March 17, 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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Term ‘Rohingya’ struck from census

Schoolteachers who have volunteered as enumerators set off to conduct the census door to door on Sunday morning. (Photo: DVB)

By Shwe Aung & Angus Watson 
March 30, 2014

Census-taking in Sittwe, Arakan State, will go ahead as of March 31, as a boycott organised by the All Rakhine Committee for the Census (ARCC) has been called off.

The group met with Immigration Minister Khin Yi on Saturday in the wake of last week’s mob violence in Sittwe — where international aid offices were ransacked and looted as an anti-census protest turned ugly.

As per ARCC demands, the Ministry of Information has now instructed census enumerators, who as of Sunday began their task in a selection of townships in Arakan State, not to enter the word “Rohingya” on any census form, regardless of what the subject might indicate.

According to Presidential spokesperson Ye Htut, the term “Rohingya” will not be available to those surveyed.

“It will be acceptable if they write ‘Bengali’,” Ye Htut is reported to have said. “We won’t accept them as ‘Rohingya’.”

Aung Win is an activist and community leader in Aung Mingalar, a Rohingya enclave of 4,000 in Sittwe that exists under strict curfew and 24-hour police protection.

Speaking to DVB on Sunday evening, Aung Win said that enumerators have not yet reached Aung Mingalar but have already interviewed Rohingya families in other areas of Arakan State. He said that in those cases, enumerators have either entered the code for Bengali — 1410 — or left the space blank.

Asked for a reaction by DVB Aung Win said that “we are not boycotting, but we are not satisfied and we have no choice but to move forward with the international community”.

Burma’s western Arakan State is home to the vast majority of the nation’s Rohingya Muslim population, estimated at around 800,000. In Arakan, protests calling for a boycott of the census have been ongoing for several weeks as the government previously rejected calls to forbid the term “Rohingya” from being entered on census questionnaires.

Rakhine Buddhists prefer to use the term “Bengali”, as it reinforces the notion that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Neither term features on the government’s list of 135 “official races” which provides the basis for citizenship, as per a 1982 ruling.

“As soon as we received confirmation that our needs have been met we stopped our boycott,” ARCC representative Than Htun told DVB on Sunday.

Yet while the shift by the government seems to have facilitated the count going ahead in Arakan state, the government’s new standpoint may now contradict commitments made to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and donor nations.

“In accordance with international standards and human rights principles and as a part of its agreement with the UN and donors, the government has made a commitment that everyone who is in the country will be counted in the census and that all respondents will have the option to self-identify their ethnicity,” the UNFPA stated shortly before the government’s back-flip.

“This commitment cannot be honoured selectively in the face of intimidation or threats of violence,” the UNFPA statement of 28 March read.

The shift by the government has drawn the ire of the UK, who with a contribution of US$16 million is the principle donor to the $60 million census project.

The British Embassy in Rangoon responded to the government’s move by stating that: “The [Burmese] government has committed to run the census in line with international standards, including allowing all respondents the option to self-identify their ethnicity. We are concerned by recent reports that this may not be met.”

Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, believes that the politicisation of ethnicity in Burma is a breach of human rights in itself.

“The problem is not that Rohingya and others are not listed as recognised ethnic groups,” said Farmaner. “The problem is that there is a list at all. All ethnicities should be allowed to self-identify in the census, but this should not be connected with citizenship rights.”

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