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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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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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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U.S. says Myanmar should draft new plan to give Rohingya citizenship

US President Barack Obama attends the 2nd Asean-US Summit in Naypyidaw on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy)

By Jared Ferrie
Reuters
November 13, 2014

Naypyidaw -- The United States on Thursday urged Myanmar to draft a new plan to allow the ethnic Rohingya minority to become citizens and to scrap a proposed plan to send them to detention camps if they decline to identify themselves as Bengalis.

Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state in the west of the predominantly Buddhist country. Almost 140,000 were displaced in clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.

The Rakhine State Action Plan will require Rohingya to identify themselves as Bengali – a term most reject because it implies they are immigrants from Bangladesh despite having lived in Myanmar for generations – in order to possibly get citizenship. 

According to a draft of the plan obtained by Reuters, the government has proposed that authorities build camps "for those who refuse to be registered and those without adequate documents".

The plan violates "universal rights" and challenges Myanmar's reforms, said U.S. deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes.

"We would like to see a new plan that will allow the Rohingya to become citizens through a normal process without having to do that type of self-identification," he told reporters in Myanmar's capital where U.S. President Barack Obama is meeting leaders at a regional summit.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had expressed his concern to Myanmar about the Rohingya "who face discrimination and violence".

That prompted a backlash from Myanmar officials, many of whom reject the term Rohingya, insisting the population was historically known as Bengali.

Rhodes said the Obama administration understood there were "contested views of history" but they should not interfere with human rights.

Obama will travel to Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, on Friday to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at her home where she spent more than 15 years under house arrest because of her opposition to the former military junta.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has been notably quiet on the plight of the Rohingya.

Rhodes urged her to speak out.

"Her voice is obviously critically important," he said.

Myanmar emerged from 49 years of military rule when a semi-civilian government took power and initiated reforms.

Obama told the Irrawaddy magazine in an interview published on Wednesday Myanmar was "backsliding" on reforms, citing issues including a crackdown on journalists and the treatment of Rohingya.


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