people who do not know about Aung San Suu Kyi – about the plight of the Burmese people will now have the option to do something because now they know.

Even before the most recent events of her life, Aung San Suu Kyi had such a remarkable life story. Yeoh had heard about Suu Kyi through the media and was passionate about bringing it to life on the big screen.

You see it’s always very difficult to try to make a movie about someone who’s alive. First of all Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest at that time. I think that was where the junta was successful in this because they would really making people forget about her. There was no news. There was no communication at all. Even the family couldn’t call. They couldn’t write letters both ways. The only time when people suddenly remembered was when the American swam into her compound just when she was supposed to be released from her house arrest term and the elections were coming up a month later. Suddenly her sentence was extended for another 18 months. So I think it was at that time we all went, “Why are we not telling this story?” I remember calling my manager here saying, “I want to do this! I’m sure there’s someone out there writing this.” So he investigated and he found Andy Harris [producer of THE QUEEN] and also Rebecca Frayn, his wife, had been writing this story. That was how it all began for me.

Fluent in more than one language, Yeoh’s dedication to her craft fully encompassed her life.

I speak English. Malay because I’m Malaysian. It’s similar to Indonesian. I speak Cantonese since I work out of Hong Kong a lot. Mandarin because of the China connections – I work in China. I was learning Burmese, which is very crucial to playing this role. The first speech she makes is in Burmese to her people to convince them and get them to understand that even though she did marry a foreigner, even though she lived outside of Burma for so long, she was her father’s daughter. She can not turn away from what’s happening to her country. And all of this is documented in Burmese. So we can’t take liberties and do it in English. It wouldn’t be right. I had one of the best dialect coaches. She is Burmese, but she is one of those who can not have credit to her name for having taught or being associated with the film because she still has family in Burma. It was just sheer hard work. It was being disciplined and diligent about it. At the end of the day there was no way to read it. Not like Malay. Here is the circles and the dots and it looks like noodles. Here, it was not the so much the sounds or exact notes but the flow that dictated the emotions. When a man says it, it’s slightly different than when a woman says it. The speed of how it was delivered would determine the emotional value of it. So then the only other way to learn it was chop blocks memorizing. Saying it over and over again until I know it so well I can just say it. At the end of the day you are committed. This is a role a chance, an incredible gift. You know that you will do it.

Since the person Yeoh is portraying is still alive, she felt pulled to make sure her performance was at the pinnacle of respect. She learned it wasn’t just about the costumes but it was about getting to the heart and understanding of Suu Kyi’s cause.

For us we were trying to research for the roles. I had 200 hundred hours of footage of San Suu when she was campaigning. So I’m very good at making political speeches in Burmese. Not very good at normal dialogue. It’s really to get inside this person. It’s one thing with the hair and the prosthetics that we both had. The change of the colors of the eyes. Because she didn’t wear a lot of makeup. She wore very minimal makeup. It was always the flowers in the hair. The costumes the beautiful longyi. From there I could see it wasn’t all this. That’s very two dimensional. It was right here [points at heart]. Her demeanor. Her body language even though she’s so proper in holding herself. There were the moments you could feel the weight and the pain or the wistfulness. Being a Buddhist helped because it’s a philosophy in life. Her thinking of the non violence. Where the selflessness came from. Where this strength – because I think she drew this tremendous strength from her husband. He supported and he enabled her to be her and fulfill her destiny. Without that strong love, which was the part of the story that really got all of us to fall in love with this and know that this story had to be told. There’s no doubt that everyday I worry I haven’t done my best. Every day I think I could have done it better. But then at the end of the day, I step back and think I have given it my best. I’ve done it with love, the greatest respect and the only way I know how. Fortunately I’m blessed when I have someone like David around and we just dove into the marriage.

Unfortunately, Thewlis didn’t have the opportunity to meet his “character,” Michael, before he succumbed to cancer. But, as fate would have it, that wasn’t necessarily a such bad thing.

I could have relied on the script as there’s not a lot of footage as there is of Suu. There’s a little bit of footage giving interviews on news programs very anguished as a new visa has been refused, as less news is getting through and another phone call has been cut short. So all I had was about three interviews with him. It was always a very solemn Michael. I thought when I first read it, it’s fairly open to me to interpret this how I see it with Luc and Michelle. Particularly because he had a very particular voice, Michael the way he spoke which I’ve quite honestly taken down a bit in the performance because it would be too eccentric. I did get to meet his twin brother, who I also get to play in the film. So that’s obviously a great bonus. I met a more eccentric version, a happier version of Michael. It was very helpful to me on a few occasions. Just spending time with him was a great help. Luc was very insistent, especially with Suu Kyi, that Michelle resemble her as much as possible but also with me who I don’t think I very much look like Michael at all. We did go someway with the wigs and the ears. We both have prosthetic ears. I think it’s one of the few films where the two leads have prosthetic ears. It got very complicated at some times because they would lock together.

Yeoh, for one, was happy to be rid of those prosthetic ears.

They were painful! Every time my sons in the film came to hug me, I’d say, “Ok guys. Stop it!”

Yeoh never worried that her race would ever play a part in her not getting the role as Suu Kyi. And she thinks audiences won’t cause an uproar over the fact she is not being Burmese.

I think as an actor, you don’t play the role with your Passport. If I only get to play Malaysian roles, there wouldn’t be very many roles for me to play. I think with the Europeans and Americans they cross between. Like Liam Neeson playing a German. Ben Kingsley playing Ghandi. I hope we are not limited. Just because we do look alike in many ways is just the way we speak, the language of course, the mannerisms. When we play Burmese, we immerse ourselves into that culture because it’s the nuances that make the biggest differences. As an actor, that is part of your job description. To be able to project yourself and portray all these different roles.

One of the most interesting facts about the film is that some of the extras in the crowd scenes were actually present at the real life events that were being recreated. As you can imagine, this leads to the authentic feel of the picture.

At the beginning, I really take my hat off to Luc. What he did was he actually went to the Burmese refugee camps up in Northern Thailand and he cast about 200 of them. You know the guy who does the [mimics gunshot motion] he’s a carpenter and not an actor. Actually all of them were not actors. It was a completely new experience. They were very natural, of course. They were Burmese. So the way they moved when they were with me, helped me tremendously. The way they kicked and reacted to each other.. some of them had family members killed. So they were just in a sense regurgitating the things that happened to them. What they have seen clearly with their own eyes. I thought it was amazing Luc had gone out of his way to do something to bring that authenticity to the film. What was most touching, when we were doing the speech, when we were doing the close up Luc was saying “there is someone crying behind you the whole time.” Of course I couldn’t see because I was so worried about doing it right so we found out he was there. He said at that time in ’88, “I was in the audience looking up at Suu Kyi hearing that speech. Today I’m standing behind her. Listening to her say that speech again.” It was incredible. When we were shooting the market scene, I had a couple of old people come up and [mimics talking] “oh Suu Kyi!”

As this marks a sort of shift in Besson’s directing career – going from fast paced action films to the slow burn of drama – the actors saw no difference in his directing style. Thewlis explains,

I’m not saying this because he might read it (he probably won’t). I don’t want to say surprising, but he was a great director for actors. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that, but maybe it’s because of the kind of films he makes would be concentrated on more of the imagery and action. He’s one of the best I’ve ever worked with. One of the main reasons is that he’s there really present on set. He’s also the camera operator which is very rare. He operates all the shots, apart from the Steadicam. So he’s right there in front of you. He’s not over at the monitor trying to gauge your reactions. I’ve had lots of directors come over to me saying, I don’t think you’re quite doing enough and you end up doing too much. He’s right there with the camera giving you notes as your performing. You don’t cut and start again, you just keep going and going and going. And I found that very stimulating.

Yeoh concurs,

This story needs scope. Needs that great picture and at the same time, needs that intimacy. It goes straight to the soul or the heart. If you look at his films from THE BIG BLUE to THE PROFESSIONAL. You’re going into that world very intimately. He’s about very raw emotions. In this movie, it’s always good to go to a director where things are unexpected. The usual suspects would be to go to Oliver Stone or Ang Lee or someone like that where they are supposed to be their kind of film. Luc was a great choice. He’s always been very good at portraying strong women – JOAN OF ARC, LA FEMME NIKITA. Now it’s very much a woman who is fighting but her armor is her faith, her weapons is her passion, with her words rather than that visual with guns. The same could be said for me as well. What are two supposedly action actor and director doing with a very dramatic film? As filmmakers, we should be able to move from one genre into another. The most important thing is if you are doing it for love and commitment.

Thewlis also tries to vary the roles that he plays, never resting in one specific genre.

I always wanted to do that. I looked at people like John Hurt, who was a big influence. If I wanted to be an actor, I’d love to be an actor like him whose such a great character actor. Never repeats himself. I would get very bored if I had done something like what I had done before so I tend to try to stretch me. Would entertain me. Not choose a script where I’m bored before I started doing it. Someone had assembled a montage of photos of everyone I’ve played. A lot of different haircuts. It’s all based around haircuts, really. This is one of the best. I’ve even got little wigs on my eyebrows.

The word “important” is often used to describe THE LADY, mostly because of its historical subject matter. However, THE LADY is so much more than that. It’s also entertaining. Yeoh explains,

When I go to a film, I like to either laugh a lot or cry a lot. For example, remember that movie THE CHAMP? I was in college and I cried buckets. It was such a liberating experience. Sometimes you need to be moved. This is one story that does that. Forget about the political side because you don’t get in there and be taught a political lesson. We don’t do that. And we didn’t set out to do that. It is a beautiful love story. That was what drove us to be really engaged with it. Fortunately, it happens to have a nice message to it.

Refugees reminds us that everyone is equal: Seeking sanctuary

2011-12-06T02:29:00.000-08:00

Life Sdn Bhd 7: Refugees served as a reminder that all human beings deserve dignity, no matter where they are from or how they live.

Imagine having to leave everything and everyone you’ve ever known. Imagine having to flee your home in the dead of night, with only the barest of essentials, never knowing if you will ever return. Imagine having to restart your life in a new place: a country where you do not know the language, you do not know the culture, and worst of all, you do not know anybody. Imagine living in fear and insecurity, with your rights denied, your choices forever misunderstood.

This sad reality, however, is the plight of many of the over 94,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the United Nations High Commissioner Registry (UNHCR) in Malaysia today. Forced to form and foster communities of their own, with little access to legal employment or education, many of these refugees live challenging lives, with many Malaysians ignorant or apathetic to their plight.

Life Sdn Bhd 7: Refugees, recently held at the Actors Studio@ Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur, was a brave production staged to highlight the often-unheard story of the refugee. Directed by Datuk Faridah Merican and produced in collaboration with UNCHR, Life Sdn Bhd 7, like its previous instalments, featured real people coming forward to share their stories: in this case, seven courageous men and women who had risked almost everything by leaving their homes abroad and coming here in search of a better life.

Inspiring testimonies: The stories shared by the cast of Life Sdn Bhd 7 touched many hearts.

The show began with an introduction by Dr Susheela Balasundram, a health officer who has been actively involved with coordinating health and assistance programmes with the UNCHR since 2007.

Balasundram invited audiences to put themselves in the shoes of a refugee. She also clarified misconceptions most had about refugees, particularly the common confusion of migrants and refugees: while the former choose to leave their countries, the latter are compelled to do so, usually due to persecution, conflict or complex human rights issues.

It was then time for the refugees to take up the microphone. Telling their stories were Khampi, Ngun Siang, Raine, Sharifah and Trasia from Myanmar, Ahmed from Somalia, and Theepika from Sri Lanka. Speaking poignantly and passionately, these brave seven enlightened the audience on what life as a refugee was like, telling of the challenges they faced in coming here, the difficulties of living in a foreign culture, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future.

It was difficult not to be moved by their stories. Many of them had suffered so much: Raine, a nurse, shared about how her family had sold everything to come to Malaysia, only to lose it all after her bag got stolen upon arrival here. Khampi, a burly and forthright man, spoke passionately about nasty run-ins with local authorities, while Ngun Siang moved many with her story about having to flee her home country and say goodbye to her children, who she has not seen in many years.

Sharifah, a tall, pretty student was discriminated against while attending school, and her stories of loneliness and longing for acceptance were truly heart-wrenching. It was inspiring to see, however, that despite all the adversity these refugees had gone through, many still faced their circumstances with poise and optimism.

Despite different backgrounds and different circumstances, all the refugees were united in one aspect: their heartfelt desire to be accepted as individuals and given the same chances as anyone else.

“We refugees are not asking for extra attention,” said Khampi in his story. “We just ask for the same basic rights.”

“I am still a human being with flesh and bone,” Theepika reminded all of us. “We are the same.”

Refugee Ahmed sharing his experiences coming to Malaysia.

Miss Malaysia Universe 2011 and refugee rights advocate Deborah Henry was also present to share her experiences with refugees, and shared how an encounter with some young Somali children who could not read inspired her to set up the Fugee School, a learning centre for Somali refugee children and youths in Kuala Lumpur. Accompanying her was a group of young students aged between 12-14 years old.

Looking resplendent in traditional costumes of blue and white, they sang a spirited rendition of their country’s national anthem, Soomaaliyeeytoosoo.

Local singer-songwriters Ian Chow and Ariff Akhir performed two musical pieces for the production, while the refugees from Myanmar also performed a song in Burmese, The Same Earth. This was arguably the highlight of Life Sdn Bhd 7, due to the song’s simple yet powerful lyrics (English translation helpfully provided in the production’s program) and the passion shown by its performers.

Life Sdn Bhd has always been a powerful production series devoted to opening our eyes on issues we take for granted, and this instalment was no different.

The show was a much-need spotlight onto a misunderstood group that many of us take for granted, and a served as a reminder that all human beings deserve dignity, no matter where they are from or how they live.

The refugees featured should be commended for their courage and frankness. For far too long, their voices have been unheard, and hopefully this production can spread awareness and spur positive change for them.

http://ecentral.my

Clinton To Test Myanmar's Readiness For Reforms

2011-11-29T01:28:00.000-08:00

Enlarge Paul J. Richards /AFP/Getty Images Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Asia this week will include stops in Myanmar and South Korea.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sets off for Asia Monday, and part of her trip will see her as the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Myanmar – formerly known as Burma.

Secretary Clinton says she's going to Myanmar to test the waters to see how committed the country's new leader is to reforms. She'll also meet with Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is rejoining the political process in the country and who has been guiding U.S. policy, according to activist Aung Din.

"She has been in touch with U.S. authorities all the time," Din says. "U.S. policy right now is being guided by her [and] she's our key figure to unifying the country."

Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent years in prison and under house arrest, has made it clear that she's ready to work now with Myanmar's new president, Thein Sein, who has begun to open up the country in recent months. Aung Din is not so sure.

"Even though I'm not very confident yet, I have to support it," he says.

Din is a former student activist who spent more than four years in jail before fleeing the country and starting up an advocacy group called U.S. Campaign for Burma. He backed the Obama administration's approach of maintaining sanctions while also trying to engage Myanmar's leaders. He calls Clinton's trip risky, but hopes she will deliver a tough message to the regime.

"I just wish the regime will take this visit seriously and respond positively by making some concessions," he says. "Importantly, the releasing of all remaining political prisoners and ending the civil war with ethnic minorities."

Secretary Clinton told NBC recently that these are all issues that will be high on her agenda.

"They need to begin to look at how they resolve these ethnic conflicts that have driven tens of thousands of Burmese of different ethnicities into refugee status," Clinton said. "They have to have a real electoral system with an open door to political parties and free expression."

Clinton says this is about whether Myanmar is on a path to democracy.

Before going to Myanmar, Clinton will be attending a conference in Busan, South Korea. That's where donor nations and recipients are grappling with another major challenge: tight budgets.

"The background truth that we are facing up to is [that] we are going to have to do a lot more with a lot less," says Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America.

O'Brien says that the conference will bring together donors and developing countries to talk about a deal they had made. If poorer countries clean up corruption and manage their finances better, donors will try to be more predictable with their aid. O'Brien says the latest reports show that donors are not keeping their end of the bargain.

"On the 13 indicators that the donors were supposed to meet, they failed on 12 of them and succeeded on one, and the only one they succeeded on was talking to each other more," he says. "So this whole idea that, 'you guys get your act together, we will trust you more,' is failing."

In the meantime, emerging powers like China have been offering big investments in Africa and Latin America without all the strings attached. They have a lot of money to invest but they don't want to see discussion in the same way around democracy, human rights and transparency, O'Brien says.

"So the real question for the secretary is: is she going to be able to move the discussion back towards what we were all there for in the first place?" he says. "Let's get these countries to be more accountable and let's hold them accountable and let's make sure their citizens can hold them accountable [That's] the deeper political agenda that we have all been working on for many decades."

That's an agenda Secretary Clinton will be trying to push both in Korea and in Myanmar this week.

Source : www.npr.org

Bullies add to refugees' misery

2011-11-29T01:18:00.000-08:00

By TAN CHOE CHOE
KUALA LUMPUR

Not only is bullying morally wrong, but it can also destroy childhood for children, says Unicef

The three sketches are by a Myanmar refugee child at a refugee learning centre in Kuala Lumpur which depict the abuse and discrimination she has experienced as she struggles to regain her footing in a foreign land.

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WARM and friendly, Malaysians are often commended for our willingness to lend to the less fortunate.'

But why does a young girl who had come to our shores two years ago to seek a brighter future, clench her teeth and sob quietly when asked about her experience in Malaysia?

Dawn had just turned 15 when she braved the high seas in a cramped fishing boat. She fled a homeland that has been embroiled in internal conflict since 1948 -- Myanmar.

With her mother and an 11-year-old younger sister, the three held on tightly to each other and tried not to think about the added risk of being captured by slave-traders prowling the waters.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, they arrived in bright, sunny Malaysia.

Sketches by a Myanmar refugee child at a refugee learning centre in Kuala Lumpur depict the abuse and discrimination she has experienced as she struggles to regain her footing in a foreign land.

With the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the family of three was reunited with their father in a refugee centre in downtown Kuala Lumpur. They have sought shelter for the last two years in this unmarked building, and there now seems to be a semblance of normalcy in their lives.

Although their movements are restricted and they fear being detained if they venture too far from the area surrounding their refugee centre, for once, Dawn can go to school and is learning English.

Her yearning to learn more was evident as she listened attentively to every question posed to her, shaping her mouth silently around some words to familiarise herself.

Perhaps this insatiable thirst for knowledge is what continues to push her to take the 20-minute trek to a school nearby every day -- though the journey often brings them face to face with a bunch of young, local bullies.

"They throw stones at us. They pull our hair sometimes and shout at us -- something very bad. Sometimes my sister will go and cry in the toilet."

Jim, head of the refugee centre where Dawn is taking shelter now, said cases of refugee children being bullied was nothing new.

"Even our adults are robbed, cursed at, looked down on. We fled our homeland because we had no choice but to leave.

"Here, we thought we can have a chance...but...we just wonder now, why is our life so hard?"

When asked if she still believed that there was a brighter future ahead, Dawn looked down on her lap and let the tears fall, unhindered.

Watching the girl and reflecting on the plight of his people, Jim, a 45-year-old, also teared up.

It is reported that there are now some 95,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR in Malaysia, fleeing persecution and conflict from many countries including Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since 1989, Nov 20 is Universal Children's Day. Malaysia, being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, also observes this day as one of celebration of the well-being of children.

"Child rights mean that children themselves have to learn to respect each other's rights," said Unicef representative to Malaysia, Hans Olsen. "Children's opinions and actions are influenced by what adults and friends around them think, do and say. Prejudice is learnt by living and observing it in society; a child may grow up believing that this is how life must be."

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has so far identified more than 50 grounds of discrimination against children based either on their identity or the identity of their parents. These include discrimination against gender, race, citizenship, family background and income, ability, and HIV status. Discrimination against these children may mean poking fun at them, or not allowing them to participate in play or other activities.

Names have been changed to protect identity

Myanmar refugee children in Malaysia vulnerable to deportation

2011-11-29T01:17:00.000-08:00

By Lee Seung-joon

Myanmar refugee children hold hands with volunteers from JUST, a non-governmental organization, before starting a football match on the rooftop of a sports center in Petaling Jaya, Selangor Province, Malaysia on Nov. 12.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia ― Myanmar children, shedding their identities as refugees, ran around freely without any worries for an afternoon despite remaining vulnerable to deportation.

Ignoring the poor living conditions, they were far from depressed. Twenty-eight excited children, aged 7 to 12, with big smiles they began to jump around as soon as they arrived at the sports center on Nov. 12.

Thawng Sian Khampi, principal of the Zomi Education Center, said that this type of outdoor event doesn’t happen often enough for them.

“The children spend most of their time inside because going out is risky," said Khampi, also a Zomi refugee.

According to the United Nations’ refugee agency, an estimated 78,000 illegal immigrants in Malaysia are from Myanmar. Of them, about 10,000 belong to Zomi, a combination of “Zo,” an ethnic group, and “mi” meaning people. They fled military-ruled, impoverished Myanmar to Malaysia through Thai jungles seeking a better life or political asylum.

The children carry refugee certificates issued by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). However, the authorized document is not considered legitimate because Malaysia is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

"The difficult situation facing us in Malaysia remains unchanged. Even refugee certificates don’t make a difference. We don’t have any protection from the Malay government," said Khampi. He added that refugees can be deported for immigration offences and they don’t receive any medical treatment such as in the case of traffic accidents.

Children and a group of young men from 14 countries, who are participating in the Inter-Civilization Youth Engagement Program offered by the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), did not speak the same language as the children from Myanmar, but a few soccer balls were all they needed to spend a fun time on the rooftop of a shopping center in Petaling Jaya on the northwestern outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

When asked if he was enjoying himself, nine-year-old Lianpi nodded his head.

“The children are showing such positive energy that we all are having an exhilarating time. I hope they will remember this fun time," said Naida Shamsirbahri from Singapore. She was one of 38 volunteers from JUST.

JUST, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Petaling Jaya, Selangor Province, aims to promote global awareness and correct the injustice in the world

Khampi, concurrently vice president of the Zomi Association of Malaysia, added that the education center was established in 2007 under an initiative of the association as children were not allowed to go to public schools. “The community could not just wait for Malaysia to join the 1951 convention,” he said.

The absence of basic education violates their rights and proves to be a lifelong handicap for the future of these children, said Khampi. “Zomi adults and a small number of volunteers take every role in the center such as teachers, cooks and nurses. As a result, we need more volunteers.”

There are about 1,000 Zomis under the age of 18 in Malaysia, and the number is increasing, according to Khampi.

The writer is a Korea Times intern.

Chin refugee stabbed to death in Malaysia

2011-11-29T01:14:00.000-08:00

A Chin refugee was stabbed to death by Thin Lin from Hmawbi Township, Rangoon division, Burma in Cameroon highland of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at around 5 pm local standard time on November 16.

The dead was identified as Ki Lawha, son of Thin Khaw Lin and Mrs. Lin Khaw Nam from Mindat Township, Chin state, Burma. He was recognized as a refugee in Malaysia by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“Ki Lawha was stabbed in the abdomen and admitted to the local hospital but he died at around 1 pm on November 17. We do not know why the incident occurred,” said Mr. Lal Siam Mawi, President of Chin Disciplinary Affairs Committee.

Thin Lin was arrested by Mr. Billy Tong Bung, Mr. Thang Lian and Mr. Pathang from the Chin community and handed over to the local police station.

It is learnt that Thin Lin and Ki Lawha stayed together in the work place and they had been quarreling frequently.

Malaysia UNHCR also intervened, said A Chin refugee from Malaysia. Khonumthung news

Refugee Children Star in Talent Competition (2011)

2011-11-29T01:12:00.000-08:00

The talent of refugee children shone today in a Talent Competition organised in conjunction with Universal Children's Day. 12 Finalists comprising refugee children between 10-17 years sang and danced to vie for the top prizes in the Refugee Children Talent Competition.

Themed "I'm A Star", this is the second time this talent competition has been held by UNHCR specifically for refugee children in Malaysia. Since October, over 200 refugee children from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Somalia have auditioned for the talent competition.

Wiith a voice that belied his young age, 10 year old Sen Hkum Share took the trophy home with his heartfelt rendition of Westlife's 'Fool Again', while 11 year old Tu Chin Lian impressed the judges to victory with his moonwalk moves of Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal'.

Universal Children's Day 2011 recognises the rights of children worldwide to have a childhood of safety and with the highest possible quality of life. However, this right is often denied to refugee children.

There are over 19,000 refugee children in Malaysia. Due to trauma and displacement because of war and conflict, many of them are denied normal childhoods.

While in exile, they often do not have the opportunity to participate in activities enjoyed by other children their age - activities which provide essential lessons for their mental and physical well-being and development - including expressions of creativity, healthy competition, team work and play.

The Refugee Children Talent Competition was held to give refugee children this opportunity, and the right to normal childhood activities like every other child.

Winners of the Refugee Children Talent Competition 2011

UNHCR KL Representative Alan Vernon giving a short welcoming speech before the show begins

Winner of the singing category Seng Hkum Share performing Westlife's 'Fool Again'

Some of the winners posing with friends and family after the show

Winner of the dancing category Tu Cin Lian ready to moonwalk to Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal

Urging Burma to change

2011-11-29T01:05:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama is moving shrewdly by testing the new government in Burma. He intends to dispatch Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a serious look at the mood in the country, a year after it claimed to have made the decision to throw off 49 years of military dictatorship.

The United States is one of the last countries to give Burma a chance. But Mr Obama has chosen to start right from the top with a high-profile event. Many others, notably the European Union and countries of Europe, have moved into Burma on little cat's feet, slowly testing the government with basic diplomacy such as film festivals and informational events.

Mr Obama announced the decision to approach Burma at a high level during last weekend's summits in Bali. Neither he nor several predecessors ever had much luck convincing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to join the western nation in criticising and sanctioning Burma. The odious military regimes, which became increasingly cruel and repressive after the 1962 coup, were detested worldwide. But the members of Asean held their noses and pretended for more than two decades that things were getting better in Burma.

They were not. Military regimes cancelled even the most basic human rights. Burma had no freedom of speech or even of religion. The armed forces and its civil service routinely punished families for the sins of a son or daughter. The most visible victim of the dictatorship was Aung San Suu Kyi, denied contact with her dying husband and her children, incarcerated for most of the past 20 years _ without charges or legal help. Her fate was a symbol of the way the tyrants in power controlled everyone.

There are strong indications, however, that the bad old days may be ending. There is still a long way to go. But Mr Obama personally telephoned Mrs Suu Kyi last week. He got through to her, an impossible task until last year. And she told him that it might be a good idea to send Mrs Clinton to make approaches to the new, nominally civilian government in Naypyidaw. And Burmese President Thein Sein, at the leaders' summit in Indonesia, spoke in what might be considered a straightforward manner. There are, he said, numerous tasks before Burma can be considered a free country.

The fact that Mr Thein Sein listed the problems _ ethnic mistrust, thousands of political prisoners, continuing media repression _ is unique in Burma in the past 49 years, during which the military killed Southeast Asia's most thriving democracy and its best economy.

Admitting some problems is progress, although he left out two important ones. The first is that his government still acquiesces in East Asia's biggest illicit drug trade. It will take a strong man to admit this, but it is vital that the president act against drug lords, and soon. The second is the huge, tragic and costly presence of refugees in Thailand, as well as India, China, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Officially, there are 129,000 Burmese refugees in Thailand. There are probably a million or more altogether.

But things are certainly improving. Mrs Suu Kyi, who boycotted the elections and saw her National League for Democracy banned, said last week she will re-enter politics _ and probably run for parliament. The media censors have eased, a European film festival was recently held, access to mobile phones and the internet have increased.

It is still far too early to credit Burma with a turnaround, but there are increasing signs that meaningful reforms may be possible.

Source : Bangkok Post

Chin Refugees Arrested in Malaysian Crackdowns

2011-11-29T01:03:00.000-08:00

Malaysian RELA raiding homes in Kuala Lumpur (Photo: CG)

At least ten Chin refugees including women have been detained following a series of government-planned crackdowns on 'undocumented' foreign workers in Malaysia since last month.

The Chin refugees were arrested in different locations including Seremban, Ipoh, and Kepong of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, with only two being registered as refugees with the UNHCR, according to the Voice of Chin Refugees.

Six of them from Seremban City are known to have been sent to Lenggeng Immigration detention centre while a Chin man from Ipoh City is detained in Lengkap Immigration detention centre and other threes being put to a lockup in Serihatamas Jalan Duta Desa Immigration complex.

It is believed that Malaysian authorities will be in liaison with the UNHCR Office in Kuala Lumpur to see if the Chin detainees, among many, are refugees.

A member of the Chin Refugee Committee was quoted as saying that the detainees without the UNHCR registration card could face months of detention.

"With the immigration crackdown beginning, the Chin community fears for the displacement of thousands of family members still waiting in queue for registration from the office of the UNHCR."

There are more than ten thousand Chin refugees, who have not been registered with the UNHCR, according to ACR (Alliance of Chin Refugees) and CRC (Chin Refugee Committee).

According to a report earlier this month, the Malaysian government had arrested nearly 200 undocumented workers and 5 employers in three states across the country since 20 October.

The Malaysian government made an official announcement in October that it plans to deploy hundreds of thousands of enforcement officers and volunteers in an attempt to sweep out 'undocumented' foreign workers.

Joy as widow's dream of new life comes true

2011-11-21T01:26:00.000-08:00

Six months ago, she became the human face of Australia's controversial refugee deal with Malaysia.

Sui Neih Maui, a 35-year-old Chin refugee, had been living in fear in a Kuala Lumpur slum since she fled the army in Burma and her husband was murdered.

When _The West Australian _tracked her down in May, she was preparing to be the first refugee to call WA home since the so-called Malaysian solution was announced.

Last week, in her new home in Perth, she said he had never felt safer in her life. "I never want to go back there," she said.

Despite the collapse of the Malaysia deal, Australia will keep its end of the bargain - increasing its refugee intake by 4000 over four years.

Most of these will be Burmese refugees, who make up the majority of 94,000 refugees in exile in Malaysia.

The most likely Burmese refugees to benefit from the deal are the Christian Chin ethnic minority.

In the past month, seven ethnic Chin have been resettled in Perth.

Obama sending Clinton to repressive Myanmar

2011-11-21T01:25:00.000-08:00

Seizing an opportunity for historic progress in repressive Myanmar, President Barack Obama is dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the long-isolated nation next month in an attempt to accelerate fledgling reforms.

The move is the most dramatic sign yet of an evolving relationship between the United States and Myanmar, also known as Burma, which has suffered under brutal military rule for decades. Obama said Friday there had been "flickers of progress" since new civilian leadership took power in March.

Responding to signs of reform, Myanmar's main opposition party, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, decided on Friday to register again for future elections after boycotting last year's voting.

"If Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America," Obama said as he announced Clinton's trip while on a diplomatic mission to southeast Asia.

Clinton will be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Myanmar in more than 50 years.

In exploring a breakthrough engagement with Myanmar, Obama first sought assurances of support from Suu Kyi. She spent 15 years under house arrest by the nation's former military dictators but is now in talks with the civilian government about reforming the country.

A U.S. opening with Myanmar would also contribute to Obama's goals of rebalancing power in the region, as Burma's military leaders for long had close ties to China.

Beijing has poured billions of dollars of investment into Myanmar to operate mines, extract timber and build oil and gas pipelines. China has also been a staunch supporter of the country's politically isolated government and is Myanmar's second-biggest trading partner after Thailand.

Administration officials stressed that the new engagement with Myanmar was not about China. They said the Obama administration consulted with China about the move and said they expected China to be supportive. They argued that China wants to see a stable Burma on its borders, so that it doesn't risk problems with refugees or other results of political instability.

Obama and democracy leader Suu Kyi spoke by phone on Thursday night while he was flying to Bali on Air Force One.

By sending in Clinton, his chief diplomat, Obama is taking a calculated political risk in a place where repression is still common. He warned that if the country fails to commit to a true opening of its society, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But he said that the current environment is a rare opening that could help millions of people "and that possibility is too important to ignore."

Myanmar is subject to wide-ranging trade, economic and political sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, enforced in response to brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and 2007 and its refusal to hand power to Suu Kyi's party after the 1990 elections.

Clinton said that while there may be an opening for a democracy push in Myanmar, the U.S. was proceeding cautiously.

"We're not ending sanctions. We're not making any abrupt changes," she said during an interview with Fox News. "We have to do some more fact-finding and that's part of my trip."

Suu Kyi's lawyer, Nyan Win, welcomed news of Clinton's visit.

"It is time for the U.S. to make such a high-level visit. This is going to be a very crucial visit," Win said.

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. wants to see a number of actions from Myanmar, including the release of more political prisoners; serious internal domestic diplomacy between the government and ethnic groups, some of which have been in civil war for decades; and further assurances with regards to interactions with North Korea.

The administration's policy toward Myanmar has focused on punishments and incentives to get the country's former military rulers to improve dire human rights conditions. The U.S. imposed new sanctions on Myanmar but made clear it was open to better relations if the situation changed.

Myanmar's nominally civilian government has declared its intention to liberalize the hardline policies of the junta that preceded it. It has taken some initial steps, such as easing censorship, legalizing labor unions, suspending an unpopular, China-backed dam project, and working with Suu Kyi.

Officials said Clinton would travel to Myanmar Dec. 1, making stops in Yangon and Naypyitaw.

Human rights groups welcomed Obama's announcement as an opportunity to compel further reforms.

"We've been arguing a long time that political engagement and political pressure are not mutually exclusive," Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Southeast Asia researcher, told The Associated Press, adding that Clinton "should not miss the opportunity in this historic visit to pressure the government and speak very clearly that the human rights violations taking place there need to stop."

Elaine Pearson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the Burmese government must realize that a visit by Clinton "puts them on notice, not lets them off the hook for their continually atrocious human rights record."

Obama was to see Burma's president during the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, that brought him to Bali. The two have met before, at an ASEAN meeting in Singapore, when Thein Sein was prime minister.

ASEAN announced Friday that Myanmar would chair the regional bloc in 2014, a significant perch that Myanmar was forced to skip in 2006 because of intense criticism of its rights record.

Obama attended a meeting Friday afternoon with the heads of ASEAN, whose 10 members include host Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The group will expand for the East Asia Summit, a forum that also counts China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S. as members.

The president held one-on-one meetings on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from Indonesia, India, Malaysia and the Philippines. Administration officials said Obama discussed the issue of Myanmar in his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III.

Earlier, in a move promoting American trade, Obama presided over a deal that will send Boeing planes to an Indonesian company and create jobs back home, underscoring the value of the lucrative Asia-Pacific market to a president needing some good economic news.

Obama stood watch as executives of Boeing and Lion Air, a private carrier in Indonesia, signed a deal that amounts to Boeing's largest commercial plane order. Lion Air ordered 230 airplanes, and the White House said it would support tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S.

Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Alisa Tang in Bangkok contributed to this report.

2011/2012 Subcommittee on Migrants, Refugees and Immigration Affairs Interim Report

2011-11-18T01:40:00.000-08:00

The Subcommittee on Migrants, Refugees and Immigration Affairs (“SMRIA”) has met twice for the term 2011/12.

The foci of SMRIA are the following issues:

(1) Pekerja Asing Tanpa Izin Courts;
(2) Rights of domestic workers in relation to the Employment (Amendment) Bill and International Labour Organization (“ILO”) Convention on Domestic Workers;
(3) Police shooting of foreign nationals;
(4) Refugees and stateless persons in Sabah;
(5) Medical insurance for foreign workers; and
(6) Malaysia’s reports on compliance of ILO conventions.

SMRIA has planned the following activities:

(1) ASEAN Legal Network/Two-day workshop on migrants and refugees

SMRIA has proposed to set up an ASEAN Legal Network with the following objectives:

(a) Set up a network for law societies from the source and destination countries of domestic workers to work with one another on migrant and refugee issues;
(b) Generate a referral mechanism for cases involving migrants and refugees;
(c) Establish a legal framework on migrant and refugee issues in ASEAN countries, eg on anti-trafficking;
(d) Create a platform for law societies in ASEAN to share information and knowledge on how migrant and refugee rights are protected in different jurisdictions; and
(e) Encourage the law societies to set up a committee on migrants and refugees within their organisation.

A two-day workshop in November 2011 will be organised as the first activity of the ASEAN Legal Network.

(2) Training on international refugee law

In the previous term, SMRIA jointly organised a seminar on international refugee law with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) in Malaysia and Judicial and Legal Training Institute (“ILKAP”) on 5 and 6 Aug 2010 at the ILKAP training centre in Bangi.

The speaker, Rodger Haines QC, is the Deputy Chairperson of the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority and a lecturer in immigration and refugee law at the Faculty of Law, Auckland University.

The web report for the seminar can be accessed here.

This term, SMRIA will collaborate with UNHCR Malaysia to organise training at Bar Council premises, tentatively scheduled on 12 and 13 Oct 2011. An official from the UNHCR office in Bangkok will be invited as a speaker for the training.

(3) Dialogue with city councils

The initiative to dialogue with city councils was the result of UNHCR’s new urban refugee policy briefing jointly organised by Bar Council and UNHCR Malaysia on 7 Apr 2010.

The web report for the briefing can be accessed here.

SMRIA will have its inaugural dialogue with the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (“MPAJ”) to discuss issues concerning refugees within MPAJ’s jurisdiction and services that can be provided to these refugees. The date will be confirmed soon.

(4) Roundtable Conference: Developing A Comprehensive Policy Framework for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Part II)

On 23 June 2009, SMRIA successfully organised a roundtable conference to consider current practices and to develop a comprehensive policy framework to enhance the social protection of refugees and asylum seekers. 41 participants attended the conference, including representatives from Suruhanjaya Hak Asasi Manusia Malaysia (“SUHAKAM”), UNHCR, United Nations Children’s Fund (“UNICEF”), International Committee of the Red Cross, Malaysian Medical Association and other members of civil society.

The web report for the conference can be accessed here.

SMRIA prepared a memorandum entitled “Developing a Comprehensive Policy Framework for Refugees and Asylum Seekers” from the views and suggestions collated at the conference.

SMRIA will organise a second part to the conference in October 2011 to map out an action plan for issues raised in the memorandum.

(5) Proposed exchange of asylum seekers for refugees between Malaysia and Australia

The Malaysian Bar released the following press statements to denounce the arrangement:

(a) “Asylum seekers and refugees are not commodities to be traded” (dated 9 May 2011); and
(b) “Home Minister must walk the PM’s talk in respect of refugee deal with Australia” (dated 3 June 2011).

Following that, the Office Bearers and representatives of SMRIA met officials from the International Court of Justice, Refugee Council of Australia and UNHCR Malaysia, in separate meetings to discuss and exchange views on the arrangement of exchange of asylum seekers between Malaysia and Australia.

SMRIA will organise a roundtable discussion in November 2011 on this matter.

(6) 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and World Refugee Day celebrated on 20 June 2011

On World Refugee Day 2011, the Malaysian Bar issued a press statement entitled “Refugees: Save them from a different kind of hell” (dated 20 June 2011).

The memorandum entitled “Developing a Comprehensive Policy Framework for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers” was released to the press in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and World Refugee Day. The document was forwarded to the Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of Home Affairs urging them to look into the plight of asylum seekers and refugees.

M Ramachelvam

Chairperson

Subcommittee on Migrants, Refugees and Immigration Affairs

Dated 26 Aug 2011

Source : www.malaysianbar.org.my

RM575,400 to help fund mission

2011-11-18T01:39:00.000-08:00

Contribution to support humanitarian effort in Somalia

Datuk Ahmad A. Talib (second from right) presenting a mock cheque to Dr Hariyati Shahrima Abdul Majid. With them are (from left) Mercy Malaysia Relief Operations head Edward Hew Cheong Yew, Mercy Malaysia executive director Zahrah Yaacob and New Straits Times Press corporate communications head Wan Abdullah Wan Nawi.

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KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Medical Relief Society (Mercy Malaysia) has received RM575,401 from the Tabung Bencana NSTP-Media Prima to help fund its mission in Somalia.

The cheque was presented by Media Prima Bhd News and Editorial Operations executive director Datuk Ahmad A. Talib to Mercy Malaysia assistant honorary secretary Dr Hariyati Shahrima Abdul Majid at Balai Berita here yesterday.

Dr Hariyati said the contribution would be used to support the organisation's existing humanitarian effort in the war-torn country.

"Thanks to the generosity of the public, we will be able to reach out to the 471,000 displaced victims of war in Mogadishu and provide them with food, sanitation and healthcare."

Mercy Malaysia has so far established mobile medical clinics in two refugee camps as well as a supplementary feeding centre, run by partners Somalia Young Doctors Association and Muslim Aid respectively.

Dr Hariyati said the operations cost Mercy Malaysia US$133,984 (RM424,167), excluding a newly-implemented psychosocial programme for Somali children which costs US$50,000.

She added it was important for Malaysians and other organisations to help make this mission a success by continuing to donate to the fund.

Meanwhile, Media Prima Bhd is the first media group in the country to send journalists to Mercy Malaysia's specialised training for volunteers on humanitarian relief missions.

Last Friday, media staff from the New Straits Times, Berita Harian, Harian Metro, New Straits Times Press Photo Department, TV3, Astro Awani, Petronas and UMW Toyota took part in the basic mission training course.

The three-day two-night course, the third held this year and conducted by Mercy Malaysia and General Operation Force (GOF) trainers, was held the GOF camp in Ulu Kinta, Perak.

Mercy Malaysia vice-president Associate Prof Dr Mohamed Ikram Mohamed Salleh said they invited Media Prima to participate as it was important for media practitioners to be properly trained when covering stories in war zones and during disasters.

Last Monday, Deputy Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum told Parliament that government would assist media organisations to train their journalists and photographers assigned to high risk areas.

1,000 Kachins Flee to IDP Camps

2011-11-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

In October, Burmese people staged a protest in front of Burmese embassy in Malaysia, calling for the end of government military offensives in Kachin State. (Photo: Reuters)

More than 1,000 villagers in southern Kachin State have taken shelter in makeshift camps in the jungle after fleeing their homes to avoid being caught in the crossfire of an intensifying conflict between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burmese government forces.
Relief workers say the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in question have fled in the last few days and are from five villages around Mansi Township, some 25 km southeast of Bhamo in southernmost Kachin State, close to the Shan State and Chinese borders.
The relief groups accuse the Burmese government of denying the UN and intentional organizations access to the IDP camps to deliver humanitarian assistance.
Kaw Ja, a member of a Kachin youth group which is assisting refugees and IDPs at the Sino-Burmese border, said that the number of IDPs had reached 1,187 by Tuesday, and that they had been separated into six camps near the border behind KIA front lines.
“In this camp alone, there are 400 refugees,” he said. “They are currently sheltering in temporary makeshift tents and sharing whatever food they have brought with them.”
“We are not able to adequately supply the IDPs, and in the long run they will face food shortages. They presently have no support,” he said.
A recently arrived IDP named Churchman said he and 180 fellow villagers from Mansi Township had fled in a hurry, and that many had run away without carrying any supplies. He said some had sheltered with relatives in other villages, but that he and his family had joined hundreds of other villagers in seeking refuge at a camp in Nawng Tau, near the Chinese border.
“Our living conditions are alright,” said Churchman. “However, we are worried about food supplies.”
Villagers fleeing from conflict in Kachin State are not recognized as refugees by the Chinese government and cannot therefore cross the border freely, said KIA spokesman La Nan.
Mai Ja, a local relief worker, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that the offensive is intensifying and more troops are being deployed into the region.
The exodus of people from their villages across Kachin State began on June 9 due to the resumption of hostilities between the two sides. There now estimated to be some 30,000 IDPs sheltering at nine camps in and around the main town of Laiza and seven camps in Maija Yang on the Shan-Kachin border.
The villagers say they fear being captured, abused or even killed by Burmese soldiers; accounts are rife of human rights abuses by troops in the area.
Mai Ja said that Tuesday marks the 19th day that a 28-year-old Kachin woman from Moemot Township has been held in captivity by government troops from Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 321.
“The troops seized the girl, her husband, their infant and her father-in-law while they were returning home from their fields with maize,” she said. “The others were later released, but not the woman.”
According to a report by the Kachin Women's Association Thailand, on Oct. 8, soldiers from LIB 74, 276 and 601 arrested eight males aged between 17 and 65 years from Namlim Pa village in Bhanmaw District. The eight were forced to work as porters, carrying army supplies and weapons.
Villagers often have to carry sacks of rice, food and heavy weapons, frequently have their hands tied, and may be forced to walk all day on very little water and food, the report said.
A UK MP, Andrew Mitchell, the country's secretary of state for international development, visits Burma this week. Burma Campaign UK has called on him to do more to ensure British aid reaches internal refugees who have fled increased attacks by the Burmese army over the past year.
Burma Campaign UK said that almost 150,000 people in Burma have been forced to flee their homes in the past year because of internal conflicts, and that the Burmese government is severely restricting access to these internal refugees by the UN and other aid agencies, resulting in a shortage of food, shelter, clothing and medicine.

A Day Out with Myanmar Refugee Kids

2011-11-17T01:50:00.000-08:00

by Haider Yutim

It was 'a day out' to remember for 28 Myanmar refugee children from the Zomi ethnic when they had a fun-filled event which was organized by International Movement for a Just World (JUST), an NGO that seeks to develop global awareness of the injustices within the existing system.

The children aged between 7 to 12, were fed with various fun activities including group games and futsal during the event held last Saturday evening on 12 November at 1 Utama Shopping Center's roof top. By the looks of those children, they seemed very excited being able to go out and spend quality time among themselves.

Vice president of Zomi Association of Malaysia, Thawng Sian Kham or fondly known as Khampi (left), when met by Malaysian Digest described this as an opportunity for those kids to spend their time outside.

"Because most of the times, they stayed at their apartments and studied there at night and sleep there... sometimes we just arrange the tables and let them do their activties there.

"So every day.. they spend it in their rooms and not allowed to attend public schools because going out for them is quite risky," said Khampi who is also in charge of the children in Malaysia.

Education Restores Their Hope

Through the organization, the children were also taught English, Mathematics and Sciene despite limited space and teaching materials. He said if one drops by to their place, one can see that they don't have as much equipments as a normal teaching center has, but nevertheless the children are still fed with as much education they can get, as it is important to them because it restores their hope.

"Education holds their future... that's why we are trying our best for these kids," said Khampi.

Meanwhile, program co-ordinator from JUST, Helen Ng (left) during a brief interview said that this is the first time her organization had done such a program involving Myanmar kids. Nevertheless, she said this is not the first time they had done a program for children where two years ago they visited a children's home in Klang where they had donated food and spent time with them by playing games and singing songs.

They even did a similar program last year where they visted a center for children, disabled and old-folks and spent time with them like they did in the previous center.

The kids were handled by a team of volunteers consisting of local youths as well as foriegners from Inter-civilizational Youth Engagement Program (IYEP).

"The adults will play with the children to make them feel wanted as they don't often get visitors and stuff like that, so we did that and we even had performances by splitting into two groups where one went to the old-folks and one went to the children," said Ng to Malaysian Digest where she said for this year they decided to do something different by taking the kids out instead of them going over to their place.

Malaysians Doing a Good Job in Looking After Refugees

Commenting on the country's treatment towards refugees, she said although Malaysia does not encourage the entering of these refugees, but at the same time they don't turn them out and that Malaysians are looking after them very well.

"Hopefully within a year or two they would have a better policy... but for now whatever the Malaysians can do to help to look after them, that's what's happening.

"The Malaysian people are looking after them very well," said Ng.

PTA Should Help Out Too

However, she said it would be great if all Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) especially in urban areas to hold special classes for these refugee children and the PTA can also collect funds to pay for those teachers who teach those children.

She stressed that it is important for them to have an education so that they can move forward as it is not their fault that they're here.

In Malaysia, life for a refugee is quite challenging as they cannot work legally and most of them live in fear of detention, despite having received a refugee card from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

While there are services such as Zomi Association of Malaysia and such, to help the refugees, they still feel vulnerable every time they leave their apartments.

Nevertheless, for these children all they know is that they need to live, play and study like a normal children as they have yet to understand the meaning of 'refugee' or the reason why they're here as in a children's world, there are no conflicts, war or even racism like the ones exist in the adult world.

Source : malaysiandigest.com

Undocumented Children in Malaysia Barred From School

2011-11-17T01:48:00.000-08:00

Two-year-old Arfaisal Marsaleh, a stateless child, holds on to his mother in a slum village in Kinarut, in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island (file photo).

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant children in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo Island are not being allowed to go to school. Efforts to change this are under way. Early this year, a community-built education center at a refugee village was inaugurated for 300 undocumented children who previously had never attended school. With support from UNICEF and the Malaysian government, officials hope to replicate this model in other deprived communities.

Traveling to the seaside refugee village of Kampung Numbak, north of Sabah’s capital, Kota Kinabalu, is a gut-churning experience.

The tin-roofed wooden houses in this fishing community are built on stilts to prevent them from being submerged by water. Low tide waters reveal a sea of garbage. Wooden bridges, some with rotten and missing planks, connect the village streets. Small stores selling a range of items, from soft drinks and basic food to clothing and electronic wares, line the streets.

At the end of the main road is the Kampung Numbak Education Center, a simple structure built on stilts.

“In this school, there are only children that are undocumented, said U.N. Children’s Fund Representative to Malaysia Hans Olsen. "There were parents who wanted to have their children here in this school, which happened to be in the middle of the community, but they were not admitted if they had no documents.”

Stateless children

Kampung Numbak’s population of some 8,000 people is a mix of Malay nationals, refugee and undocumented migrant workers, mainly from the Philippines. Hans Olsen says Malay children can go to government-run schools, but children without birth certificates or other proof of legal residency are not given the same privilege.

“The children that are here had not been to school before," he said. "They were left behind when the other children went to the government schools. So, when you come into the classroom here in Kampung Numbak, the children you see at their desks, before the beginning of this year, they did not have access to school at all, none of them had gone to school before.”

A 2009 study by the Ministry of Education found nearly 44,000 undocumented children between the ages of seven and 17 were not enrolled in school. This figure is believed to be grossly underestimated.

Exploitation

Children who do not go to school are easily exploited. Many are forced to perform child labor. Others wind up on the streets, become involved with drugs, petty crime and are exposed to abuse.

UNICEF Monitoring and Educational Officer Nur Anuar Muthalib says education may not be a panacea. But, it can help children avoid many of these pitfalls.

“From our view, children are children," said the officer. "Their place is in school. It is not the children’s fault that they are in our country and not able to attend schooling. It is their right.”

Teachers' committment

There are more than 40 children in this classroom. The teachers are young, generally inexperienced, and poorly paid. But, they take their jobs seriously and are committed to helping their pupils learn. One teacher, Amira Binti Asen Abdullah, says she is proud of the progress her students have made in such a short time.

“Before this, the children just hang around playing," she said. "After this, because they have this school, they come here every day and study. Sometimes in the evening, they also come here. So, the students ... very, very love to come to school every day.”

Students agree. Before coming to this school, 11-year-old Normida says she could not read or count. Now, she likes going to school. She especially likes Islamic studies and wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

Thirteen-year-old Azali has never attended school. He is excited to be in class. He says he is learning a lot and wants to become a soldier.

Twelve-year-old Benhar has greater ambitions. He wants to be a money-maker. He wants to be a millionaire.

UNICEF and Malay officials say their aim is to replicate the Kampung Numbak model in other deprived communities in Sabah. Their next project, they say, will be to construct a school for an estimated 1,000 undocumented children in the refugee village of Kampung Bahagia, where the existing building is in a deplorable state.

"Open Letter from 3 Prolong Burmese Detainees in Australian Detention

2011-11-17T01:45:00.000-08:00

"A Call for Humanitarian Intervention"

We are recognized refugees of Burma. Our ethnic minority is unknown to the world, yet is one of the most oppressed minority group in Burma, the sole ethnic who has been declined any rights for an identity. We are de-facto stateless. Remember our race: we are Rohingyas.

It was out of ultimate survival that we embark in a boat hoping for Australian protection and mercy. The trip was promising pain and potentially death but it was far better than continuing enduring abuses and extreme violations of human rights in the countries of transit. Although we had refugee status in Malaysia, Malaysia was never better than Burma for our people.

As we hope for a life that we never had the right to have, a safe land that we never walked on, where we could breathe without fear, we remained locked in Australian detention until May 2010, when we were finally confirmed as refugee.

We thought the end of life of nightmare was over and we would born as new man.

Yet we were kept in detention. The process of our case was not over and required security clearance by ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Two years have passed since our arrival in Australia and yet we remained detained. Although our physical health was maintained by constant check, our mental health has been severely affected as a consequence of the injustice of our mandatory detention.

We have a strong feeling of indirect discrimination and unfair treatment in processing our cases while both DIAC and ASIO uphold proper schedules which complete every process of asylum claim within 90 days with respect and dignity for the vast priority groups.

After a long wait of two years, we have been given a rejection letter as negative security assessment under Australian Security Act 1979-section (4) that stated to find a third country. This news has devastated us.

Why have we been rejected? What sort of security threat are we considered as? Rohingyas are terrorized by the military junta and there are no links that we know of to any terror organization. Our minority is surviving and we , as part of this community have also spend each day of our life trying to survive.

We have no alternative or way to appeal to this decision as our stateless and illegal status in Australia does not provide us any legal ground. Although we are in Australia, we have no access to Justice to defend our case and we are left languishing in unlawful detention for unlimited period ahead of us. Our full life in detention ahead. We are also not allowed to be placed into an alternative and softer detention like community detention and we are continuously placed in tight security were we are submitted to tempestuous intimidations although we are not criminal, just normal citizen of the world like most of you. And like anybody, we feel stress facing injustice and this leads to mental health issue, stress, depression, nightmare and more. We urge domestic and international legal system to review its policy in regards to stateless people and the fate for stateless refugees that are denied security clearance. We are human, our life is precious to us and you cannot just store us in a box until we die. We hope for a future.

We can't also help to feel injustice and inconsistency when we witness the release of 4 Bangladeshi people who claimed to be Burmese. They are granted visa and released earlier than genuine Burmese refugees. According to immigration the 3 other Rohingyans in NIDC detention are also awaited 2 years for security clearances when ASIO itself told a parliamentary enquiry in October that it is not a requirement under the ASIO Act for boat arrivals to be detained during security processing.

We have respect for Australian policy abroad defending the refugees rights and working hand in hand with UNHCR when it comes to refugees fleeing Burma to reach any country that would give them protection. Unfortunately, the plight of Burmese does not end at the Burma border and Malaysia is a country of much oppression for refugees and Malaysia is another dictator to refugees.

Unfortunately , Rohingyas are rarely granted any visa to go to a third country, which is the reason why most of Burmese coming by boat are Rohingyas. This is how we came by boat. Today, the oppression of Rohingyas continues and has reached the soil of Australia that we considered a democratic country, respectful of human rights. Today, our life is hold forever in between walls, for no reason except ignorance.

We have no other ways to appeal any one, just through your kind humanitarian intervention to help us to get out of inappropriate, unreasonable, unlawful and arbitrary detention. Our lives are at risk, languishing in a legal limbo. We hope our voices will be heard, we hope all humanitarian quarters including resettlement countries will come and gather to help us through humanitarian intervention.

Today we are trapped, our past is dark. Our present is dark, our future is dark. Although we would like to taste life, Presently, death seems to be our only solution to finally find peace.

Please help us to find another solution than death.

Sincerely,

Shoef (Boat ID: VAU-2, in Villawood detention of Sydney)
Razamya (Boat ID: SEA-10, in Villawood detention of Sydney) Mufis (Boat ID: SEA-3, in Meribyrnong detention of Melbourne)

- Asian Tribune -

Burma regime faces calls to release Chin political prisoners

2011-11-12T23:22:00.000-08:00

Transforming lives among the Burmese Chin of New Delhi

Remarkable photo exhibition is showing in Edinburgh through to the end of this month, featuring depictions of the Burmese Chin people by award-winning photographer Bharat Choudhary.

The show, which runs from 6-30 November 2011, is being sponsored by the Scottish charity Burma Assist, headed up by Chris Barr, which supports a Chin community tailoring training centre in New Delhi, India.

The official launch of the exhibition is taking place from 5-8pm on Saturday 12 November at Cafe Camino, located at St Mary's Catholic Cathedral in the Scottish capital (1 Little King Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3JD).

In addition to the photos, there will be fine refreshments, a talk from the Burma Assist CEO, a DVD illustrating the situation of the Chin people and the charity's work, and a sale of Christmas cards and craft gifts.

Burma Assist's work is humanitarian relief aimed at helping a particular community - not least the women among them, whose livelihoods and status are particularly involved.

The Chin are one of the major ethnic groups originally from Burma (Myanmar) in Southeast Asia. For decades, they have suffered at the hands of the military regime there. As a predominantly Christian community, the Chin people are especially vulnerable as a result of their minority status - and many have sought refuge in other countries

Some 60,000 Chins live in extremely difficult conditions in India, existing on very scarce resources and sharing the plight of the local poor, plus some additional discrimination in housing, employment and healthcare.

Appropriately, the Burma Assist and Bharat Choudhary exhibition is entitled 'Searching for Home: Transforming Lives Among the Burmese Chin in Delhi'.

Human rights campaigners have called for the immediate release of ethnic Chin political prisoners held by the military regime in Burma (Mynamar).
They have urged President Thein Sein's government to free a range of people imprisoned for their political activity, including Kam Lam Khup, Kam Khan Khual, Go Pian Sing, Khun Tun Oo, Saing Ngunt Lwin, Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Kyi, U Nyi Puh, and Tin Min Thut.
Seven Chin are believed to have been among the 6,359 political prisoners released on 12 October 2011 as part of an amnesty programme instituted by the Myanmar government - following lobbying from international human rights groups, including Amnesty International Australia and Human Rights Watch.
Burmese refugees have been continuing to flee to neighbouring countries such as India, Thailand and Malaysia.
Last year, Graham Thom, Amnesty International Australia's National Refugee Coordinator, was able to visit the Indian state of Mizoram to talk to Burmese Chin refugees.
The visit was organised by the Centre for Refugee Research at the University of New South Wales as part of a cultural exchange focusing on human rights issues, including gender persecution.
"We heard appalling accounts of the systematic rape by the Burmese military of Chin women and the family’s powerlessness to stop these attacks," he said.
Most Chin refugees enter India across the land border with Mizoram State, and this is where the majority of the refugee population has settled. Mizoram is one of the most urbanised states in India, and refugees generally gravitate towards cities and towns despite coming from largely agricultural backgrounds, reports Refugees International.
* A photo exhibition, 'Searching for Home: Transforming Lives Among the Burmese Chin in Delhi', is showing in Edinburgh through to the end of this month, featuring the work of award-winning photographer Bharat Choudhary. Its official launch is taking place from 5-8pm on Saturday 12 November 2011 at Cafe Camino, located at St Mary's Catholic Cathedral in the Scottish capital (1 Little King Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3JD).

For more infomation, http://assistingburma.blogspot.com/

Chins in Norway Contributed for Kachin Refugees

2011-11-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

Chin people living in Norway have come together in an effort to make contributions toward helping Kachin victims of the ongoing armed conflict against the Kachin Independence Army by Burma Army soldiers.

The Norway Chin Christian Federation (NCCF) announced last Sunday that a total donation of 91,400 Norwegian Kroner (about 16,119.50 US dollars) was collected among Chin churches, fellowships, families and individuals across Norway.

Pu Daniel, Treasurer of NCCF, said in his email: "We are pleased to say that Chin people in Norway contributed more than we had expected for our brothers, the Kachins. Our collection will be delivered to Kachin State by responsible Chin pastors in Burma."

It is claimed that Chairman of the Zomi Baptist Convention (ZBC), Rev. M. Thawng Kam and Pi Dar Nawn Tial are set to to meet with members of the Kachin Baptist Convention in Rangoon, former capital of Burma.

Sources confirmed that Chin churches based in Melbourne, Australia and Chin refugees in Malaysia under the leadership of the Malay Chin Christian Union (MCCU) are making their efforts in raising awareness and fund for Kachin refugees and IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons).

The ongoing armed conflict between Burma Army soldiers and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has escalated in recent days, resulting in the displacement of an estimated 30,000 people, according to sources.

A Chin NGO worker, who recently returned from a trip to Kachin State, told Chinland Guardian: "The humanitarian situation in Kachin State is devastating and the people victimized by the ongoing conflict are in urgent need of relief aid."

In Aizawl, Mizoram State of India, a newly formed humanitarian group for Kachin refugees have organized a door-to-door and church collections of donation among local Chin churches and individuals.

It is estimated that there are more than 1,200 Chins living in Norway, most of them being resettled as refugees from Malaysia under the UNHCR resettlement programme after having fled various forms of brutalities and rights violations committed by Burma Army soldiers in Chin State.

Myanmar Asylum-Seekers & Refugees in Malaysia

Giving Refugee Youth a Second Chance at Life

Immigrant students get a taste of American of dining, politics

Senator Mitch McConnell visits with Louisville's Burmese refugees

Don’t Forget the Children in Burma

Without hope, without reason

Burma-Myanmar progress contends with continuing human rights violations

USCRI Applauds Proposed Rule Helping Families Stay Together

Karen to hold peace ceremonies worldwide

Malaysian school targets undocumented children

On the island of Borneo in Malaysia, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant children are not allowed to go to school. But efforts to change this are underway and a school just for these children has been built.

Kachin in Singapore and Malaysia raise $20,000 for humanitarian relief

Burma: Unraveling the paradox

Sri Lankan refugee returning home falls in 2011

Refugees form groups to conduct gotong-royong and night watch

Is democracy finally coming to Burma?

Booming Burmese population brings new business to Waterloo

Refugees have rights, too

ON Dec 10, 1948, these words were adopted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

A Year in Review: Important News & Events that Mattered to the Chin in 2011

Burmese are newest immigrants to settle in Dubuque Archdiocese

Wrestling helps Burmese refugee transition to life in Syracuse

Undocumented 2 Burmese Refugees Arrested in Malaysia

Burmese Refugees Get American Style Christmas Thanks To Volunteers At A Greensboro Church

Top 10 ASEAN Stories of 2011

Malaysiakini brings cheer to refugee children

Myanmar refugees indulge in traditional fare during Christmas

Hotel brings festive joy and cheer to Myanmar Chin refugees

Refugees clean up neighbourhood

MYANMAR refugees have cleaned up playgrounds and back alleys of shop lots in Jalan Khoo Teik Ee as a part of a competition under the Jom Gotong-Royong programme.

Karen immigrants find viable employment option

Greensboro parish welcomes Burmese refugees

Refugee agency aids newcomers

Refugee Monologues

Refugee Monologues

Burmese Refugees in Malaysia

Refugees Take the Stage

The cold realities of life in Malaysia as a refugee

Sanctions On Burma Must Be Maintained – OpEd

This Christmas, Rossland gives the gift of freedom to six Burmese refugees

Burma jails Rohingya on immigration charges

M’sia overly dependent on foreign workers

International Human Rights Day, 2011

Baseline Study: Family Planning Among Burmese Refugees in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

JOY AS REFUGEES REUNITE WITH FAMILY

Mom weeps at photos of Wheaton yard where she abandoned child

INTERVIEW: THE LADY’s Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis Talk Political Struggles, Love Stories, & Prosthetic Ears

Refugees reminds us that everyone is equal: Seeking sanctuary

Clinton To Test Myanmar's Readiness For Reforms

Bullies add to refugees' misery

By TAN CHOE CHOE KUALA LUMPUR

Not only is bullying morally wrong, but it can also destroy childhood for children, says Unicef

Myanmar refugee children in Malaysia vulnerable to deportation

Chin refugee stabbed to death in Malaysia

Refugee Children Star in Talent Competition (2011)

Urging Burma to change

Chin Refugees Arrested in Malaysian Crackdowns

Joy as widow's dream of new life comes true

Obama sending Clinton to repressive Myanmar

2011/2012 Subcommittee on Migrants, Refugees and Immigration Affairs Interim Report

RM575,400 to help fund mission

Contribution to support humanitarian effort in Somalia

1,000 Kachins Flee to IDP Camps

A Day Out with Myanmar Refugee Kids

Undocumented Children in Malaysia Barred From School

"Open Letter from 3 Prolong Burmese Detainees in Australian Detention

"A Call for Humanitarian Intervention"

Burma regime faces calls to release Chin political prisoners

Chins in Norway Contributed for Kachin Refugees

By TAN CHOE CHOE
KUALA LUMPUR