Rohingya

At least 18,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the worsening violence in northern Myanmar over the last few days – many of them stranded in no man’s land on the border as they try to reach Bangladesh. Government troops have launched what they call ‘clearance operations’ against Rohingya insurgents, but both sides have accused each other…

Thousands of people have fled their homes following two days of violence in a deepening crisis in the state of Rakhine, in western Myanmar. About a thousand of the Muslim Rohingya minority forced their way over the border into Bangladesh from north western Myanmar – also known as Burma – after coming under fire from…

The Muslim Rohingya people have for many years lived in a kind of internal exile in the state Rakhine in western Myanmar – or Burma, as it is often still known.

Security forces in Myanmar have massacred villagers and carried out mass rapes of Rohingya Muslims, the UN has declared, in what could amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The UN human rights chief said the Rohingya had been subjected to “devastating cruelty”. The authorities in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have now promised…

There are rapes – there are killings – there are human rights abuses on a daily basis: but says the UN, the persecution of Burma’s minority Rohingya people is being ignored. And it’s accused Aung San Suu Kyi’s government of a “counterproductive, even callous” approach. The scale of the crisis is sharply revealed by satellite…

She’s banned by law from becoming president, but the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has declared that if her party wins a majority in Sunday’s elections, she will rule “above the president”. However she insisted that even if her National League for Democracy won a clean sweep, she would still seek national reconciliation…

She says she’s confident of victory. With elections due later this year, the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is poised to win – but only if the vote is free and fair, which is far from certain. In a rare interview – the Nobel Peace laureate has been speaking to our Asia correspondent…

For so long Burma’s chief dissident, now the leader of a political party, Aung San Suu Kyi strongly denies any complacency against persecution.

Migrant traffic is not all heading from north Africa towards Europe, there’s another route which is no less perilous. One used by Burmese Muslims and Bangladeshis who travel south in hope of a better life in Malaysia. But the traffickers who transport them often take them prisoner in camps on the Thai-Malaysian border, and it’s…

They escaped persecution – only to end up the prisoners of human trafficking gangs: held in bamboo cages in squalid camps – tortured, then killed. Malaysian forensic teams have been scouring mass graves found deep in the forest straddling Southern Thailand and Northern Malaysia. Police have been pulling out the remains of dozens of suspected…

Malaysian authorities say they have discovered 139 suspected graves near the country’s border with Thailand. Many of the victims are thought to be Rohingya Muslims fleeing from persecution in Burma. The graves are on the site of abandoned camps often used by traffickers to hold the refugees.

As odious as the business of smuggling people across the Andaman Sea is, the traffickers and the “boat people” fleeing Burma and Bangladesh share a common cause.

The mystery of the ‘green boat’ was solved this morning when 400-odd occupants of a rickety fishing trawler turned up on the Indonesian coast in the early hours of this morning.

Four days ago a camp was found on the Thai-Malaysia border containing the graves of dozens of would-be migrants – and some believe there may be at least 60 more such camps.

The discovery on the Thai border of around 50 bodies, thought to be members of the marginalised Rohingya community, underlines the brutal nature of the trade in humans.