July 12, 2025

Latest Highlight

News @ RB

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

Myanmar Muslims trapped in a ghetto

Muslim Rohingyas stand outside a school sheltering Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in the village of Theik Kayk Pyim, located on the outskirts of Sittwe, capital of Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. — AFP

SITTWE — Barbed wire and armed troops guard the Muslim quarter of a violence-wracked city in western Myanmar, a virtual prison for the families that have inhabited its narrow streets for generations.

The security forces outside the ghetto in the Rakhine state capital Sittwe are not there to stop its residents leaving — although few dare to anyway — but to protect them from Buddhist mobs after an outburst of sectarian hatred.

In the nearby city center, life has regained some semblance of normality since the authorities imposed a state of emergency in June in response to Buddhist-Muslim clashes that left dozens dead and tens of thousands homeless.

But inside the tense enclave of Aung Mingalar, hundreds of families from the Rohingya Muslim minority group say they are living in fear for their lives.

“Rakhines will attack us today,” one man told AFP at Friday prayers last week.

The same evening groups of Rakhine Buddhists — who have also accused the Rohingya of attacks on their communities — gathered outside the barriers, prompting troops to fire warning shots and sparking panic inside.

On three separate days earlier in the week, hundreds of ethnic Rakhines — sometimes led by Buddhist monks — had marched near the perimeter demanding the “relocation” of Aung Mingalar.

Their shouts were clearly audible by people within the ghetto, who could only imagine what was happening outside.

“In my opinion, living in the Sahara desert in Africa would be better than living in this situation,” said 28-year-old Mohamed Said, tears welling in his eyes.

“We cannot suffer anymore. We have lost everything but our lives. We are human beings as well,” a crying Said said.

Between 3,000 and 8,000 people are thought to live in an area of roughly 0.5 sq km, where no traffic circulates and almost all shops have been shuttered.

Supplies of food — mainly rice — are provided by the authorities and some benevolent Buddhist locals, forced to deliver aid discreetly for fear of fanning local resentments. But there is not enough to eat.

Some Rohingya have dared to breach the barriers — which vary from bamboo and barbed wire to simple security cordons — hiding their faces under hoods to prevent people identifying them.

But most people have not ventured outside in four months.

“This bamboo fence is like a psychological barrier, symbolizing the fear that separates the two worlds,” said Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, which campaigns for Rohingya rights.

Calls are growing for the Muslim quarter to be moved.

“If the Aung Mingalar quarter stays in the city centre, the problem will get worse,” said Nya Na, a leader of a monk association.

“I don’t want the two communities to fight. It is risky for them to stay.”

The stateless Rohingya have long been considered by the United Nations to be one of the most persecuted minorities on the planet.

The segregation recalls South African apartheid in the 1980s, “but worse” because the Rohingya are unable to leave their camps, Lewa said.

“Freedom of movement was always an issue for the Rohingya, but it is an extreme restriction now,” said Sarnata Reynolds, of aid group Refugees International.

“Unofficially there seems to be widespread agreement that the camps will likely be there for three years or more, and that it might be the beginning of a permanent segregation.” — 

Sources Here:

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus