Anita Schug | |
---|---|
Born | Myanmar |
Citizenship | Burmese/Rohingya |
Occupation(s) | Neurosurgeon, Humanitarian |
Known for | Spokesperson on Rohingya issues |
Anita Schug is a Rohingya neurosurgeon and human rights activist based in Solothurn, Switzerland. [1] [2] [3] At the age of five she fled Myanmar with her family, learned medicine in Ukraine and is a co-founder of the Rohingya Medics Organisation. [4] [5]
Schug was born in Rangoon, Myanmar. [2] Doctors refused care to her mother at the hospital when giving birth because her family is Rohingya Muslim. [2] Her father was a chemical engineer. [2]
In the 1980s, when Anita Schug was five years old, her family fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, having paid people smugglers. [2] [1]
Her family then moved to Pakistan, to the United Arab Emirates and then to Ukraine, where Schug studied medicine. [1] [2] She speaks eight languages. [2]
Schug was the head of Women and Children Affairs for the European Rohingya Council [6] [7] and is the co-founder of the Rohingya Medics Organisation. [8] [9]
In 2017 she spoke of the thousands of Rohingya women killed in Rakhine state [4] and confirmed reports of violence against Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. [6]
In September 2017, Schug called the violence in Myanmar "a slow burning genocide". [10]
In 2018, she spoke about the widespread sexual abuse of Rohingya women in Buthidaung prison, Myanmar. [11]
In 2020, Schug spoke of the practical difficulties of following World Health Organization advice for social distancing for those who lived in crowded refugee camps, and called for faster distribution of food to refugees. [12]
Schug has two sisters who are also both doctors. [1] [2] She has two children and is married to a German trauma surgeon. [2]
The Rohingya people are a stateless ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist. The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice to investigate genocide.
The Burmee Colony is one of the neighbourhoods of Landhi Subdivisions in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.
There is a history of persecution of Muslims in Myanmar that continues to the present day. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country, with significant Christian and Muslim minorities. While Muslims served in the government of Prime Minister U Nu (1948–63), the situation changed with the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. While a few continued to serve, most Christians and Muslims were excluded from positions in the government and army. In 1982, the government introduced regulations that denied citizenship to anyone who could not prove Burmese ancestry from before 1823. This disenfranchised many Muslims in Myanmar, even though they had lived in Myanmar for several generations.
The 2012 Rakhine State riots were a series of conflicts primarily between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar, though by October Muslims of all ethnicities had begun to be targeted. The riots started came after weeks of sectarian disputes including a gang rape and murder of a Rakhine woman which police allege was committed by three Rohingya Muslims. On 8 June 2012, Rohingyas started to protest from Friday's prayers in Maungdaw township. More than a dozen residents were killed after police started firing. A state of emergency was declared in Rakhine, allowing the military to participate in administration of the region. As of 22 August 2012, officially there were 88 casualties: 57 Muslims and 31 Buddhists. An estimated 90,000 people were displaced by the violence. Around 2,528 houses were burned; of those, 1,336 belonged to Rohingyas and 1,192 belonged to Rakhines.
The Rohingya conflict is an ongoing conflict in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine State, characterised by sectarian violence between the Rohingya Muslim and Rakhine Buddhist communities, a military crackdown on Rohingya civilians by Myanmar's security forces, and militant attacks by Rohingya insurgents in Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung Townships, which border Bangladesh.
The Arakan Army, sometimes referred to as the Arakha Army, is an ethno-nationalist armed organisation based in Rakhine State (Arakan). Founded in April 2009, the AA is the military wing of the United League of Arakan (ULA). The Arakan Army are followers of Theravada Buddhism. It is currently led by Commander-in-Chief Major General Twan Mrat Naing and vice deputy commander-in-chief Brigadier General Nyo Twan Awng. The Arakan Army states that the objective of its armed revolution is to restore the sovereignty of the Arakan people. It was declared a terrorist organization in 2020 by Myanmar, and again by the State Administration Council junta in 2024.
The Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) is a Rohingya insurgent group and political organisation. It was founded in 1982 following a large scale military operation conducted by the Tatmadaw. The group discontinued its armed rebellion in 1998 but rearmed itself following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.
In 2015, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Nearly one million fled to neighbouring Bangladesh and some travelled to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formerly known as Harakah al-Yaqin, is a Rohingya insurgent group active in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. According to a December 2016 report by the International Crisis Group, it is led by Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, a Rohingya man who was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and grew up in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Other members of its leadership include a committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia.
The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017. The crisis forced over a million Rohingya to flee to other countries. Most fled to Bangladesh, resulting in the creation of the world's largest refugee camp, while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, where they continue to face persecution. Many other countries consider these events ethnic cleansing.
Violent clashes have been ongoing in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine Statesince October 2016. Insurgent attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) have led to sectarian violence perpetrated by Myanmar's military and the local Buddhist population against predominantly Muslim Rohingya civilians. The conflict has sparked international outcry and was described as an ethnic cleansing by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In August 2017, the situation worsened and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Myanmar into Bangladesh, with an estimated 500,000 refugees having arrived by 27 September 2017. In January 2019, Arakan Army insurgents raided border police posts in Buthidaung Township, joining the conflict and beginning their military campaign in northern Rakhine State against the Burmese military.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh mostly refer to forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals from Myanmar who are living in Bangladesh. The Rohingya people have experienced ethnic and religious persecution in Myanmar for decades. Hundreds of thousands have fled to other countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines. The majority have escaped to Bangladesh, where there are two official, registered refugee camps. Recently violence in Myanmar has escalated, so the number of refugees in Bangladesh has increased rapidly. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 723,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017.
Kutupalong refugee camp is the world's largest refugee camp. It is located in Ukhia, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, and is inhabited mostly by Rohingya refugees who fled from ethnic and religious persecution in neighboring Myanmar. It is one of two government-run refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, the other being the Nayapara refugee camp.
The Rohingya genocide is a term applied to the persecution—including mass killings, mass rapes, village-burnings, deprivations, ethnic cleansing, and internments—of the Rohingya people of western Myanmar.
Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation, officially known as Operation Pyi Thaya in English, was a military operation conducted by the Tatmadaw in northern Rakhine State, near Myanmar's border with Bangladesh. The operation took place between 1991 and 1992, under the military junta of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), officially as a response to the military expansion of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO).
On 25 August 2017, Hindu villages in a cluster known as Kha Maung Seik in the northern Maungdaw District of Rakhine State in Myanmar were attacked and 99 Bengali Hindu villagers were massacred by Muslim insurgents from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). A month later, the Myanmar Army discovered mass graves containing the corpses of 45 Hindus, most of whom were women and children.
The Chut Pyin massacre was a massacre of Rohingyas by the Myanmar Army and armed Rakhine locals that purportedly took place in the village of Chut Pyin, in Rakhine State, Myanmar on 25 August 2017, the same day Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents attacked security forces along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border. The event was first brought to attention after a report was published by Human Rights Watch, which detailed accounts of rape and killings from survivors.
Jasmin Akter, is a cricketer, who was born in a Nayapara refugee camp in Bangladesh, and is Rohingya, an ethnic group savagely persecuted from Myanmar. She came to live in the Bradford, UK as a refugee, was a child carer for her mother, and started an all-Asian girls cricket team. She represented England in the first Street Child Cricket World Cup Charity match, and almost won. She was named one of the BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women in 2019.
On 22 March 2021, a fire that had started during the late afternoon in the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, destroyed a large portion of the camp, killed over a dozen people, and left nearly a thousand injured or missing. Thought to have begun when gas cylinders used for cooking exploded, 100 firemen fought the blaze, which burned for around eight hours until midnight.
The Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA) is an ethnic Rohingya insurgent group founded by Nabi Hossain and Abdullah Kane.