April 05, 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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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...

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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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Suu Kyi’s Attendance ‘Unsure’ at Planned Sittwe Reform Rally

Aung San Su Kyi gives a speech about constitutional reform in Rangoon to thousands of supporters on May 17. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy)


By Simon Roughneen
June 3, 2014

RANGOON — Aung San Suu Kyi’s constitutional reform roadshow is due to hit Sittwe sometime over the coming weeks, but it is not yet confirmed whether the opposition leader will speak in the troubled Arakan State capital.

“It is not sure yet whether The Lady will travel,” said Kyi Toe, a senior member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), referring to Suu Kyi by her popular nickname.

“We are still in planning,” Kyi Toe told The Irrawaddy on Monday. With Suu Kyi, an MP, currently attending the recently reconvened Parliament in Naypyidaw, June 28 and July 12 dates have been proposed for the event.

Burma’s biggest opposition party, the NLD, along with the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society, a group of prominent former student dissidents, are jointly campaigning to have Burma’s 2008 Constitution amended, saying the charter gives Burma’s military too much say in politics.

Sittwe is the regional capital of Arakan State in western Burma and, until mid-2012, was a mixed town, with Arakanese Buddhists and Muslims living and working in close proximity. Riots in June 2012 saw most of the towns Rohingya Muslims expelled into grim ghettoes at the town’s edge, where they now live in shacks and depend on aid delivered by the United Nations and other relief organizations.

Most of those displaced and living in camps outside Sittwe and elsewhere in Arakan State are Rohingya Muslims, a group thought to number anywhere from 800,000 to 1 million people. Suu Kyi, a former Nobel peace laureate and for a time the world’s best-known prisoner of conscience, has been criticized internationally for failing to speak up for the Rohingya, who live under discriminatory laws and are labeled “Bengali,” or foreigners, by the region’s ethnic Arakanese and most Burmese politicians.

Despite this reticence, Suu Kyi is seemingly unpopular among the Arakanese, who perceive the opposition leader as aligned with Western criticisms of how Rohingya are treated in Burma.

During a recent interview in Sittwe, Thein Khine, a member of the recently formed Arakan National Party (ANP), slammed Suu Kyi for what he described as “seeking equally treatment between Buddhist and Muslim.”

“We don’t want this,” Thein Khine said, linking the NLD’s perceived stance on Arakan State as similar to that of foreign aid organizations, which were attacked en masse by Arakanese mobs in March after being accused of favoring Rohingya in their provision of humanitarian aid. UN figures show that all but 5,000 of the almost 140,000 people left homeless by violence in Arakan State since 2012 are Rohingya.

Asked if Suu Kyi would receive a warm welcome in Sittwe, should she travel there to speak at the reform event, Aye Maung, the former leader of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), now merged into the ANP, said “I don’t know.”

The RNDP made submissions to have the Constitution amended, including Article 436, Aye Maung said, telling The Irrawaddy that at the moment there are no plans for the ANP to take part in the proposed NLD/88 Generation event in Sittwe. It would follow recent rallies attended by tens of thousands of people in Rangoon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw.

But for Rohingya like Myo Win, the proposed constitutional reform rally will be a reminder of their second-class status.

“Even if the Constitution is changed, it might not give us any hope,” said Myo Win, speaking by telephone from Aung Mingalar, a Muslim district of Sittwe that has been cordoned off by police. “We will not able to attend the event, and I don’t think we will be able to sign any petition for change.”

While Article 59(f) currently bars Suu Kyi from becoming president even if her NLD wins elections scheduled for late 2015, the reform campaign has of late focused on Article 436, which outlines the tricky process by which constitutional changes can take place.

A committee of MPs set up to examine reform has said it will recommend revising Article 436. To pass, the amendment will require at least 75 percent of MPs to back it—as laid out in Article 436—meaning at least one “yes” vote from the 25 percent bloc of unelected soldiers in Parliament will be needed for a change that would likely reduce the military’s political role.

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