March 16, 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

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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Boats with over 500 Rohingya from Myanmar land in Indonesia

An ethnic Rohingya woman who was on one of the boats washed ashore on Sumatra island weeps as she boards a military truck heading to a temporary shelter in Seunuddon, Aceh province, Indonesia, Sunday, May 10, 2015. Boats carrying about 500 members of Myanmar's long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim community washed to shore in western Indonesia on Sunday, with some of the people in need of medical attention, a migration official and a human rights advocate said. (AP Photo/S. Yulinnas)

By Margie Mason & Robin McDowell 
Associated Press
May 10, 2015

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Boats carrying more than 500 members of Myanmar's long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim community washed ashore in western Indonesia on Sunday, with some people in need of medical attention, officials and a nonprofit organization said. They warned that thousands more are believed to be stranded at sea.

Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, said his teams were racing to the Aceh province sub-district of Seunuddon, where the boats landed.

Of the four boats found, three had apparently been abandoned by the smugglers and the other ran out of fuel, he said.

Most of those on the boats were Rohingya, but there were also some Bangladeshis on board, Hamilton said.

"We had nothing to eat," said Rashid Ahmed, a 43-year-old Rohingya man who was on one of the boats. He said he left Myanmar's troubled state of Rakhine with his eldest son three months ago.

"There were about 20 children on our boat - they were so hungry," he said, crying as he spoke to The Associated Press by phone. "All we could do was pray."

The Rohingya have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Myanmar.

Attacks on the religious minority by Buddhist mobs in the last three years have sparked one of the biggest exoduses of boat people since the Vietnam War, sending 100,000 people fleeing, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which has monitored the movements of Rohingya for more than a decade.

An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 Rohingya are now being held in large ships in the Malacca Straits and nearby international waters, she said, adding that crackdowns on trafficking syndicates in Thailand and Malaysia have prevented brokers from bringing them to land.

That has added to a spiraling crisis, with some stranded at sea for more than two months.

Tightly confined, and with limited access to food and clean water, their health is inevitably deteriorating, Lewa said, adding that dozens of deaths have been reported in recent months.

Thailand has long been considered a transit point for human traffickers across the region.

The tactics of brokers and agents started changing in November as authorities started cracking down on smuggling networks on land - a move apparently aimed at appeasing the U.S. government as it prepares to release its annual Trafficking in Persons report next month. Last year, Thailand was downgraded to the lowest level, putting it on par with North Korea and Syria.

In the past, Rohingya and Bangladeshis packed into ships in the Bay of Bengal.

Their first stop was almost always Thailand, where they were held in open pens in jungle camps as brokers collected "ransoms" of $2,000 or more from family and friends. Those who could pay continued onward, usually to Malaysia or other countries.

Those who couldn't were sometimes beaten, killed or left to die.

Since May 1, police have unearthed two dozen bodies from shallow graves in the mountains of southern Thailand, the apparent victims, they say, of smuggling rings.

Indonesian authorities said the migrants who arrived in Aceh early Sunday were taken to a police station and a sports stadium, where they were being given care.

Risky Hidayat, from Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, said some of the migrants mentioned that there was another boat with an unspecified number of people on it still at sea in the same area.

One of the Rohingya who arrived Sunday, Muhammad Juned, told the AP that he left Myanmar two months ago, hoping to go to Malaysia.

"We just wanted to leave because the situation in Myanmar is no longer conducive for us to stay," he said.

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McDowell reported from Yangon, Myanmar. Associated Press writer Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

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Rohingya Exodus