May 04, 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...

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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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Free speech runs riot as anti-Muslim radicals fill vacuum



Bangkok Post
March 30, 2013

The murderous communal riots that have wracked Myanmar for nearly six months are edging closer to the country's most important cities, and to strong notice abroad, particularly in Muslim-majority countries. 

The government faces serious security questions from civil rights activists at home and overseas, including its knee-jerk reaction to declare a state of emergency and call in the army at every riot. 

The deaths, injuries and property destruction pose security threats to the government of President Thein Sein, and especially to its fragile attempt to transform Myanmar from a military-ruled tyranny into a functioning, free state. 

Democracy requires free speech, but free speech is putting Myanmar at risk at the moment. Extremists, especially anti-Muslim radicals, have dominated and taken control of the country's community message. Unless government and decent civil society responds soon, Myanmar faces a downward spiral of violence with unpredictable but disastrous consequences. 

The proper solution to offensive free speech is more free speech. That is not working and may not work in post-tyranny Myanmar for critical reasons. 

The most important problem is the abject failure of the government, opposition and civil society to engage the extremists. 

Thein Sein has been quick to bask in praise for what he claims are "reforms without parallel in modern times", but he has refused to condemn even murder and ethnic cleansing by Buddhists in Myanmar. 

Even Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has merely called for new laws that she thinks may protect minorities, without serious criticism of killing and mass arson. 

The army, which once controlled radicals with prison, torture, threats and ruthless intimidation, has completely abandoned that role. So far, it has stepped in to restore order when directed by the president, but has been totally inert as a proactive force. 

Thus, the militants and extremists have not only gained control of the microphone, they also are using free speech without serious challenge to their message. 

The other major failing of free speech in Myanmar is an inability to counter the extremists, currently controlling the microphones _ and the internet. 

The seasoned Myanmar reporter James Hookway, in a report for The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, pictured pro-violent groups like the scurrilous Buddhist 969 Movement as dominating the Myanmar internet channels, and forcing out moderate messages. 

But while the 969 group does dominate some internet forums, the truth is there's little to dominate. 

Myanmar's hate and xenophobia are not controlled by militant messaging and microphone control. They are fuelled by a lack of means to communicate. 

An excellent and credible in-depth survey of Myanmar's communications turned up a pitiful and pitiable lack of means to counter the hate speech with free speech. 

Newspapers and magazines remain untrustworthy. TV and radio are unavailable to reasonable voices. 

But it is precisely in new information and communications technology (ICT) where reasonable voices have no chance in Myanmar. 

Three million of the country's 60 million people have mobile phones. Four million have no access at all to the internet, and a measly 1% of the country has an internet subscription. All three mobile phone operators are effectively government-controlled. 

In short, the extremists have the only voice. Militant monks like Sayataw Wira Thu of 969 are not effectively countered anywhere _ not by the government, by civil society or the media including the internet. 

As a result, this is a forking moment for free speech in Myanmar. The government and citizens have to decide whether the "free speech" of the extremist monks and nationalists can continue to foment violence, murders and ethnic cleansing. 

Until high-ranking authorities expose the hate, and an effective internet-based media can affect public opinion, the government may be forced to revert to the old way of controlling hate speech, by the prison system. That would scratch the veneer of democratic reforms, but probably would stop the blatant and murderous attacks on minorities, especially Muslims. It is a tough call for the self-styled world-class reformer, but Thein Sein must face the hard choice soon, before racial and communal riots get entirely out of hand.

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