Thread: Myanmar - Aung San Suu Kyi - Muslim Rohingya - bringing it together

Rohingya crisis: Push for contraception, even sterilisation, as Bangladesh
struggles with refugee influx


^ Noor Fatima, a Rohingya refugee who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, with one of her four children.

"How many children you have already?"
"Four," mumbles Noor Fatima, a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee, from inside her hut in the Balukhali refugee camp.


"What will you do if there is another one?" asks family planning volunteer Kulsum in reply.
Noor Fatima shrugs.

"If Allah gives, then what can I do?"

Kulsum, an energetic Bangladeshi woman who goes by the one name, is used to hearing this line.

"Allah wants us to do things ourselves and not to look at him with folded arms," Kulsum counters.

"... I will not take any contraceptive, because children are the will of Allah,"


Public health official Dr Pintu Bhattacharya thinks the Bangladesh Government's family planning program should be
extended to refugees.

Under the scheme, local men and women are paid small stipend for undergoing voluntary sterilisation.


"The maximum I have seen in one family? Nineteen children," he says.

"Minimum is six to seven".


^ Rohingya refugee Noor Alam, his wife Tamsin and two of their eight children.

Child marriage he says, remains extremely common among the Rohingya.
How young?
"Fifteen or 14 years," Dr Rakibullah says. "These things are happening."

Indeed, Noor Alam (above), the father of eight who has come so his wife can receive a contraceptive injection, says he's looking for a
husband for his 15-year-old daughter.

"Allah and our Prophet tell us that we need to get our grown up children married as early as possible," he explains.

Here

Millions on the run. However, after all, the international community (and ourselves either) have not been so outraged as with other bad states...

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Millions on the run. However, after all, the international community (and ourselves either) have not been so outraged as with other bad states...

What's more tragic is the "international community's" current concerned false fashion, attention and dismay regarding the newest attempted extermination activities by the culturally-superior central Burman.
[actually, not new - as the Rohingya have been on the list for ages]

Where was the fashionable uproar and political punditry from all the feel good circles and international community during the Burman systematic wars of extermination of particular ethnic groups disguised under the adage of civil war? These activities when on for decades and less reported by the spurious human rights circles and associated "international groups" - as civil strife and brutalities still occur in the north.

A news article worth a look. Personally, I don't see the country going anywhere with so much hatred and division.I'd sooner invest in Vietnam or Thailand.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/dont-b...25-gyo23u.html


The Myanmar that's advertised in travel brochures doesn't match up with the heartbreaking reality we're witnessing in daily news reports. The country is often marketed as the "golden land of a thousand smiles", a place of majestic Buddhist monuments and peace-loving monks and pilgrims.

As someone who lived there for almost five years, I can attest there is a different and disturbing side to the mostly Buddhist Burmese society. It's the side playing out in Rakhine State right now against Rohingya Muslims, but it's not something that is confined to that area – casual racism and religious bigotry (including towards people from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh) is commonplace even in urban hubs such as Yangon.