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

Report @ RB

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

Ghosts of Myanmar's past refuse to be buried

The Nation/Asia News Network
April 27, 2013


These past few weeks have been somewhat hectic for the government of Myanmar. First, there was the prestigious peace award given to President Thein Sein by the International Crises Group, recognizing his work toward a peace that can be achieved.

Then came the lifting of all sanctions by the European Union, except for its arms embargo. Afterward the government released 100 prisoners, 56 of whom were said to be political internees. More than 800 political prisoners have been freed in amnesties between May 2011 and last November.

But later the mood among the country's political leaders wasn't so festive, nor among Western countries.

A 153-page report from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) entitled “All You
Can Do is Pray: Crimes against Humanity in the Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma's Arakan State” quickly re-established a sense of reality about Myanmar.

HRW accuses the Myanmar government and other local authorities of taking part in the displacement of more than 125,000 minority Rohingya and other Muslims.

“Burmese officials, community leaders, and Buddhist monks organised and encouraged ethnic Arakanese, backed by state security forces, to conduct coordinated attacks on Muslim neighborhoods and villages in October 2012 to terrorize and forcibly relocate the population. The tens of thousands of displaced have been denied access to humanitarian aid and been unable to return home,” the report said.

Critics also slammed the Myanmar government for not doing enough in the recent anti-Muslim disturbances in other parts of the country.

As expected, Myanmar dismissed the report and other allegations.

It wasn't that long ago that many in the international community were using terms such as “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing” to describe the atrocities committed by the then-military government of Myanmar.

There were reports accusing government soldiers of using rape as a military weapon to demoralize ethnic people such as the Shan and Karen. Countries including the U.S. threw their weight behind some of these reports. Myanmar, in short, was the big bad wolf, a pariah among nations.

And then came the political reform, and with it a breath of fresh air. The international community rushed in along with foreign investors looking to establish a presence in this resource-rich country sandwiched between China and India.

From the geo-political point of view, one can't deny the strategic appeal of Myanmar. But the world hasn't fully decided whether it's willing to let bygones be bygones. Have we forgotten about the alleged atrocities from the reams of reports over the past decades?

Certainly the rape victims and the displaced villagers — thousands of whom are stranded in makeshift camps on the Thai side of the border — have not forgotten.

What is just as appalling is the fact that the country's leaders continue to cynically deny that their troops committed any of these atrocities.

Perhaps it is too early to abandon the carrot-and-stick approach when it comes to Myanmar. Western countries that claim to be champions of human rights and democracy seem all too eager to extend all sorts of incentives to the government.

While we can't deny that much progress has been made over the last couple of years in terms of political and economic reform, the world must think carefully about completely closing the book on alleged atrocities over the past five decades.

If so, can we also apply this logic and treatment to the drug lords, some of whom, like the Wa leaders, have been indicted in Thai and U.S. courts for heroin trafficking?

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus