March 18, 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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Arakan Govt Softens Stance Toward MSF

Medicine are seen in a pharmacy which also serves as a makeshift clinic at the Thae Chaung camp for internally displaced people in Sittwe, Arakan State, on April 22, 2014. (Photo: Minzayar / Reuters)

By Lawi Weng
July 24, 2014

RANGOON — The Arakan State government and Burma’s Ministry of Health have encouraged international humanitarian organizations—including the previously maligned Medecins Sans Frontieres—to work in the troubled state, where 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in increasingly dire conditions after interreligious violence broke out more than two years ago.

The Ministry of Health said in a statement printed in state media on Thursday that the assistance of international organizations would contribute to the stability and development of Arakan State.

The Arakan State government said in the statement that “our government would like to invite all organizations, as well as other UN agencies and including MSF, to participate in implementing the Rakhine Action Plan effectively at Union and state levels,” referring to a recently issued plan that covers development in the health and education sectors of Burma’s second-poorest state.

The statements mark a notable improvement in at least the public stance of state and Union-level officials toward MSF, which faced a barrage of government criticism earlier this year and has been barred from operating in Arakan State.

Members of Arakan State’s Emergency Coordination Center (ECC) met with diplomats, UN agencies, international nongovernmental organizations, state government officials, civil society organizations and representatives from the Myanmar Peace Center in late June. The meeting addressed how to improve humanitarian aid delivery and relief efforts, with the parties also agreeing to put an emphasis on development issues impacting the state.

The ECC, comprised of government officials and civil society leaders, was set up in March to oversee aid operations in the state.

Win Myaing, the Arakan State government spokesman, said he had not read the statement yet and did not know anything about it, declining to provide comment on those grounds.

Than Tun, who is a member of the ECC and a community leader in Sittwe, said MSF would need to win the hearts and minds of the state’s majority ethnic Arakanese population if it wanted to resume operations there.

“Arakan people did not like MSF. To let it come back, this depends only on our people,” he said, adding that the Arakanese would welcome any organizations working in the region, but only if they provided humanitarian aid in an impartial way.

“There will be no problems coming here if they have transparency and no bias in offering aid. This depends on those organizations,” Than Tun said.

Accusations of bias have hounded MSF, which maintains that it provides its services based solely on medical need in a state where the vast majority of the displaced populations are Rohingya Muslims.

The Burmese government kicked MSF out of Arakan State in February after the aid group said it had treated patients wounded in a massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Maungdaw Township’s Du Chee Yar Tan village.

The government has denied that any attack took place.

After MSF’s aid operations in the state ceased, the Ministry of Health said it had stepped up its delivery of medical services, but frequent reports since then of the deteriorating health situation in the IDP camps suggest the government’s efforts have failed to plug the hole left by the MSF pull out.

In an email to The Irrawaddy, MSF responded positively to the government’s apparently softened stance toward the organization.

“MSF welcomes the Myanmar Government’s announcement today that the organization will be invited to resume medical humanitarian operations in Rakhine [Arakan] State,” the group said. “We look forward to continuing constructive discussions with the Ministry of Health regarding how MSF can support the ministry in the immediate expansion of life-saving medical activities for the people of Rakhine currently facing a humanitarian crisis.”

Despite Thursday’s state media missive, MSF remains officially banned from operating in the state.

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