April 04, 2025

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Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com) Dear Readers, From 1st January 2019 onward, the Rohingya News Portal 'Rohingya Blogger' will be renamed and upgraded as 'Rohingya Today'. Due to this transition to a new name, our website will be available at www.rohing...

Rohingya News @ Int'l Media

Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Thursday. | CHISATO TANAKA By Chisato Tanaka, Published by The Japan Times on October 25, 2018 A leader of a global network of activists for Rohingya Mu...

Myanmar News

By Sena Güler | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 1, 2018 Maung Zarni says he will boycott Beijing-sponsored events until the country reverses its 'troubling path' ANKARA -- A human rights activist and intellectual said he withdrew from a Beijing-sponsored forum in London to pro...

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Oskar Butcher RB Article October 6, 2018 Every night in an unassuming shop space located in Mandalay’s 39thStreet, Lu Maw and Lu Zaw – the remaining members of the Burma’s most famous comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers – present their show: a curious combination of comedy, political sa...

Article @ Int'l Media

A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. By Natalie Brinham | Published by Open Democracy on October 21, 2018 Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s attempts to provide them with documenta...

Analysis @ RB

By M.S. Anwar | Opinion & Analysis The Burmese (Myanmar) quasi-civilian government unleashed a large-scale violence against the minority Rohingya in the western Myanmar state of Arakan in 2012. The violence, which some wrongly frame as ‘Communal’, was carried out by the Burmese armed forces...

Analysis @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni, Natalie Brinham | Published by Middle East Institute on November 20, 2018 “It is an ongoing genocide (in Myanmar),” said Mr. Marzuki Darusman, the head of the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission at the official briefing at ...

Opinion @ RB

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj MS Anwar RB Opinion November 12, 2018 Some may differ. But I believe the government of Bangladesh is ...

Opinion @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 15, 2018 US will not intercede, and Myanmar's neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed LONDON -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution ca...

History @ RB

Aman Ullah  RB History August 25, 2016 The ethnic Rohingya is one of the many nationalities of the union of Burma. And they are one of the two major communities of Arakan; the other is Rakhine and Buddhist. The Muslims (Rohingyas) and Buddhists (Rakhines) peacefully co-existed in the A...

Rohingya History by Scholars

Dr. Maung Zarni's Remark: The best research on Rohingya history: British Orientalism which created the pseudo-scientific biological notion of "Taiyinthar" or "real natives" of #Myanmar caused that country's post-colonial cancer of official & popular genocidal Racism.  This co...

Report @ RB

(Photo: Soe Zeya Tun, Reuters) RB News  October 5, 2013  Thandwe, Arakan – Rakhinese mob in Thandwe started attacking Kaman Muslims on September 28, 2013. As a result, 5 Kaman Muslims were mercilessly killed and 1 was died in heart attack while escaping the attack. 781 Kaman Mus...

Report by Media/Org

Rohingya families arrive at a UNHCR transit centre near the village of Anjuman Para, Cox’s Bazar, south-east Bangladesh after spending four days stranded at the Myanmar border with some 6,800 refugees. (Photo: UNHCR/Roger Arnold) By UN News May 11, 2018 Late last year, as violent repressi...

Press Release

(Photo: Reuters) Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide December 17, 2018  We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, call for accountability for genocide and crimes against...

Rohingya Orgs Activities

RB News December 6, 2017 Tokyo, Japan -- Legislators from all parties, along with Human Rights Now, Human Rights Watch, and Save the Children, came together to host the emergency parliament in-house event “The Rohingya Human Rights Crisis and Japanese Diplomacy” on December 4th. The eve...

Petition

By Wyston Lawrence RB Petition October 15, 2017 There is one petition has been going on Change.org to remove Ven. Wira Thu from Facebook. He has been known as Buddhist Bin Laden. Time magazine published his image on their cover with the title of The Face of Buddhist Terror. The petitio...

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A human rights activist and genocide scholar from Burma Dr. Maung Zarni visits Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Extermination Camp and calls on European governments - Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Germany not to collaborate with the Evil - like they did with Hitler 75 ye...

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Editorial by Int'l Media

By Dhaka Tribune Editorial November 5, 2017 How can we answer to our conscience knowing full-well what the Myanmar military is doing to the innocent Rohingya minority -- not even sparing children or pregnant women? Despite the on-going humanitarian crisis involving Rohingya refugees ...

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Praise rings out for Burmese defector in US, but some smell a rat

It’s hard not to be bemused by the timing and nature of the recent defection of a top Burmese diplomat in the US. In a letter yesterday, Kyaw Win, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, told Hillary Clinton: “…my conscience would no longer allow me to work for the government.” He is now seeking asylum, fearing retribution if he returns to Burma.

Until yesterday, Kyaw Win had been a solid career diplomat with more than three decades experience in the Burmese foreign ministry. That a man so familiar with the machinations of the regime takes so long to acknowledge that “democratic change under this system will not happen in the foreseeable future,” as the letter laments, is somewhat mystifying. But the timing of the decision, during a period when Naypyidaw is winning plaudits from key international players for seemingly little, appears on the surface a bold statement of protest.
“When I first began my service in the Foreign Ministry I thought that, over time and perhaps with the help of my efforts, the military would ease its grip and send Myanmar [Burma] on a path to greater political pluralism,” he wrote in the letter. “However, the truth is that senior military officials are consolidating their grip on power and seeking to stamp out the voices of those seeking democracy, human rights and individual liberties. Oppression is rising and war against our ethnic cousins is imminent and at present, threats are being made against Aung San Suu Kyi — they must be taken seriously.”


He follows in the footsteps of Aung Linn Htut, a former senior intelligence officer and top diplomat who quit his post in 2005 and claimed asylum in the US. Aung Linn Htut now works as a part-time analyst and is outspoken about the regime and his intelligence work – whether Kyaw Win will join the dozens of government and military defectors whose protests cast them as pro-democracy heroes remains to be seen. Dr Maung Zarni, an academic at LSE and founder of the US-based Free Burma Coalition, told me that Kyaw Win was “long disillusioned” with the regime, “as most career diplomats are”.

“He is a decent guy who has spoken his mind to other Burmese whom he came into contact with,” Dr Maung Zarni said. Kyaw Win reportedly thought the election last year a small positive step, and generally shunned international confrontation, but after the vote “realised he was fed monkey meat”. Zarni met the former diplomat several years ago and “was surprised how candid he was with me about his views of the regime, and I suspected then it was a matter of time before he defected”.

His decision to publicly defect now will perhaps have more impact than prior to new government coming to power, signalling as it does high-profile dissent within the ranks despite consistent promises of progress from the Burmese prime minister. Some, however, smell a rat: Derek Tonkin, the former British ambassador to Thailand, and who now runs Network Myanmar, commented that the speedy release of the letter, which was carried on RFA and VOA on the same day, is suspicious.

“[It] strongly suggests to me manipulation by hawks in the US determined to sabotage any hope of detente in US-Burmese relations,” he posted on DVB. “It is highly unlikely that the letter was written solely on Kyaw Win’s personal initiative without help and support from US official sources. His asylum application could have been handled quite differently.

“I bet that Derek Mitchell [mooted US envoy to Burma] and Kurt Campbell [a US diplomat with long-time interest in Burmese affairs] are furious at the way in which their mandates and missions have been undermined through what has been deliberately handled as a propaganda coup. Kyaw Win was clearly of no intelligence value as he would otherwise have been whisked away and not heard of for weeks if not months. I wonder if Mitchell and Campbell were even consulted,” Tonkin said.

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