July 15, 2025

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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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Arakan Party Concerned Army General Will Become Chief Minister

Deputy Border Affairs Minister Gen. Maung Maung Ohn (R), seen in this file photo from 2010. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

By Lawi Weng
June 24, 2014

RANGOON — Arakanese lawmakers said they are worried that a Burma Army general will become the replacement for the Arakan State chief minister who resigned last week, adding that they want to decide who becomes the next minister because they are the majority party in the state.

President Thein Sein announced last week that Hla Maung Tin, the chief minister of strife-torn Arakan State, was “allowed to resign,” but no details were provided as to why the lawmaker of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), who was appointed in 2010, stepped down.

The President’s Office on Friday it announced that Deputy Border Affairs Minister Gen. Maung Maung Ohn will become a member of the Arakan State legislature.

The Arakan National Party (ANP) said they believe that he will be appointed as the new chief minister on Wednesday during a meeting of the state parliament.

“They are calling us for an urgent meeting tomorrow so I know we will have to discuss that Gen. Maung Maung Ohn will become the next chief minister,” said Aung Mrya Kyaw, a local ANP lawmaker, adding that this procedure had been used in the past to appoint a chief minister.

The general headed the government commission that investigated the Sittwe riots in March, during which more than a dozen UN and humanitarian aid groups offices were ransacked by Arakanese Buddhist mobs.

The ANP demand, however, that lawmakers in the state legislature—where the ANP holds 18 of the 34 seats—are consulted over the appointment.

“The best thing to do is to let our 34 civilian MPs here appoint a chief minister, instead of [letting the government] choosing someone from the army,” Aung Mrya Kyaw said. “Because those who come from the army do not understand the whole situation here, and it could even become worse if the army manages it.”

Burma’s military-drafted 2008 Constitution centralizes executive powers over the divisions and ethnic states with the government in Naypyidaw, which has the authority to directly appoint a region’s chief minister.

The ANP demands that local lawmakers are consulted and that an ANP lawmaker is chosen as the new chief minister because their party holds the majority.

“We should have the right to decide who will run our state, but this Constitution does not let us decide this,” Aung Mrya Kyaw said. “We ethnic [groups] ask for amendments to this Constitution because it currently does not let ethnic people run their own states.”

“In a democratic system, only those who are elected can be appointed as chief minister. So we disagree to appoint Gen. Maung Maung Ohn,” added Khin Maung Gyi, an ANP central committee member.

Under the former military regime, senior military officers held all positions in the cabinet and ran Burma’s states and divisions as chief ministers. Under the current nominally civilian government, the army controls the Border Affairs, Home Affairs and Defense ministries.

Ethnic minority groups have long fought a political and armed struggle against the Burman-majority army and central government in order to seek greater political autonomy, cultural rights and control over natural resources in their regions.

Since 2012, Arakan State has experienced waves of deadly inter-communal violence between Arakanese Buddhist majority and the Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority of around 1 million people who suffer gross human rights violations at the hands of security forces, government authorities and Arakanese nationalists.

International human rights groups have accused the Burmese government of colluding with Arakanese nationalist groups during the attacks on the Rohingya, and contributing to the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim group from communities in northern Arakan State.

Some 140,000 displaced Rohingya live in crowded camps from where they cannot leave, while about 89,000 Rohingya fled by boats last year in a desperate attempt to reach Malaysia.

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