April 06, 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...

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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...

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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...

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Statement on People’s Right to Public Assemblies and Processions

1. In Burma, people’s right to public assemblies and processions has already been enacted in the Police Act, 1945. Under Chapter 5 of that law, with the title ‘Maintenance of Law and Order,’ section 31 provides as follows: 

(1) The District Superintendent or any Assistant or Deputy Superintendent of Police, may, as occasion requires, direct the conduct of all assemblies and processions on the public roads, or in the public streets or thoroughfares, and prescribe the routes by which, and the times at which, such processions may pass. 

(2) The District Superintendent or any Assistant or Deputy Superintendent may also, on being satisfied that it is intended by any persons or class of persons to convene or collect an assembly in any such road, street or thoroughfare, or to form a procession, which would, in his opinion, be likely to cause a breach of the peace if uncontrolled, require by general or special notice that the persons convening or collecting such assembly or directing or promoting such procession shall apply for an obtain a license. 

(3) On such application being made, he may issue a license specifying the names of the licensees and defining the conditions on which alone such assembly or such procession is to be permitted to take place and otherwise giving effect to this section. 

2. The question of Burma is the question of the rule of law, that is, the successive military regimes, including the one led by Thein Sein, did not activate the existing laws, inter alia, including Chapter 5 of the Police Act 1945, by which people could exercise their basic rights with minimum restrictions. Rather, the regime provides more draconian laws. During the period between 1948 and 1962, with the background of the 1947 Constitution and under the Police Act 1945, people were able to enjoy their rights to assemblies and processions peacefully and effectively. 

3. Unfortunately, the Law on the Right to Peaceful Assemblies and Processions provided for by the regime on December 2, 2011, reaffirmed the unreasonable exceptions mentioned in the 2008 Constitution; and, contrary to the Police Act 1945, it has also extended restrictions enormously. As such, under the newly enacted law, people will never be able to exercise their basic rights with minimum restrictions and democracy will never be achieved. 


The Burma Lawyers’ Council December 5, 2011




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