Consider the following Watermelon Tomato Salad with Feta & Toasted Almonds recipe by Chef Charles Wiley of ZuZu for light spring or Ramadan meals.

Yield:     6-8 Servings

1 each Watermelon (4-1/2 lb seedless, will yield 3 lb trimmed) very cold
As needed Kosher salt
¼ tsp Black peppercorns
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1 Tbsp vinegar
3 Tbsp Basil & mint, chopped
1 lb Tomatoes, cored and cut in ¾ inch chunks
4-6 oz Feta cheese
¼ cup Almonds, toasted
1/2 cup Tender greens

Directions:
1. Peel the watermelon and cut into fourths lengthwise, then cut each fourth into 9-10 slices. Arrange on a platter and sprinkle with salt.
2. Crack the peppercorns on a cutting board with the bottom of a skillet or in a mortar and pestle. It should not be too fine; set aside.
3. Whisk together the oil, vinegar and herbs in a large mixing bowl; add the tomatoes and toss. Check seasoning and arrange on top of the melon. Top with the cheese, peppercorns, almonds and greens.

Special note from the chef: “The melon can be peeled ahead of time and refrigerated, however the dish should be assembled at the last minute and served immediately as the salt will draw the liquid out of the melon fairly quickly.”

[Source: www.azfamily.com]

Muslims among Truman Scholarship recipients

The prestigious Truman Scholarship recipients for 2014 were announced last week and there are  quite a few Muslim students among them. They are among 59 students selected from 655 nominations from nearly 300 institutionsannounced as recipients by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Each one will receive up to $30,000 in scholarship money for their graduate studies, as well as “priority admission and supplemental financial aid at some premier graduate institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and special internship opportunities within the federal government, according to the Truman Scholarship’s website.

A few of them along with their profiles are as follows:

Safiya Subegdjo (Tufts University)

Safiya is a junior studying International Relations and Leadership Studies. She plans to obtain graduate degrees in public health and medicine, aspiring to be a global health diplomat. For four years, Safiya has worked with resettled refugees in the greater Boston area and currently coordinates the Tufts University Refugee Assistance Program. Through the Institute for Global Leadership, Safiya traveled to Jordan with a team of student researchers, assessing the challenges of a temporary health system for Syrian refugees. She also worked on implementing health education initiatives at the Foundation for Mother and Child Health in Jakarta, Indonesia. Safiya is a Tisch Scholar for Citizenship and Public Service and a volunteer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Sarah Mirza (University of Georgia)

Sarah studies Spanish and human geography. She hopes to obtain a Master’s degree in Geography with a focus on labor and migration and, later, to attend law school and specialize in immigration law. These degrees will help further her work in community organizing, which is currently informed by her experiences as a founding member of the Undocumented Student Alliance at UGA and as an intern at Workers Defense Project in Austin, TX.

Rana Abdelhamid, Middlebury College

Rana is a Posse Scholar pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in International Politics and Economics.  She speaks Arabic and Spanish and is passionate about female empowerment.  Prior to starting college, she founded New York City’s Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE).  This self-defense, entrepreneurship and leadership organization has reached over 150 women through its fellowship and summer programs.  As an organizer and human rights activist, she also serves as the Student Activist Coordinator and Co-Chair of the National Youth Action Committee for Amnesty International USA. At Middlebury, she has been elected to the Student Government Association for the past three years, works as a research assistant in the Political Science department and is a fellow for the Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

Yusef Al-Jarani, University of Chicago

Yusef is American by nationality, Libyan by memory, Muslim by religion, Western by culture, and universalistic by principle. He believes that in this era of globalism and economic interdependence, security and prosperity are no longer components of a zero-sum game where one country’s loss is another’s gain. Alleviating youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa can advance the economic and security interests of the U.S., our allies, and the region. He hopes to use the knowledge and skills he has gained through the great education this country afforded him to honor Truman’s legacy and engage with the world. In doing so, he hopes to help a people who so desperately need it and, in turn, give back to the country that supported him, invested in him, and allowed him to do the same for others in need.

Hira Baig, Rice University

Hira, a Sugar Land, TX native, is pursing degrees in Political Science and Policy Studies. Currently working for Teach for America, Hira also interned for the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission, the U.S. House of Representatives, the World Affairs Council of Houston, and various political campaigns. Hira has traveled to London and Shanghai to research the impacts of Islamophobia on Muslim communities. Chosen as a coach for Interfaith Youth Core’s Leadership Institutes, Hira is spending her junior year traveling the country to help coach future interfaith leaders. With interests in religion, public policy and politics, Hira will pursue law school and a career at the Department of State.

Rahfin Faruk, Southern Methodist University

Rahfin, an SMU President’s Scholar, is an Economics, Political Science, Public Policy and Religious Studies major with a minor in Mathematics. He intends to pursue a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Public Policy in order to work in the social enterprise sector. Rahfin, the former editor in chief of the SMU student newspaper, has been published in The Dallas Morning News and The Huffington Post. He founded a zero-interest micro finance initiative focused on financial inclusion, and he has interned at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the U.S. Department of State.

Syed Imaad helps develop MRI sensor

CAMBRIDGE,MA–Syed Imaad, a recent master’s degree recipient from the prestigious MIT, is part of a team that has has invented an injectable device that reveals oxygen levels over several weeks and can be read with magnetic resonance imagigs (MRI).

Using this kind of sensor, doctors may be able to better determine radiation doses and to monitor whether treatments are having the desired effect, according to the researchers, who describe the device in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The team was led by professor Michael Cima.

Shawn Ahmed’s research links aging to cellular interactions

University of North carolina professor Shawn Ahmed, PhD, shows that tweaking specific cellular mechanisms helps tiny worms overcome infertility through a pathway of cellular interactions that result in long life. The finding gives clues to how the molecular interactions in cells of one organism affect progeny many generations later.

The evidence for what causes aging has typically been limited to the study of a single organism’s lifespan; our cells divide many times throughout our lives and eventually cause organs and our bodies to age and break down. But new research from the UNC School of Medicine suggests that how we age might depend on cellular interactions that we inherit from ancestors throughout many generations.

By studying the reproductive cells of nematodes – tiny worms found in soil and compost bins – Shawn Ahmed, PhD, an associate professor of genetics, identified the Piwi/piRNA genome silencing pathway, the loss of which results in infertility after many generations. He also found a signaling pathway – a series of molecular interactions inside cells – that he could tweak to overcome infertility while also causing the worms to live longer adult lives.

The research, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cambridge and described in a paper published in the journal Cell Reports, suggests that it’s possible to manipulate the aging process of progeny before they’re even born.

The finding gives scientists a deeper understanding of what may govern aging and age-related diseases, such as some cancers and neurodegenerative conditions

Islamic Awareness Week held at UT-Arlington

ARLINGTON,TX–Muslim students at the University of Texas-Arlington held several events last week to create awareness about Islam and Muslims in the wider community. A series of talks on Islam+Women, Islam+Science, and Islam+Prayer were addressed by prominent speakers.

“We’re just trying to introduce Islam to the overall campus of UTA, trying to get some exposure so that people can know more about us and actually apply a face to Muslims on campus,” an event coordinator told the student newspaper.

The talks were well attended and sparked serious discussions.

16-19

Comments of Mr. Falk at the Term Out of his Duties of Human Rights Rapporteur on The Occupied (Palestinian) Territories

By Geoffrey Cook, TMO

Geneva (Switzerland)–Your reporter had the privilege to hear the eighty-three year-old Professor Richard Falk, Esq. (emeritus) of International Law now retired from Princeton University in New Jersey.

Since your author is writing to an Islamic audience, I shall quote Wikipedia, “Falk was born into an assimilationist New York Jewish family — which all but repudiated the ethnic side of Jewishness.  Defining himself as “an American Jew,” he says that having an outsider status, with a sense of not belonging, may have influenced his later role as a critic of American foreign policy.  His being Jewish signifies above all for Falk, ‘to be preoccupied with overcoming injustice and thirsting for justice in the world, and that means being respectful toward other peoples regardless of their nationality or religion, and empathetic in the face of human suffering whoever and wherever victimization is encountered.’” 

Your commentator makes this quote because, like Judge Goldstone, it most assuredly does not mean to be Jewish to be anti-Islamic.  It is Zionism in the Middle East that is repressing Muslims there (or here), and not Judaism!  In fact, it is your author’s opinion that progressive Jews and Muslims are “natural allies” in finding peace and justice in the Holy land!

Dr. Falk was talking to us while he was awaiting the presentation of his Report to the United Nations in this city on the Lake of the same name on his findings on the conditions within the Occupied Territories in regards to human rights garnered during his six-year tenure as the (U.N.’s) Special Rapporteur on the Occupied (or Palestinian) Territories.

In the estimation of your writer, Dr. Falk is one of the moral giants of this Century!  On the eve of his testimony before he was to be termed (six-years) from his office, he stated that the situation there on the Mediterranean and the Jordan (riverine) Valley is as severe as ever.  Especially, within Gaza which is living under great distress.   Conditions have deteriorated for that mini-“State” Since the coup in Cairo.  The treatment of the Strip by its surrounding neighbors violates the Geneva Convention, Article 33 of 1949 which outlines the “the status and treatment of protected persons…”  

Falk describes the West Bank as under a state of Apartheid (which is the systematic persecution of one racial [ethnic/sectarian] group by another and was recognized as a Crime against Humanity by the U.N. [in 1976].)  Dr. Falk denounced other policies of the Israelis, also, as Crimes against Humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court’s Explanatory Memorandum [1998 and put into force as of 2002] as “are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack…”)  There has been a total lack of responsibility by the occupiers (the Israelis) to respect the Fourth (Geneva) Convention.  (See http://www. icrc. org /applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Comment.xsp?view Comments=LookUpCOMART&articleUNID= 78EB50EAD6EE7 AA1C12563CD0051B9D) within the territories of which they occupy.  This prolonged Occupation resembles a de facto annexation that he concludes will be difficult to reverse.  At this time — at cessation of his tenure — he concludes that he does not perceive any prospect for change in the immediate future because of the steady expansion of the Israeli Settlements upon traditional Palestinian lands.

He predicts there is a potential prospect for change because of the international outrage that has been generated in opposition to the brutality of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians.

For the present, though, there has to be a signal from Tel Aviv to a commitment for peace to proceed; therefore, “We must stand in solidarity for justice and sustainable peace between both peoples!”

16-19

The Canadian Charger

File:  Putin and Obama

There are many things that can be said about the situation in the Ukraine, and more specifically about the Crimea. The first thing to note is that in the international order the big powers do what they will and the small ones do what they must.

Thus, the Monroe Doctrine has involved the U.S. in invasions of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and in organizing the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala, replacing it with a vicious dictatorship.  It forced Cuba to grant it control of Guantanamo, as the price for granting Cuban independence—or, more accurately, dependence.

While it acts to secure its Latin perimeter, it also surrounds Russia with bases and secret prison-torture centres.  Russia is not much concerned with what the U.S. does in the Americas, but it does not much like its invading what it sees as its security zone.  All this is not said in defense of Russian actions, simply to understand its behavior in context.

The most important thing about the big power bullying exhibited by both the U.S. and Russia is the impact on international security.

Let’s look first at the impact of American behavior in Latin America, focusing on Nicaragua.  The United States actively aided the contras in undermining the Sandinista régime, which took the U.S. to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.  The U.S.  Was a signatory to compulsory jurisdiction of the court, but it withdrew its adherence when faced with the suit.  The court ruled against the United States.  This action by the United States was the most serious undermining of international law since the Second World War.  It means that the United States, and hence all major powers, are not subject to legal limitations on their conduct.  Major powers do what they will.  Lesser ones do what they must.

Russia had every reason to be concerned about American behavior in the Ukraine.  American and other Western funding of oppositional efforts in the Ukraine helped to undermine the Ukrainian government that was friendly to Russia.  Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, went in person to the Ukraine last December and handed out cookies to demonstrators in Maidan Square, demonstrators engaged in trying to topple the government.  A telephone conversation between her and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, intercepted and widely distributed, has the two of them plotting out just which individuals should be taking power in the Ukraine and which international organizations should be involved in arranging the transfer of power.  She proposed involving the U.N. to mediate and help establish what might be termed “order.”  Why not the European Union?  “Fuck the EU,” she told the ambassador.

Vladimir Putin’s actions in the Crimea are parallel to those of the U.S. in the world.  Nuland might well take lessons from him, and perhaps she has.  Nevertheless, Russia’s intervention is a danger to world peace and security equivalent to that of the American refusal to abide by the decision of the International Court of Justice.

When the Ukraine became independent in 1991, it had a truly massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.  Three years later, it shipped these to Russia, in exchange for the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which it signed along with Russia, the U.S., and Britain.  The memorandum made the Ukraine a non-nuclear power in exchange for a guarantee of its territorial integrity.

Regardless of what one might think of the various players on the political stage in the Ukraine, the Russian invasion of the Crimea is a serious blow to international security.  Now any country considering giving up nuclear weapons will think at least twice before doing so.  If the Ukraine had kept nuclear arms, a Russian invasion would have been far less likely.

So hang onto the bomb.

16-19

WASHINGTON – The US Monday urged Egypt to stop mass trials and sentencing of its nationals, as a court handed down death sentence to another 683 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, reports IANS.

“The United States is deeply troubled by the continued use of mass trials and sentencing in Egypt, and particularly by today’s death sentence against 683 defendants,” Xinhua quoted White House spokesperson Jay Carney as saying in a statement.

“We urge the Egyptian government to end the use of mass trials, reverse this and previous mass sentences, and ensure that every citizen is afforded due process.”

The Brotherhood’s top leader Mohamed Badie is among the defendants accused of inciting violence and murdering policemen in conflicts sparked by the Egyptian military’s ouster of Mohamed Morsi, the first elected president of Egypt, in July last year.

The same court sentenced 529 Brotherhood members and supporters to death last month, as the interim government has branded the group, to which Morsi belongs, a terrorist organisation.

“Today’s verdict, like the one last month, defies even the most basic standards of international justice,” Carney said. “A fair and transparent criminal justice system free of intimidation and political retribution is an important part of any democracy, and the Egyptian people deserve no less.”

Washington has partially lifted its freeze on assistance to Egypt, enacted after Morsi’s removal, with plans to deliver 10 Apache helicopters and some $650 million in military aid this year.

16-19

By Josh Rogin

The secretary of state said that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could become ‘an apartheid state,’ like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming over the comparison.
If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to the Jewish state. Kerry’s use of the loaded term is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and it could attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.

It wasn’t the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”
According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the “crime of apartheid” is defined as “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The term is most often used in reference to the system of racial segregation and oppression that governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994.

Former president Jimmy Carter came under fire in 2007 for titling his book on Middle East peace Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. Carter has said publicly that his views on Israeli treatment of the Palestinians are a main cause of his poor relationship with President Obama and his lack of current communication with the White House. But Carter explained after publishing the book that he was referring to apartheid-type policies in the West Bank, not Israel proper, and he was not accusing Israel of institutionalized racism.

“Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank, and it’s based on the desire or avarice of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land,” Carter said.

“Injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal [of peace],” Obama said. “It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.”

Leading experts, including Richard Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court who led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008 and 2009, have argued that comparisons between the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and “apartheid” are offensive and wrong.

“One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues ‘apartheid’ policies,” Goldstone wrote in The New York Times in 2011. “It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.”

In a 2008 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, then-Sen. Barack Obama shot down the notion that the word “apartheid” was acceptable in a discussion about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians:

“There’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal,” Obama said. “It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told The Daily Beast that Kerry was simply repeating his view, shared by others, that a two-state solution is the only way for Israel to remain a Jewish state in peace with the Palestinians.

“Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister Livni, and previous Israeli Prime Ministers Olmert and Barak, was reiterating why there’s no such thing as a one-state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish State. He was talking about the kind of future Israel wants and the kind of future both Israelis and Palestinians would want to envision,” she said. “The only way to have two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two-state solution. And without a two-state solution, the level of prosperity and security the Israeli and Palestinian people deserve isn’t possible.”

But leaders of pro-Israel organizations told The Daily Beast that Kerry’s reference to “apartheid” was appalling and inappropriately alarmist because of its racial connotations and historical context.

“One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues ‘apartheid’ policies,” Goldstone wrote in The New York Times in 2011. “It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.”

Yet Israel’s leaders have employed the term, as well. In 2010, for example, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak used language very similar to Kerry’s. “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of ¬Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”

“While we’ve heard Secretary Kerry express his understandable fears about alternative prospects for Israel to a two-state deal and we understand the stakes involved in reaching that deal, the use of the word ‘apartheid’ is not helpful at all. It takes the discussion to an entirely different dimension,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, an organization that has been supportive of Kerry’s peace process initiative. “In trying to make his point, Kerry reaches into diplomatic vocabulary to raise the stakes, but in doing so he invokes notions that have no place in the discussion.”

Kerry has used dire warnings twice in the past to paint a picture of doom for Israel if the current peace process fails. Last November, Kerry warned of a third intifada of Palestinian violence and increased isolation of Israel if the peace process failed. In March, Democrats and Republican alike criticized Kerry for suggesting that if peace talks fail, it would bolster the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“It’s in the Palestinian playbook to tie Israel to these extreme notions of time being on the Palestinian side, that demographics are on the Palestinian side, and that Israel has to confront notions of the Jewishness of the state,” Harris said.

Kerry on Friday repeated his warning that a dissolution of the peace process might lead to more Palestinian violence. “People grow so frustrated with their lot in life that they begin to take other choices and go to dark places they’ve been before, which forces confrontation,” he said.

The secretary of state also implied, but did not say outright, that if the governments of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas left power, there could be a change in the prospects for peace. If “there is a change of government or a change of heart,” Kerry said, “something will happen.”

Kerry criticized Israeli settlement construction as being unhelpful to the peace process and he also criticized Palestinian leaders for making statements that declined to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

“There is a fundamental confrontation and it is over settlements. Fourteen thousand new settlement units announced since we began negotiations. It’s very difficult for any leader to deal under that cloud,” Kerry said.

He acknowledged that the formal negotiating process that he initiated and led since last summer may soon stop. But he maintained that his efforts to push for a final settlement will continue in one form or another.

“The reports of the demise of the peace process have consistently been misunderstood and misreported. And even we are now getting to the moment of obvious confrontation and hiatus, but I would far from declare it dead,” Kerry said. “You would say this thing is going to hell in a handbasket, and who knows, it might at some point, but I don’t think it is right now, yet.”

Kerry gave both Israeli and Palestinian leaders credit for sticking with the peace process for this long. But he added that both sides were to blame for the current impasse in the talks; neither leader was ready to make the tough decisions necessary for achieving peace.

“There’s a period here where there needs to be some regrouping. I don’t think it’s unhealthy for both of them to have to stare over the abyss and understand where the real tensions are and what the real critical decisions are that have to be made,” he said. “Neither party is quite ready to make it at this point in time. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to make these decisions.”

Kerry said that he was considering, at some point, publicly laying out a comprehensive U.S. plan for a final agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, in a last-ditch effort to forge a deal before the Obama administration leaves office in 2017.

“We have enough time to do any number of things, including the potential at some point in time that we will just put something out there. ‘Here it is, folks. This is what it looks like. Take it or leave it,’” Kerry said.

16-19

About 1.3 million Rohingya live in the predominantly Buddhist country of 60 million, almost all of them in Rakhine state.

About 1.3 million Rohingya live in the predominantly Buddhist country of 60 million, almost all of them in Rakhine state.

SITTWE, Myanmar: The two children stood on the beach, at the end of the only world they knew, torn between land and sea.

They couldn’t go back to their tiny Muslim village in Myanmar’s northwest Rakhine because it had been devoured in a fire set by an angry Buddhist mob. In the smoke and chaos, the siblings became separated from their family. And after seven months of searching, they had lost hope of finding anyone alive.

The only way was forward.

Hungry and scared, they eyed a rickety wooden fishing boat in the darkness. Mohamad Husein, just 15, dug into his pocket and pulled out a little wad of money for the captain. He and his 9-year-old sister, Senwara Begum, climbed on board, cramming themselves tightly between the other ethnic Rohingya in the small hull.

As the ship pushed off, they didn’t realize they were among hundreds, if not thousands of children joining one of the world’s biggest boat exoduses since the Vietnam War. They only understood it wasn’t safe to stay in a country that didn’t want them.

Mohamad had no idea where they were headed. And as Senwara looked back in tears, she wondered if she would ever see her parents again.

Neither could imagine the horrors that lay ahead.

From Malaysia to Australia, countries easily reachable by boat have been implementing policies and practices to ensure that Rohingya Muslims don’t wash up on their shores — from shoving them back to sea, where they risk being sold as slaves, to flat out barring the refugees from stepping onto their soil.

Despite pleas from the United Nations, which considers the Rohingya to be among the most persecuted groups on earth, many governments in the region have refused to sign refugee conventions and protocols, meaning they are not obligated to help. The countries said they fear adopting the international agreements could attract a flood of immigrants they cannot support.

However, rights groups said they are failing members of the religious minority at their most vulnerable hour, even as more women and children join the increasing mass departure.

“The sense of desperation and hopelessness is growing,” warned Vivian Tan of the UN Refugee Agency.

About 1.3 million Rohingya live in the predominantly Buddhist country of 60 million, almost all of them in Rakhine state. Myanmar considers them illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, though some families have lived here for generations.

When the country was under military rule, young men took to the seas on small, dilapidated boats every year in search of a better life. But since the bumpy transition to democracy in 2011, sectarian violence has killed up to 280 Rohingya and forced more than 140,000 others from their homes. Now, people of all ages are fleeing, many on massive cargo ships.

Women and children made up 5 per cent to 15 per cent of the estimated 75,000 passengers who have left since the riots began in mid-June 2012, said Chris Lewa of the nonprofit Arakan Project, a group that has tracked the boat journeys for a decade. The year before, around 9,000 people fled, most of them men.

It’s a dangerous voyage: Nearly 2,000 Rohingya have died or gone missing in the past two years, Lewa said. Unaccompanied children like Senwara and her brother are among the most at risk.

The Associated Press reported from Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on their plight, interviewing family members, witnesses and aid groups. Data were collected from the UN, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and news reports at the time.

The relief the two children felt after making it safely away from land quickly faded. Their small boat was packed with 63 people, including 14 children and 10 women, one seven months pregnant. There were no life jackets, and neither sibling could swim. The sun baked their skin.

Senwara took small sips of water from a shared tin can inside the hull piled with aching, crumpled arms and legs. With each roiling set of waves came the stench of vomit.

Nearly two weeks passed. Then suddenly a boat approached with at least a dozen Myanmar soldiers on board.

They ordered the Rohingya men to remove their shirts and lie down, one by one. Their hands were bound. Then they were punched, kicked and bludgeoned with wooden planks and iron rods, passengers on the boat said.

They howled and begged God for mercy.

“Tell us, do you have your Allah?” one Rohingya survivor quoted the soldiers as saying. “There is no Allah!”

The police began flogging Mohamad before he even stood up, striking his little sister in the process. They tied his hands, lit a match and laughed as the smell of burnt flesh wafted from his blistering arm. Senwara watched helplessly.

As they stomped him with boots and lashed him with clubs, his mind kept flashing back to home: What had he done? Why had he left? Would he die here?

After what seemed like hours, the beating stopped. Mohamad suspected an exchange of money finally prompted the soldiers to order the Rohingya to leave.

“Go straight out of Myanmar territory to the sea!” a witness recalled the commander saying. “If we see you again, we will kill you all!”

The Myanmar government denied that the Navy seized any ships during that period.

The refugees plodded on, but the boat was falling apart. A sarong stuffed in a hole could not stop water from bubbling through. The sticky rice and bits of bread Mohamad had brought for his sister were gone.

When they finally floated ashore, someone said they were in Thailand. Senwara didn’t even know where that was.

Thailand is the first stop for almost all Rohingya fleeing by sea, but it does not offer them asylum. Up until a few years ago, the country had a “push back” policy of towing migrants out to sea and leaving them, often with little or no food, water or fuel. But after photos leaked of the military dragging one such boat in 2009, the government changed course.

Under its new “help on” policy, Thai authorities give basic supplies to migrants in its waters before sending them on. Other times, however, they direct the boat to traffickers who hold the asylum seekers for ransom, according to human rights groups that have interviewed scores of escapees.

Those who cannot get money are sometimes sold as slaves to work on fishing boats or in other industries without pay. Others flee, usually back into the hands of agents, where the cycle continues.

Royal Thai navy spokesman Rear Admiral Karn Dee-ubon denied cooperation with traffickers and allegations of boats being towed out to sea. He insisted the navy always follows humanitarian principles, but added that other Thai agencies could be involved in such activities.

After the children’s boat entered Thai waters, all of its passengers were marched into the jungle where their hands were tied and they were told not to leave, survivors said. They were given rice and dry fish crawling with bugs.

Days later, they were put on another small boat without an engine. Then, survivors said, Thai troops pulled them far out to sea, cut the rope and left them to drift without food or water.

The boat rolled with the wind and currents. Senwara drank sea water and ate a paste of ground-up wood. She vomited, and diarrhoea poured out of her.

The next day, someone spotted what looked like a shadowy tree in the distance. The men used a little boy’s mirror to flash signals in its direction.

When the boat came near, Indonesian fishermen smiled and spoke a language no one understood. The Rohingya could only make out that the crew was Muslim.

Indonesia has been sympathetic to the Rohingya, and its president has sent a letter to his Myanmar counterpart calling for an end to the crisis. Protesters in cities across the world’s most populous Muslim nation have condemned the violence.

Yet Indonesia has not opened its doors to the Rohingya. It only allows them to stay until they can be resettled elsewhere, which can take years. In the meantime, they are kept in overcrowded detention centres and shelters, and no one can legally work.

The Indonesian and Malaysian governments fear that letting the Rohingya stay could lead to a greater influx of illegal migrants.

“At stake is national interest,” said Yan Welly, an Indonesian immigration official. “Let alone a flood of immigrants could affect efforts in coping with problems of our own people.”

The number of Rohingya housed in Indonesia jumped from 439 in 2012 to 795 last year. About 20 percent of the children who arrived were traveling alone, according to U.N. data.

Some go the official route: They register with the U.N. Refugee Agency when they arrive and wait to be resettled in another country. However, no Rohingya in Indonesia were referred for placement last year.

Ultimately, it is up to accepting nations, with their own policies and criteria, to decide whom to accept. To avoid the long delay, many asylum seekers run away and never get recorded.

In the past, thousands paid smugglers to take them by boat across a deadly stretch of ocean to Australia’s Christmas Island. But that country recently took a hard line, transferring everyone arriving by sea to impoverished Papua New Guinea or the tiny Pacific island of Nauru. Australia’s new policies also include towing vessels back into Indonesian waters, which has left the two governments sparring.

The boat carrying Mohamad and Senwara only made it as far as Indonesia.

After nearly a month and hundreds of miles at sea, they were rescued off Aceh’s coast in the west. UN and news reports confirm the rickety ship arrived in late February 2013 and was towed because it had no engine.

The asylum seekers were transferred to a filthy detention centre with about 300 people — double its capacity — including more than 100 Rohingya. They soon clashed with 11 Buddhists from Myanmar picked up for fishing illegally in Indonesian waters, according to a police report obtained by The AP. The Rohingya complained the Buddhists were harassing their women.

A riot broke out in April 2013, and the nightmare the children thought they had escaped began replaying itself. Men threw splintered chairs and spewed rage into a darkness so black, it was impossible to see who was fighting whom. Eight Buddhist fishermen were beaten to death.

Senwara slept through the brawl in a separate quarter for women. But when she awoke the next morning, her brother was gone.

She was now all alone.

After a few months in jail with other Rohingya arrested for the fight, Mohamad was released due to his age. He soon left for neighbouring Malaysia on a small boat to find work and avoid further trouble.

For many fleeing Rohingya, Malaysia, is the preferred destination. Around 33,000 are registered there and an equal number are undocumented, according to the Rohingya Society of Malaysia. Those numbers have swelled with the violence in Myanmar.

But increasingly, migrants risk getting caught up in group arrests and sent to detention centers. Up to 1,000 have been detained in a nationwide crackdown, the Society said.

Those who arrive in the Muslim-majority country are not eligible for free health care or education, relying mainly on help from the U.N. and aid groups. But it usually doesn’t take long to get illegal work on construction sites or in factories.

Mohamad found a job as a street sweeper in the city of Alor Setar, earning about $70 a month. He now lives in a tiny hovel with about 17 other Rohingya men sleeping on every inch of floor.

For the first time, he is earning a living on his own. But he remains tortured with guilt for leaving his little sister behind.

Soon after the detention centre riot, Senwara was registered as an asylum seeker. She was moved to temporary UN housing in Medan that’s made of small concrete dorm-style rooms with a large play area in front. A Rohingya woman who knew Senwara’s parents from childhood took the girl in.

Although Senwara smiles around her new foster parents, she remains hurt and angry that her brother left.

Mostly, her heart aches for home.

Senwara’s parents didn’t learn the children were safe until more than eight months after their village was burned.

On that awful night, rioters lit bottles and lobbed them into the mosque. Panicked Rohingya raced outside, slicing their bare feet on shards of broken glass left to make them bleed.

Senwara’s mother, Anowar Begum, and father, Mohamad Idris, fled with two babies into a lake. They used bamboo stalks to guide them through the muddy chest-high water in the darkness.

Later, they searched frantically and found five more of their nine children. But Senwara and Mohamad had vanished. Everyone feared they were dead.

After moving from place to place, the family ended up in a squalid camp with tens of thousands of other homeless Rohingya on the outskirts of Rakhine state’s capital, Sittwe.

They had given up hope for Senwara and Mohamad by the time an unknown Rohingya called from Indonesia to say they were safe. Today, 22 months after their separation, it’s only through technology that the family, now scattered across three countries, can remain in touch.

Mohamad, in Malaysia, watches a video clip of his sister playing soccer in Indonesia. While the other young men in his simple, two-room flat sit on the floor chatting and scraping curry from their plates, the teenager retreats into silence. Even as he breaks down, he cannot look away from the little girl on the screen.

Back in Myanmar, a Skype video call pops up on a laptop. From inside the camp, Anowar stares at her daughter and sobs quietly into her headscarf. In Indonesia, Senwara quickly wipes away her own tears.

Two birthdays have passed since she left home. As her father asks how she’s been, his weathered face trembles.

They then go through the questions every parent wants to know: Is she well? How is she doing in school? Is she getting enough to eat?

“It’s really good to see you here and healthy,” her father says, balancing a baby on his knee.

Soon her favourite sister, who looks just like her, starts making jokes. The whole family laughs, breaking the sadness for a few minutes.

“I’m fine,” Senwara says, trying to sound upbeat. “I’m with a family that is taking good care of me. They love me. I’m learning things, English and religion.”

Her father reminds her to be a good girl. He is desperate to see his children again, but believes they are better off far away. The family often goes hungry, and there’s no money for medicine.

When it’s time to say goodbye, Senwara keeps staring at the screen even after the faces disappear. She still doesn’t understand why her village was burned or what forced her to leave home. She only knows one thing.

“I don’t think I will ever be able to see my parents,” she says, softly. “For the rest of my life.”

AP

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