· January, 2009

Stories about Refugees from January, 2009

Palestine: “They used our clothes as a toilet”

  31 January 2009

Bloggers in Gaza are gathering information about what happened during the recent Israeli attacks. In this update, we hear from families whose homes were looted and left covered with faeces by Israeli soldiers, learn what the effects of DIME weapons are, and are told the story of a father whose baby daughter was shot, his wife breastfeeding the girl as she bled to death.

Rohingya Muslims facing cultural genocide

  30 January 2009

Prof. Marranci writes that Rohingya Muslims are “victims of their lack of strategic value, both for their native Southeast Asia and the wider international community.” The Rohingyas are also “facing a slow, silent cultural genocide.”

Jamaica, Zimbabwe: Hunger Strike

  29 January 2009

“Do people in Jamaica and the Caribbean care enough about events in Zimbabwe to lend their help to this call for moral action?”: Annie Paul has a friend who is on a hunger strike to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe and tells us how we can help.

The plight of the Rohingya

  28 January 2009

The Rohingya have been called “trafficked victims”, “refugees”, “forced migrants” and “illegal migrants”. The Irrawaddy provides a comprehensive background to the situation of the Rohingya. This issue has involved Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and even the United States.

Palestine: Assessing the Aftermath in Gaza

  19 January 2009

On Sunday evening the Israel Defense Forces began a troop withdrawal from Gaza, following three straight weeks of attacks. Israel's unilateral ceasefire was announced earlier in the day, and met with an offer for a one-week ceasefire from Hamas. Ayesha Saldanha shares blog reactions from Gaza.

Thailand: Rohingya refugee story coverage

  18 January 2009

Bangkok Pundit provides a round up of the story about Rohingya refugees who were allegedly pushed out to sea by the Thai Navy. The story has been reported in detail by BBC News. According to Bangkok Pundit the news was originally broken by the website Phuket Wan.

Bosnia & Herzegovina: Accounts by Wojciech Tochman and Peter Lippman

  18 January 2009

Kirk Johnson of Americans for Bosnia writes about the newly-published English translation of a collection of Polish-language articles by journalist Wojciech Tochman (“Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia”): “I can only highly recommend that anyone interested in the human stories behind official statistics on refugee returns and...

Flashfloods and landslides in south Philippines

  17 January 2009

More than 115,000 people in the Philippines’ northern Mindanao region had fled to safety due to flashfloods and landslides. The local government reported that the series of flashfloods that struck the region have reached humanitarian crisis proportions

Indonesia: Flooding in 13 provinces

  17 January 2009

Thirteen Indonesian provinces experienced flooding the past week due to torrential rains. The disaster has claimed the lives of 14 people while three others are still missing. More than 50,000 people have to be evacuated. Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, is under up to two meters of water.

Palestine: Israeli Troops Enter Residential Areas of Gaza City

  16 January 2009

Thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing from Gaza City as IDF troops have entered residential areas. A number of the foreign activists in Gaza were helping at Al Quds hospital when it came under attack, and managed to get out reports of what was going on. We hear from them and other bloggers in this roundup of Gaza blogs by Ayesha Saldanha.

Japan: Hakenmura, the Temp Workers Village

  12 January 2009

Over 300 people spent their nights between New Year`s Eve and the 5th of January in a tent camp stationed at Hibiya Park in central Tôkyô, referred to as 年越し派遣村 (toshikoshi hakenmura, or lit. “New Year's Village for Temporary Workers”). The people staying in Hakenmura were temporary workers (派遣社員, haken...

Azerbaijan: IDPs

  10 January 2009

“sIDe-tALKs” Azerbaijan visits Azeri refugees and IDPs displaced by the war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s. The blog posts photographs of the visit and says that while attempts to integrate refugees and IDPs into Azerbaijani society have gained momentum, much more remains...