May 21, 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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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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(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...

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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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Cheered In Europe, Suu Kyi Faces Crises In Myanmar



There are few opposition leaders who are welcomed abroad with the same pomp and ceremony as heads of state. But that's the sort of star treatment lavished on Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition leader of Myanmar, also known as Burma, on her three-week tour of Europe.

But pressure is increasing on her to address simmering political crises at home, and to move her country's democratic changes forward.

In Geneva, Oslo, Dublin, London and Paris, Suu Kyi issued eloquent pleas for ethical foreign investment in Myanmar and foreign support for her country's ongoing reforms.

"This is the most important time for Burma," she told parliamentarians and dignitaries gathered in London's Westminster Hall.

"This is the moment of our greatest need," she continued. "And so I would ask that our friends both here in Britain and beyond participate in and support Burma's efforts toward the establishment of a truly democratic and just society."

'Reform Program' Still Fragile Suu Kyi, the first foreign woman and Asian citizen to speak at Westminster in the palace's 900-year history, said that beyond President Thein Sein, it's hard to determine how much support the current efforts in Myanmar enjoy, especially within the country's military. It's an assessment shared by outside observers.

"The entire reform program in Myanmar now hangs by a very slender thread," says Vikram Nehru, a Southeast Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He says Suu Kyi must quickly throw her considerable authority behind Thein Sein's key reform policies.

"Otherwise there's a great danger that the enemies of reform, those that are currently benefiting from the current system, will exert a pushback," he warns, "and that might be to the detriment of the long-term development of the country."
Pressure is increasing for Suu Kyi to make good on her inspiring rhetoric about human rights. There's no starker example than the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, next to Bangladesh.

Mob violence among Burmese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims there has claimed at least 80 lives and created as many as 90,000 refugees in the past month.

Many Rohingya immigrated to largely Buddhist Myanmar from what is now Bangladesh generations ago. But neither Bangladesh's nor Myanmar's government recognizes them as citizens.

When asked in Oslo whether Rohingyas are citizens of Myanmar, Suu Kyi said she did not know.

"When you talk about the Rohingya, we are not quite sure whom you are talking about," she said. "There's some who say those people who claim to be Rohingyas are not the ones who are actually native to Burma but have just come over recently from Bangladesh."

A Sensitive Issue
Suu Kyi echoes popular complaints in Myanmar that the problem is caused in part by corrupt immigration officials along the border, and ineffective law enforcement in Rakhine state. She says that establishing the rule of law is the key to resolving the issue, but she does not suggest what the law should say.

"She finds herself in a very difficult position, because her constituency is known to be extremely anti-Rohingya," says Maung Zarni, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Suu Kyi was elected to represent the remote rural township of Kawhmu, a three-hour drive from the main city of Yangon.

Maung Zarni points out that, when it comes to the subject of the Rohingya, the views of many Burmese pro-democracy activists are just as discriminatory and intolerant as those of the former junta they once fought.

"We must not be ashamed to admit that we have illiberal tendencies and elements within our culture and our practices, and they need to be rectified in accordance with the principles that we espouse or we are fighting for," Maung Zarni says. "You can't have it both ways. Are you for human rights, or are you against human rights?"

Maung Zarni suggests that Suu Kyi emphasize her principles while avoiding the specifics of the citizenship debate. He admits that he, too, opposes recognizing the Rohingya as one of the country's ethnic minorities.
Capitalizing On Recent Momentum

Fresh from her election to Parliament on April 1, and at the end of a triumphant tour of Europe, Suu Kyi now finds herself at an unprecedented level of popularity at home and abroad.

Some supporters point out that Suu Kyi is under considerable pressure not to upset the military into rolling back the changes and revoking her freedoms, and that she is working hard to build an organization that was focused on survival during decades of military suppression. They advise observers to be patient and not judge her too quickly.

But other supporters say Suu Kyi can afford to waste neither time nor opportunities to consolidate and push forward the country's fledgling reforms.


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