May 05, 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...

Event

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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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Burma’s Rohingya need protection from persecution

(Photo: AP)


By Holly Atkinson and Michael Abramowitz

November 2, 2013

Rakhine state, on the western coast of Burma, is among the most dangerous places in the world to be a Muslim.

Just over a year ago, simmering tensions and small-scale clashes erupted into mass violence between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingya, a minority of about 800,000 whose roots in Burma are several centuries old. During these rampages, Buddhist mobs stormed Muslim enclaves, setting fire to villages, destroying schools and mosques and leaving scores of Rohingya dead.

One victim of the violence was Ayessa, a 55-year-old woman who lived in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state. Her husband and brother were killed, and she was forced to flee her home for a displaced persons’ camp. She sought to leave Burma on a boat with her two young granddaughters and other relatives but was turned back by Burmese authorities. She was returned to one of the camps, where displaced Rohingya continue to be confined a year after the violence, cut off from nearly all goods and services. The September United Nations humanitarian bulletin reports that 180,000 people in camps and segregated communities in Rakhine state need life-saving assistance — nearly all are Muslim, and a majority, about 103,000, are children. Yet humanitarian agencies increasingly are obstructed from reaching those in need.

The anti-Rohingya violence has since affected other Muslims in Burma. In September, a Buddhist mob rampaged through a Muslim neighborhood of Kamein ethnicity in Thandwe, a town in Rakhine state. Among those killed was a 94-year-old grandmother. Attacks have been reported in dozens of locations across Burma. In the central town of Meiktila, for example, a mob massacred middle-school students and their teachers, among others. Survivors told investigators from Physicians for Human Rights grisly details of beatings, stabbings, decapitations and immolations while scores of police officers watched and hundreds of bystanders cheered and shouted such things as, “Kill them!” A key catalyst for the violence is the rising influence of the 969 movement, a campaign led by Buddhist monks that preaches religious purity and urges boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses.

The threat of future violence is acute against all Muslims in Burma but particularly the Rohingya. Burma’s 1982 citizenship law does not include the Rohingya among the country’s officially recognized ethnic groups, so they are essentially stateless. They are widely reviled throughout Burma as illegal immigrants. They must obtain official approval to marry and to travel, even to neighboring villages; in some areas, they are prohibited fromhaving more than two children. Many Rohingya, including children, have been forced to work without pay for government and military authorities. Rohingya routinely face arbitrary arrest and detention, confiscation of property, and physical and sexual violence.

Perhaps most outrageous amid this violence against Rohingya and other Muslims has been the tacit support of Burmese authorities. Investigations by Physicians for Human Rightsand others have found that Buddhist monks and local politicians incited and led many of the attacks. State security forces have failed or refused to stop incidents of violence and sometimes participated in it. While hundreds of Muslims have been jailed for supposedly instigating the violence, few perpetrators have been arrested. It has become evident that there is little risk in Burma to those who attack Muslims.

In the past few years, Burma has made remarkable progress on political reform. But in his final report last month as the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana called attention to the “profound crisis” in Rakhine state and expressed concern that the de facto segregation of Burma’s Muslim communities would become permanent.

The Burmese government’s eagerness to attract foreign investment and aid provides opportunities for the international community to encourage and assist in protecting all of Burma’s peoples from crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, largely in response to outside pressure, members of Burma’s government have signaled their intention to address the plight of the Rohingya; Burmese President Thein Sein visited Rakhine state last month for the first time since the violence started in 2012 and offered soothing words.

But there has been little progress toward easing the suffering of the Rohingya or protecting Muslims from further discrimination and violence. Pro-democracy leaders have been passive in the face of the anti-Muslim violence. Without greater initiative from Burma’s leaders and vigilance from its friends abroad, the mix of religious nationalism, ethnic violence and state complicity could yet reap catastrophic violence, which would be disastrous for the entire nation.

Holly Atkinson is director of the Human Rights Program at Mount Sinai Global Health and past president of Physicians for Human Rights. Michael Abramowitz, a former Post reporter, directs the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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