March 19, 2025

News @ RB

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...

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

Rescued Burmese in limbo after boat deaths

In recovery ... thirty-two Burmese asylum seekers rescued off Sri Lanka's eastern coast rest on the floor at a hospital in Galle. (Photo: AP)
Ben Doherty
Fairfax Media
February 22, 2013

THE 32 surviving Burmese asylum seekers who were forced to throw nearly 100 dead shipmates overboard as their Australia-bound boat drifted in open seas off Sri Lanka face a state of limbo - the Burmese embassy is so far refusing to claim them as citizens. 

The 31 men and one boy were rescued from their stricken and sinking vessel by the Sri Lankan navy last Saturday, more than 200 nautical miles from land. 

They told their rescuers 98 others on board died of dehydration and starvation during nearly two months adrift and their bodies had been pushed into the sea.

They said they were from a village on the Burma-Bangladesh border and were headed to Australia or Malaysia to claim asylum. 

Several remain in hospital suffering severe dehydration and malnutrition, while others have faced court and are being held in immigration detention. 

But, nearly a week since they were rescued, the Burmese embassy has not yet agreed that the men belong to their country.

An embassy spokesman, Aung Soe Moe, said this week the process of determining the men's nationality was under way. An embassy official told Fairfax Media on Thursday there was no progress to report. 

Sri Lanka Police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said the men were the responsibility of the Burmese government. ''We have informed the Myanmar embassy for their further action,'' he said. 

But Sri Lankan police sources have said the men are refusing to go back to their home country, saying they were fleeing persecution. The men are believed to be Rohingya, a Muslim community in Burma the United Nations has described as one of the world's most persecuted minorities. 

The Burmese government does not recognise Rohingyas as belonging to the country and refuses to grant them citizenship. 

They are regularly the target of violence, from Burmese army soldiers and vigilante groups, especially in the Rakhine state, near the border with Bangladesh. 

Riots last year between Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists left more than 600 people dead and more than 80,000 displaced, according to Rohingya groups. 

The 32 men rescued Saturday are the second group of Burmese asylum seekers saved by Sri Lanka this month. On February 3, the Sri Lankan navy rescued 138 Bangladeshi and Burmese nationals from a sinking wooden boat. 

One of those men told local TV: ''We are Muslims in Burma … we are floating on the sea, 25 days, without eating and without drinking.'' 

The federal Immigration Minister, Brendan O'Connor, said other asylum seeker boats trying to get to Australia were being lost at sea. 

''A lot of people are just disappearing, out of sight, out of mind … It is very hard to put a number on it,'' he said. ''Too many.'' 

Video footage of the rescue of the 32 men showed many close to death. All appeared emaciated. Most could not stand up and the strongest could not walk unaided. Several were unconscious.

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus