NEW DELHI: Rohingya community leaders in India urged the UN on Wednesday to take urgent steps to protect the persecuted minority in Myanmar.
Sabber, founder of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, also called on the Indian government to reconsider its decision to deport Rohingya from India, and asked New Delhi to use its “clout with the Myanmar government to stop atrocities against the Muslim minority group.”
“It is the international community’s responsibility to protect the rights of the Rohingya community, not only in Myanmar but elsewhere as well,” he said.
Sabber set up the initiative two years ago to take up cases of human rights violations against Rohingya, and it also supports the community in India.
He has lived in India since 2005, when he escaped persecution in the town of Buthingdawung in Rakhine state in Myanmar, where his elderly parents still live. The situation there is so grim that he fears for their safety.
“We are not able to contact parents, relatives and other friends. Their houses are under siege; the roads are blocked. Myanmar has imprisoned them in their own houses. It’s a very miserable situation,” he said.
He rejected claims by the Myanmar government that Hindus in Rakhine state had been massacred.
“Just to divert attention from the brutalities of the Myanmar Army, they are raising the issue of the killing of Hindus. They want to win India’s support, that’s why they are propagating this.”
Maung Abdul Khan, another Rohingya refugee in India, said there were “two ways of handling the current crisis; one is humanitarian assistance and the other is political engagement.”
Khan, the son of a policeman in Buthingdawung, came to India in 2013 after the government in Myanmar threatened to prosecute him for raising the issue of Rohingya human rights in Rakhine. He earns a living in Delhi by giving private tuition to children.
“With what authority does Myanmar call me a stateless citizen?” he said.
“My father worked for the government, my maternal uncle was elected for parliament in 1999 and the regime drives us out of my country.”
He said he was hurt when some media in India described Rohingya as terrorists.
“Just because we are different, we are suffering, we are taking shelter, you are calling us terrorist. Is it justified?”
Rohingya in India urge UN to protect minority in Myanmar
Rohingya in India urge UN to protect minority in Myanmar
World copper rush promises new riches for Zambia
CAPE TOWN: Five years after becoming Africa’s first Covid-era debt defaulter, Zambia is seeing a dramatic turnaround in fortunes as major powers vie for access to its vast reserves of copper.
Surging demand from the artificial intelligence, green energy and defense sectors has exponentially boosted demand for the workhorse metal that underpins power grids, data centers and electric vehicles.
The scramble for copper exposes geopolitical rivalries as industrial heavyweights — including China, the United States, Canada, Europe, India and Gulf states — compete to secure supplies.
“We have the investors back,” President Hakainde Hichilema told delegates at the African Mining Indaba conference on Monday, saying that more than $12 billion had flowed into the sector since 2022.
The politically stable country is Africa’s second-largest copper producer, after the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo, and the world’s eighth, according to the US Geological Survey.
The metal, needed for solar panels and wind turbines, generates about 15 percent of Zambia’s GDP and more than 70 percent of export earnings.
Output rose eight percent last year to more than 890,000 metric tons and the government aims to triple production within a decade.
Mining is driving growth that is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to reach 5.2 percent in 2025 and 5.8 percent this year, which places Zambia among the continent’s faster-growing economies.
“The seeds are sprouting and the harvest is coming,” Hichilema said, touting a planned nationwide geological survey to map untapped deposits.
But the rapid expansion of the heavily polluting industry has also led to warnings about risks to local communities and concerns of “pit-to-port” extraction, in which raw copper is shipped directly abroad with little domestic refining.
’Dramatic new chapter’
“We need to be aware of the potential for history to repeat itself,” said Daniel Litvin, founder of the Resource Resolutions group that promotes sustainable development, referring to the colonial-era scramble for Africa’s resources.
There is a risk that elites will be enriched at the expense of the broader population, while “narratives of partnership” offered by major powers can mask underlying self-interest, he said.
Chinese firms have long dominated the sector in Zambia and control major stakes in key mines and smelters, cementing Beijing’s early-mover advantage.
Another major player is Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Zambia’s largest corporate taxpayer.
Investors from India and the Gulf are expanding their footprint, and the United States is returning to the market after largely pulling out decades ago.
Washington, which has been stockpiling copper, this month launched a $12 billion “Project Vault” public-private initiative to secure critical minerals, part of an effort to reduce reliance on China.
In September, the US Trade and Development Agency announced a $1.4 million grant to a Metalex Commodities subsidiary, Metalex Africa, to expand operations in Zambia.
“We are at the beginning of what is going to unfold to be a dramatic new chapter in the way that the free world sources and trades in critical minerals,” US energy secretary adviser Mike Kopp said at Mining Indaba.
Sweeping US tariffs introduced last year helped send copper prices soaring to record highs, as companies rushed to buy both semi-finished and refined stocks.
Cost of rush
“The risk is that this great power competition becomes a race to secure supply on terms that serve markets and not the people in producer countries,” said Deprose Muchena, a program director at the Open Society Foundation.
Despite its mineral wealth, more than 70 percent of Zambia’s 21 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
“The world is waking up to Zambia’s copper. But Zambia has been living with copper and its consequences for a century,” Muchena told AFP.
Environmental damage caused by mining has long plagued Zambia’s copper belt.
In February 2025, a burst tailings dam at a Chinese-owned mine near Kitwe, about 285 kilometers (180 miles) north of Lusaka, spilled millions of liters of acidic waste.
Toxins entered a tributary feeding the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a major source of drinking water. Zambian farmers have filed an $80 billion lawsuit.
“Whether this boom is different depends on whether governance, rights, and community agency are at the center, not just supply chain security,” Muchena said.
