aung san suu kyi

the Web Editors 3-07-2018

Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi walks towards her car after arriving at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, India, January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

U.N. human rights officials have said Myanmar’s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Since August, more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since Myanmar began systematically targeting Rohingya armed groups.

Roshid Jan, a Rohingya refugee who said she is not sure of her age, cries holding her son Muhammad Gyab at their shelter at the camp for widows and orphans inside the Balukhali camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Dec. 5, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj
 

The international community is demanding that the Rohingya be allowed to go home in safety, and Bangladesh and Myanmar have begun talks on repatriation, but huge doubts remain about the Rohingya ever being able to return in peace to rebuild their homes and till their fields.

Engy Abdelkader 9-21-2017

Image via RNS/AP Photo/Bernat Armangue

Today, the Rohingya are the single largest “stateless” community in the world. Their “statelessness” or lack of citizenship increases their vulnerability because they are not entitled to any legal protection from the government.

Photo via REUTERS / Beawiharta / RNS

A Rohingya migrant woman inside a compound for refugees in Indonesia’s Aceh Province. Photo via REUTERS / Beawiharta / RNS

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims live in squalor in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State. That number has been falling fast as thousands flee by land and sea in search of better lives and basic survival. Here’s a look at who the Rohingyas are and why they’re leaving Myanmar in droves.

Charles Redfern 8-26-2014
JolieNY and Krzysztof Kuczyk/Flickr

Aung San Suu Kyi delivering a lecture and street art of her. JolieNY and Krzysztof Kuczyk/Flickr

The 2014 election-year posturing forces me back to November, 2010, when a living parable walked into freedom after 15 years of house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma/Myanmar's opposition leader, waved to her supporters and awakened our stagnant conscience.

Suu Kyi ranks among the elite of real-life parables. "I should be like them," we typically think. "Everyone should." They're the true norm. Saint Francis was one such parable. So was Gandhi. So were Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. Pope Francis may be another. They shame our insipid, glitz-and-glitter leaders, whether they're overpaid CEOs or I'll-say-anything-to-get-votes candidates. They show us that politics is more than winning elections and business is more than making money.

In fact, they shame us all. We reward the attack ads. We elect the politicians and hire the CEOs. We diminish human beings to mere consumers and interest groups and file them into marketing categories. We breed our rant-and-rave culture and turn it loose.

the Web Editors 6-08-2012
Nobel laureate and Burmese opposition leader, Ang San Suu Kyi.

Nobel laureate and Burmese opposition leader, Ang San Suu Kyi.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, Amnesty International has released a new song, "Toast to Freedom," recorded by nearly 50 artists from around the world.

The original tracks for the song were recorded in Levon Helm's famed studio in Woodstock, N.Y., known as "The Barn," where acclaimed artists like the Black Crowes and My Morning Jacket have made recordings and where Helm, a four-time Grammy winner, for years stages his intimate, multi-artist concert performances known as the “Midnight Ramble.” (Helm passed away in April after a long battle with cancer.)

Artists who sing and/or play on the recording includ Kris Kristofferson, Roseanne Cash, Keb Mo, Carly Simon, Marianne Faithful, Donald Fagen (of Steeley Dan), Sunny Landreth, Shawn Mullens, Ewan McGregor (who knew he could sing so nicely?) and the late Mr. Helm himself.

Have a listen to the song and read about the "Electric Burma" concert later this month in Ireland honoring Burmese justice champion Aung San Suu Kyi, where some of the "Toast to Freedom" artists will perform the song live, inside the blog ...

 

 

 

 

When my children were young, I took them with me to vote. Before we went into the polling place, I said to them, "We vote because somebody died so we could have the right to vote." Now I think the reason we vote is because somebody lived so we could have the right to vote.

Margaret Benefiel 11-13-2009
In the midst of the hate speech that's surfacing in the public square these days, I've been asking myself how I can respond to such speech nonviolently.
Jim Wallis 10-01-2009

Oh no, my eleven-year-old went to his first rock concert this week! Oh good, it was Bono and U2. That would express the feelings of many parents about their child's introductory rock and roll concert experience.

Aaron Taylor 6-26-2009
On May 24th, 2009, Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) junta-backed troops attacked numerous villages in Paan District, Burma, causing the flight of at least 3,000 internally displaced persons (I
Kaitlin Barker 5-20-2009

I spent my Monday lunch hour, and maybe longer due to D.C. traffic, standing with some 30 protesters across the street from the Burmese embassy, waving signs and shouting at curtained windows. Hundreds of other demonstrators around the world were also protesting on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Let us pray for Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe and for the Burmese generals. Let us send them our love. This is the counterintuitive radicality of the Christian witness.