March 17, 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...

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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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Obama is set to visit Burma - but will he help the tormented Rohingya people? | EMANUEL STOAKES



Evidence is mounting that attacks on the Rohingya are not just skirmishes but an organised pogrom

“Please treat us like human beings” the sign reads. It is one of several placards held up by the emaciated inhabitants of a refugee camp in Rakhine state, Burma, captured in a photograph taken by locals. 

It can hardly be said to be an unreasonable plea. Sadly, it may be a hopeless one-for those making the appeal- the Rohingya people of Burma- are not treated like human beings. Instead, they are a stateless minority, suffering from the continual threat of racist violence from their neighbours. This year 100,000 or more have been driven from their homes by mob attacks, which destroyed entire villages and neighbourhoods  . 

Sources within Burma have sent a plethora of photos, pixellated phone videos, and messages to me this week, desperate to share visible records of their suffering. The refugee camp protest photo is certainly among the least upsetting files I’ve received. Some appear to show the victims of ethnic violence in June; others appear to be from last month’s equally bloody riots. They are, for the most part, harrowing and gruesome: shots of dead babies; corpses putrefying on beaches; young people shot in the groin or stomach; purported torture victims. Such horrors, I am told, are the result of intentional pogroms - not mere “ethnic skirmishes” as some have portrayed events. 

Police attacks 

In addition to visual evidence, I have received compelling witness testimony. One source from Sittwe told me that he had clearly observed police involvement in some of this year’s violence. He stated that a group of thousands of Rakhine “including police, security forces” had surrounded the Rohingya area in June and that “everybody [in the mob] had a sword, some had weapons, some guns.” He saw that houses were subjected to arson attacks, after which time the occupants fled their homes only to be attacked by the crowd. “Rakhine started killing us, our people tried to protect [themselves]…at that time police shot us.” 

Such claims of systematic, discriminatory violence are supported by independent analysis. Andrew Heyn, Britain’s ambassador to Burma told Radio 4 recently that “there’s compelling evidence, that this latest wave of attacks [against the Rohingya]...were pre-planned, coordinated and organised.” 

Adding to the case for high-level involvement, a Reuters investigation released this weekend quoted senior political sources as stating that the recent attacks against Rohingya were “led by Rakhine nationalists tied to a powerful political party in the state, incited by Buddhist monks, and… abetted at times by local security forces.” 

It’s clear that the Rohingya have also been the target of hostility from a large number of Buddhist monks, who are influential among the population. Yet one prominent Buddhist figure has spoken out, arguing that political forces are seeking to stir up inter-communal animosities for their own gain. Ashin Gambhira, a monk who was heavily involved in 2007’s brutally suppressedSaffron revolution, wrote recently: “the neo-military dictatorship has exploited and fostered a new national crisis, a religious conflict, the Rakhine-Rohingya conflict, for its own purposes… These clashes were encouraged by the military.” 


This is ethnic cleansing 



American human rights advocate Dr. Nora Rowley, drawing on her experience of working in Burma, told me that the attacks on the Rohingya were “absolutely” being backed by members of the former military junta, now incorporated into the political elite. She suggested “what we need right now is to connect the regime with what’s going on so the international community know it’s not an internal matter.” 

I asked her what she believes will happen if nothing is done to protect the victims. “Ethnic cleansing completion,” was her terse reply. 

The recent news that Barack Obama is set to visit Burma’s President Thein Sein in coming days has been the source of some hope to those that imagine he may seek to press Burma on the plight of the Rohingya. Yet there is room for pessimism: American business interests in the country are strong, as are geo-political concerns - Burma sits between two regional powers, India and China, and Washington will be mindful of the importance of gaining a stronger foothold in the strategically-positioned country. As a result, Obama may not push too hard on an issue that is domestically controversial in order to advance other agendas. 

However, as I have argued before, the safety of the imperiled Rohingya people is an issue of major concern to those who value the rights of threatened minorities - and the shame will belong to all of us if the world fails to prevent an entirely predictable humanitarian catastrophe in the near future. More has to be done. 



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