March 16, 2025

News @ RB

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...

Video News

...

Article @ RB

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...

Campaign

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...

Event

...

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 ...

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

Obama says Myanmar needs to do more on human rights

By Michael Perry

CANBERRA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday Myanmar had opened a dialogue on reform but needed to do more to improve human rights in his first remarks about the authoritarian regime after the Southeast Asian nation released political prisoners.

A senior Myanmar Home Ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday that the new civilian government was ready to release more political prisoners after freeing about 230 activists on Oct. 12, a further sign that genuine reform could be underway after five decades of harsh military rule.

"Some political prisoners have been released. The government has begun a dialogue. Still, violations of human rights persist," Obama said in a speech to the Australian parliament.

"So we will continue to speak clearly about the steps that must be taken for the government of Burma to have a better relationship with the United States."

The United States, Europe and Australia have said that freeing political prisoners is one of several preconditions to lifting sanctions that have isolated Myanmar and driven it closer to China.

Obama is in Australia ahead of visiting the Indonesian island of Bali for the East Asia Summit, and to signal a closer U.S. engagement with the Pacific.

Myanmar President Thein Sein, seen as having a reformist agenda, is already in Bali for a summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The senior Myanmar official said the authorities were preparing "very soon" to release political prisoners for the second time in just over a month under an amnesty.

Another amnesty would boost Thein Sein's image and strengthen his case for Myanmar taking the rotating ASEAN presidency in 2014, two years ahead of schedule -- a bid widely seen as an attempt to legitimise the new political system.

Myanmar's National League for Democracy, headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is expected to decide on Friday whether to re-register as a political party to contest imminent by-elections.

Suu Kyi's party welcomed ASEAN's expected endorsement on Thursday of Myanmar's chairmanship and said it would help to drive political change.

"Their decision is tantamount to encouraging the present Myanmar government to step up the momentum for reforms," Nyan Win, a senior official in Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, told Reuters in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon.

"I think that Myanmar's political activities will become more vibrant after assuming the chair and Myanmar will also become a quality member of ASEAN."

HUMAN RIGHTS

In his speech, Obama said the U.S would continue to champion human rights.

"Every nation will chart its own course. Yet it is also true that certain rights are universal, among them freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and the freedom of citizens to choose their own leaders," he said.

"These are not American rights, or Australian rights, or Western rights. They are human rights. They stir in every soul, as we've seen in democracy's success in Asia."

The United States has had strained relations with Myanmar since the military junta, which took power in a 1962 coup, killed thousands in a crackdown in 1988.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Friday that Myanmar appeared to be making some "real changes" to its political system, but the United States wanted to see more reform before embracing the country formerly known as Burma.

Clinton noted reports of "substantive dialogue" between the government and Suu Kyi and changes in the country's laws on labour and political party registration.

Myanmar's new government has responded by urging the United States to lift sanctions, describing its reforms as genuine, a line echoed by Indonesia's foreign minister and current ASEAN chair, Marty Natalegawa, who told Reuters they were "irreversible" after visiting the country last month.

Recent overtures by Myanmar's government have included calls for peace with ethnic minority groups, some tolerance of criticism, the suspension of an unpopular Chinese-funded dam project and the legalisation of labour unions. President Thein Sein has also defied sceptics by reaching out to Suu Kyi.

The resource-rich country, as big as France and Britain combined, sits between booming India and China with ports on the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea that, if developed with proposed rail and pipeline projects, would allow cargo ships to bypass the Straits of Malacca.

That would open the way for faster delivery of oil from the Middle East and Africa to China and other countries in the region straddling the Mekong River.

India, Japan and Southeast Asia have sought to ramp up engagement, largely to counterbalance China's influence and to gain a toehold in a country whose proven gas reserves have tripled in the past decade to around 800 billion cubic metres, equivalent to more than a quarter of Australia's, BP Statistical Review figures show.

(Additional reporting by James Grubel and Caren Bohan in Canberra and Aung Hla Tun in Yangon. Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Jason Szep) 


Credit : here


Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus