Ongoing ethnic cleansing in Burma

A Rohingya Muslim woman displaced by ethnic cleansing in a Burma township weeps after arriving in a refugee camp outside Sittwe, Burma on October 28, 2012. Boatloads of Rohingya Muslims try to reach refugee camps & find safety on islands & in coastal villages to escape ethnic cleansing in Burma & after Bangladesh closed down refuge to them.

Media continues to report the conflict as a religious one between Muslims & Buddhists but the 800,000 Rohingya residents of Burma have been subject for decades to violent state-sponsored persecution & discrimination conducted by the military, including denial of citizenship (though they have lived in the region for decades), religious persecution, forced labor, land confiscations, arbitrary taxation & various forms of extortion, forced eviction & house destruction, restrictions on travel for health & work, restrictions on marriage, education, & trade. The violence is so extreme & sustained going back decades that hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas flee for asylum to Malaysia & to squalid refugee camps in Thailand & Bangladesh. Bangladesh has long been trying to deport the thousands living in refugee camps, has subjected them to harrowing human rights violations, & is refusing to accept the new refugees. Boats of desperate Rohingya refugees are now being turned back by Bangladeshi border guards & Bangladesh as a haven is now closed to them. There were several incidences of Rohingya refugees to Thailand being towed by the military in dilapidated boats & abandoned on the open sea. Not only is immigration a human right but refugees from persecution are privileged under international law. Of course, when it comes to human rights, international laws have all the force of a city ordinance against urinating in public--that is, they mean zilch, nada, zip, nothing. (Photo by Soe Zeya/Tun/Retuers)