March 19, 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

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Act now on slavery shame

(Photo: Royal Thai Government)

By Editorial
November 14, 2014

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha met Myanmar President Thein Sein at the 25th Asean Summit in Nay Pyi Taw this week. Unfortunately, global attention was not so much on the economic dreams the pair wanted to share with the world, but on their roles in the modern day slave trade. 

Human trafficking has long made the Asean community the target of international criticism. Undeniably, Myanmar and Thailand are among the main culprits.

Questions then followed as to how the two countries could produce meaningful measures to end their cross-border trade in human lives.

As the country of origin, Myanmar bears a responsibility to end the harsh political and economic oppression that pushes millions of its people into the hands of human traffickers out of desperation for a better life. 

As the destination, Thailand has a responsibility to prevent labour abuse and set up a system that ensures labour rights and protection for migrant workers.

In reality, both countries have allowed human trafficking syndicates to run a modern slave trade. Impoverished Myanmar migrant workers and ethnic Muslim Rohingya are cheated, enslaved, tortured, sold and used as forced labour, especially in the deep-sea fishing industry.

At the Asean summit, Gen Prayut stressed the importance of joint regional efforts to battle human trafficking and transnational crime. With the country being overwhelmed with Rohingya boat people, Myanmar is obviously his target audience.

While joint efforts are necessary, it would be more urgent — and more effective — for both countries to get rid of the root of the ills that make human trafficking a thriving industry — their own corrupt officials.

According to a report by Fortify Rights, an international human rights organisation, the persecuted ethnic Rohingya must pay security forces huges sum of money to flee the country by boat. As part of a transnational crime syndicate, these officials even escort human trafficking boats out to international waters, Fortify Rights claimed.

"State security forces are complicit in and profit from the increasingly lucrative maritime human trafficking and smuggling of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State," Fortify Rights said.

The Rohingya's horrific stories of physical assault during enslavement and extortion for ransom money on the Thai side of the border are well documented. The setting up of secret camps on islands and the Thai-Malaysian borders during ransom is not possible without help from officials.

As victims of human trafficking, the Rohingya and other trafficked migrant workers are entitled by law to help to return home and compensation. Yet, police and security forces prefer to treat them as illegal immigrants who must be immediately deported.

More often than not, the human traffickers are waiting at the border to pick the migrants up and send them back to the Thai border again. Many officials are getting rich from this deportation practice.

Pressured by rights groups, some Rohingya have been sent to detention centres, pending nationality verification before being sent home. Last year, hundreds were "allowed" to flee detention centres, back into traffickers' arms. There was no investigation and no officials were punished.

Just this week, about 130 Uighur asylum seekers "disappeared" from a shelter in Songkhla. The officials blamed it on a lack of personnel to closely guard the detainees. There will be no investigation; no one will be punished.

Neither the Myanmar nor the Thai governments can beat the transnational crime syndicates and rescue their countries' names unless they get tough with their corrupt officials.

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