April 02, 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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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...

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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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Inside Burma's forbidden camps


Tuesday 14 August 2012Exclusive: As members of Burma's Muslim Rohingya minority are forced into camps after violent clashes, the government bans international observers - but Channel 4 News gains access.



There is a part of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State in Burma, that people still refer to as Narzi. But if you travel there, as Channel 4 News did recently, you will not find much to look at. In fact this substantial section of town, until recently the bustling home of 10,000, no longer exists.

Instead, you will find a post-apocalyptic world of rubble and burnt-out tree trunks. Personal effects are left scattered on the ground. It seems an incongruous scene in a country that claims to be remaking itself as modern, democratic state. Spend five minutes in Narzi, however, and you start to wonder whether Burma has really changed at all.

Until a month ago, Sittwe was home, in almost even proportions, to two different ethnic groups – the Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims.


It seems an incongruous scene in a country that claims to be remaking itself as modern, democratic state.

There have long been tensions between the two, and the recent violence started with an allegation that three Rohingya men had raped and killed a young Buddhist woman. After the distribution of inflammatory pamphlets, ten Muslim pilgrims were pulled out of a bus and beaten to death. The immediate consequence was chaos. Hate-filled mobs from both communities went on the rampage, burning homes and settling scores.


'Resettlement'


Narzi and many other communities were lost in the storm. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) estimate that some 100,000 people were displaced in the fighting. The government puts the death toll at 78, a figure human rights groups call "a gross underestimate".

In an effort to regain control, Burma's government sent in nine military regiments to Rakhine and implemented a policy of strict separation. In Sittwe, this meant moving 60,000 Rohingya out of the city, and "resettling" them in a series of camps located some distance from the city.

We were told by humanitarian agencies that conditions in these camps were "desperate", but access is strictly controlled, even to aid workers. Through our contacts however, we managed to reach several of these sites.

The camps were located on soggy pastures, squeezed between paddy fields. When our vehicle stopped, we were surrounded by residents desperate to communicate. The adults looked thin and many of the children were clearly malnourished. I asked a woman with three children how much food she was getting. "We’re living on rice and beans," she said. "It's not enough. We haven't got blankets. When we were in town, we could buy food for the kids, but now we can't."


Restrictions


Young men in the camp told me they were dreaming of escape. One young man told me: "I am from Sittwe, but I don't want to stay (in the camp). I want to go to Bangladesh. We are really suffering here."

In truth, he has few options. The Bangladeshis do not want the Rohingya - and they have long been treated with indifference and hostility in Burma. The United Nations has for some time called them "one of the most persecuted groups in the world". They are subjected to restrictions on marriage, employment and education, and they were denied in citizenship in 1982.
We're living on rice and beans. It's not enough. We haven't got blankets. When we were in town, we could buy food for the kids, but now we can't.Rohingya camp resident

Now they are in the camps, another weighty constraint has been added – they can't leave. Sittwe is now off-limits, and it seems unlikely its former residents will be able to return.

It is the cause of great anxiety here, for few people here can support themselves. One woman told us: "We have no jobs and our kids can't work. I use to run a shop in Sittwe, but I came here in the rain with nothing but my bare hands. No money, nothing."

International NGOs and the United Nations are struggling to provide assistance to the camps, with their efforts hindered by a determined campaign of obstruction by local Buddhists. Aid workers have been threatened and some shipments have been blocked. Local doctors have refused to treat Rohingya and businessmen have declined to provide humanitarian organisations with services like warehouse space – crucial for the storage of food, for example.


'Favouritism'


When we sought the views of local Buddhists, they told us that the UN and International NGOs engage in favouritism. Much sought after jobs with the agencies "always" go to the Rohingya, we were told. When I put these complaints to one NGO official, he was unapologetic however. "We go to where the need is greatest," he said.

Burma's government has been accused by international human rights organisations of doing little to stop the violence after the first clashes took place - and of siding with the local population when troops and military policemen were moved in. The UN Special Rapporteur for Burma, Tomas Quintana, told Channel 4 News that he had received allegations of mass arrests, torture and killings and the hands of the security forces on a recent visit there.

There is much justified excitement with the reforms currently being undertaken by Burma's new government. But the president, Thein Sein, has offered little on the issue, other than to suggest that a third country may be persuaded to take in the Rohingya. The opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi has also said, and done, little. When asked about the situation by one Muslim during the initial period of violence, she replied: "Yes, I understand, but I am not the government. I can't do anything. Only the government [can] do something."

There are many Rohingya Muslims – like the former residents of Narzi - who would beg to differ with that.

Source here 


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