Asia

    More than 60 Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar are believed to have drowned when their boat capsized, the latest victims in what the United Nations says is the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency. The refugees drowned in heavy seas off Bangladesh late on Thursday, part of a new surge of people fleeing a Myanmar military campaign that began on Aug. 25 and has triggered an exodus of more than half a million people. International anger with Myanmar over the crisis is growing. In New York, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over the violence. It was the first time the United States had called for punishment of Myanmar's military, but she stopped short of threatening to reimpose U.S. sanctio...

    Thailand’s ousted former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra was handed a five-year prison sentence on Wednesday after the country’s highest court found her guilty of negligence in the management of a rice subsidy scheme. Yingluck was due to hear the verdict on Aug. 25, but failed to show up, surprising hundreds of supporters who had gathered at the court. Aides said she had fled Thailand, fearing a harsh sentence. Last month, Reuters reported that she had escaped to Dubai, where her brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, owns a home. Yingluck, who swept to power in a 2011 general election, introduced a rice subsidy scheme that proved wildly popular with farmers but which the military government says caused billions of dollars in losses. Her government was ouste...

    State Minister for Social Welfare Ministry Nuruzzaman Ahmed on Tuesday said that the government will rehabilitate some 6,000 Rohingya orphan children after giving them field card. The junior minister came up with the information at a press briefing at the secretariat. There will be separate arrangements for the Rohingya orphan children aged between 0-18. They will also be divided into two groups, said Nuruzzaman, adding that, By filling up a form, the government is making database on the orphan children. He told media that his ministry had already urged the government to allocate 200 bighas of land for their rehabilitation. Besides, Zillar Rahman, secretary of Social Welfare Ministry, said that the activities of filling up form have already been started. A total of 120 sta...

    Seven UN experts have joined together to call on the government of Myanmar to stop all violence against the minority Muslim Rohingya community and asked State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to talk to Rohingya people, reports the UNB. We call on Aung San Suu Kyi to meet the Rohingya personally in Rakhine State as well as in Cox’s Bazar to talk to those who have fled, as well as those who have stayed, as she says the Myanmar Government is interested in doing, the experts were quoted in a statement UNB received from Geneva on Tuesday. They also called on the Myanmar government to halt the ongoing persecution and serious human rights violations which the High Commissioner for Human Rights has described as an apparent textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The call comes a month a...

    The latest fiery exchange between the United States and North Korea has produced a new kind of threat. On Tuesday, during his speech at the United Nations, President Trump said his government would totally destroy North Korea if necessary to defend the United States or its allies. On Friday, Kim Jong Un responded, saying North Korea will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history. The North Korean leader didn’t elaborate on the nature of this countermeasure, but his foreign minister provided a hint: North Korea might test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean. It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific, Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters at the United Nations General Assembl...

    Htun Aung Kyaw, secretary general of the Arakan National Party, gestures during an interview at the party's headquarters in Sittwe, Myanmar September 20, 2017. Reuters Sittwe, Myanmar: Relief agencies struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims displaced by strife in northwestern Myanmar are facing rising hostility from ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who accuse the United Nations and foreign aid groups of only helping Muslims. So far, the Myanmar government has only granted Red Cross organisations access to the area. The United Nations suspended its activities and evacuated non-critical staff after the government suggested it had supported Rohingya insurgents. Already battling against bad weather, tough terrain and obstructive bureaucracy, the Red Cross also ra...

    The international Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal ruled the Myanmar government is guilty of genocide against the Rohingya people and other Muslim minorities. The seven-man panel tribunal announced its verdict after considering documentary and expert evidence as well as the testimony of some 200 victims of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, Kachin and other minority groups in Myanmar, reports Malaysia based The Star. Head judge Daniel Feierstein, who founded the Centre for Genocide Studies in Argentina, read out the findings following five days of hearing held at the Universiti Malaya Legal Faculty moot court. He said that the Myanmar regime was indicted and found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal ruled that Myanmar is guilty o...

    When he saw his commander holding the severed head of one of his neighbors, teenage Islamist fighter Jalil knew it was time to escape from Marawi City. Churches and homes had been ransacked, people had been shot or taken hostage, and now Philippines government troops, planes and helicopters were pounding the Islamic State loyalists who had taken over large parts of the town on May 23. Six days into the occupation, 17-year-old Jalil said he came across a crowd of fellow fighters led by rebel chief Abdullah Maute, including a boy who looked about 10. They were cheering the beheading of a Christian from Jalil’s neighborhood who was accused of being a spy. ‘Abdullah Maute was holding a man’s head, he was shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is Greatest),’ said Jalil, who spoke on cond...

    Amid international accusations that Myanmar’s military is engaging in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Rohingya Muslim minority, Facebook designated a Rohingya insurgent group a dangerous organisation and ordered moderators to delete any content by or praising it. The decision, which the company said was made after an internal assessment of the group, came shortly before activists began complaining that the company was censoring posts about the brutal military campaign against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, reports the Guardian. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) was placed on Facebook’s ‘dangerous organization’ list in recent weeks, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed. The company’s community standards ban posts by or in support of such organizations, which it defines as grou...

    Protesting persecution on Rohingya in Myanmar, the Buddhist community in Bangladesh will not fly lantern during their Probarona festival, the second largest religious festival, to be held on 5 October. The fund collected for the lantern festival will be donated for relief goods for Rohingya refugees, said Ashok Barua, main coordinator of Bangladesh Sammilito Bouddha Samaj, at a press briefing in city on Monday. The Buddhist community of Bangladesh also condemned the atrocities on Rohingya people in Rakahine state in Myanmar and decided to hold a modest celebration of Probarona Purnima to express solidarity with distressed Rohingyas. Over 410,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and old people, fled violence to seek safety in Bangladesh since 25 August, when Myanmar securi...