Tirana Hassan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Singapore |
| Education | University of South Australia (BA) University of Adelaide (LLB) University of Oxford (MSt) |
| Relatives | Riaz Hassan |
Tirana Hassan is an Australian lawyer, social worker, and human rights activist. She is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, [1] an international non-governmental organization based in New York City. [2]
Hassan was born in Singapore to a Pakistani father Riaz Hassan, who is an Australian academic, and a Tamil Malaysian-born Sri Lankan and Chinese mother Selva Arulamapalam, a dentist. Her childhood was spent in Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, and Australia. She attended high school at Scotch College in Australia and holds bachelor's degrees with honours in social work from the University of South Australia, and law from the University of Adelaide. In 2008, she received a master's of studies in human rights law from Oxford University. [3]
While in her final year of law school, Hassan co-founded the Woomera Lawyers Group, a refugee advocacy organization that provided legal services to asylum seekers detained in Australia. She was based part-time at the Woomera Detention Centre. [4] [5]
In August 2022, Hassan became the acting executive director for Human Rights Watch after Kenneth Roth retired from the role. [6] Before taking the position, Hassan worked as the deputy executive director and chief programs officer, overseeing the organization's research, legal and policy, communications, and advocacy departments. [4]
From 2010 to 2015, Hassan was a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch's Emergencies Division, responsible for human rights investigations in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. [7] In 2011 while conducting a research mission in Indonesia, Hassan was detained with fellow HRW researcher Andreas Harsono while investigating persecution and violence in the East Java region. [8]
As a researcher, Hassan published reports on violence against women in Cote d’Ivoire and Somalia, uprisings in Egypt in Bahrain, the Red Shirts political movement in Thailand, armed conflict in Libya, Sudan and South Sudan, child recruitment and attacks on schools in Somalia, sectarian violence in Burma and armed conflict in Iraq. [9]
From 2015 to 2020, Hassan was director of Amnesty International’s crisis response program, leading teams of investigators and building the organization's capacity in innovative research methodology, including using digital verification research methods for evidence collection in partnerships. [10] [11]
During her time at Amnesty, Hassan worked on crises in Yemen, Syria, and European refugee issues. She covered the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis, when tens of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar by the Myanmar security forces. [10]
Prior to attending law school, Hassan was a social worker in Los Angeles, California, London, United Kingdom, and Adelaide, Australia. [12]
From 2003 to 2010, Hassan worked in humanitarian aid operations as a protection specialist focusing on children in armed conflict, sexual and gender-based violence programs, and humanitarian protection across Asia and Africa. She has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and was Save the Children's child protection program director for West Africa. [2] [6]
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations related organization working in the field of migration. The organization implements operational assistance programmes for migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.
Noer Hassan Wirajuda is an Indonesian politician who was the foreign minister of Indonesia from 2001 to 2009. He served during the presidencies of Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Human rights in Myanmar under its military regime have long been regarded as among the worst in the world. In 2022, Freedom House rated Myanmar’s human rights at 9 out 100.
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.
During World War II, Japanese forces invaded Burma, which was then under British colonial rule. The British forces retreated and, in the power vacuum left behind, considerable violence erupted between pro-Japanese Buddhist Rakhine and pro-British Muslim villagers. As part of the 'stay-behind' strategy to impede the Japanese advance, the Commander-in-Chief of forces in Delhi, Wavell, established "V-Force", which armed Rohingya locals in northern Arakan to create a buffer zone from Japanese invasion when they retreated.
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.
Brad Adams is the founder and executive director at Climate Rights International. Prior to that Adams was executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch from 2002-2022, overseeing investigations, advocacy and media work in twenty countries, including China, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, and North Korea. Adams has worked on issues including the protection of civil society, human rights defenders, and environmental activists; freedom of expression, association, assembly, and information; media freedom; political prisoners; women’s rights; children’s rights; land rights; labor rights; refugees and migrants; international justice; and armed conflict.
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.
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 following lists events in the year 2017 in Myanmar.
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.
Bhasan Char, also known as Char Bhasani, is an island in Hatiya Upazila, Bangladesh. Until 2019 it was known as Thengar Char. It is located in the Bay of Bengal, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) from Sandwip island and 37 miles (60 km) from the mainland.
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).
Truth and reconciliation in Myanmar refers to the examination of human rights abuses in Myanmar, particularly involving those suffered by the Rohingya people. From a coup d’état in 1962 to a general election in 2010, Myanmar was controlled by a military regime. The junta was officially dissolved in 2011 into a civilian government, but there are lasting effects from the decades of military rule. Currently, the income gap in Myanmar is one of the largest in the world, and there are claims that many members of the previous regime continue to hold positions of power. In 2012, U.N. Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana called on the creation of a truth commission by Myanmar to look into the human rights abuses committed by the previous government's rule. Quintana also called for an "independent and credible investigation" into the conflict between the Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslim minority. In 2015, the Network for Human Rights Documentation Burma (ND-Burma) came out with a report that called for the acknowledgement and reparation for both crimes committed under the military junta, and the abuses currently ongoing.
As Indonesia did not sign the convention on the status of refugees and lacks any domestic legislations providing refugees rights, refugees in Indonesia do not have the right to employment, permanent residency or citizenship.
In December 2023, students from various universities in Aceh, Indonesia protested and rioted against Rohingya refugees. The protests took place at the Balee Meuseuraya Hall in Banda Aceh.
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