February 25, 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...

Video News

...

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

...

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 ...

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

Nearly 2,000 boat people including Rohingya rescued in S.E. Asia

A group of rescued migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, passengers of the first migrants boat, temporarily housed at a government sports auditorium in Lhoksukon, Aceh province, on May 11, 2015 (AFP Photo/Reza Juanda)

By M Jegathesan
May 11, 2015

Nearly 2,000 boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been rescued or swum to shore in Malaysia and Indonesia, authorities said Monday, warning that yet more desperate migrants could be in peril at sea.

The spate of arrivals comes as Thailand, a key stop on a Southeast Asian people-smuggling route, cracks down following the discovery of mass graves that has laid bare the extent of the thriving trade.

Thousands of impoverished Muslim Rohingya -- a minority unwanted by Myanmar's government -- and Bangladeshis brave a perilous sea and land trafficking route through Thailand and into Malaysia, Indonesia and beyond every year.

Malaysian police said people-smugglers had dumped at least 1,018 hungry migrants in shallow waters off the coast of the resort island of Langkawi since Sunday.

Migrant women and children from Myanmar and Bangladesh wait at a shelter in Matang Raya village, Baktya, in northern Aceh, on May 10, 2015 (AFP Photo/Reza Juanda)

One boat was still stuck on a breakwater offshore but the others are believed to have fled to sea.

"We know that there are more boats out there that want to come in," Langkawi police chief Haritth Kam Abdullah told AFP, citing police intelligence.

Indonesian authorities said they intercepted a boat off the coast of the northwestern province of Aceh early Monday with estimates of at least 400 people aboard, a day after 573 people described by one official as "sad, tired and distressed" came to shore in Aceh.

At least 92 children were among those brought ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia.

- Bracing for further arrivals -

The vessel discovered off Indonesia on Monday was still at sea, shadowed by the country's navy, said naval spokesman Manahan Simorangkir.

He said the vessel was damaged but afloat and its captain had fled. The navy was supplying the ship with water and food but the spokesman said there were currently no plans to allow it to berth. 

Migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh wait at a shelter in Matang Raya village, Baktya, in northern Aceh, on May 10, 2015 (AFP Photo/Reza Juanda)

Aceh provincial search and rescue chief Budiawan, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP authorities were bracing for further arrivals.

"We are on standby and ready to rescue them when we receive an alert," Budiawan said.

Abdul Rahim, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi who swam ashore Sunday on Langkawi, told AFP he endured a 28-day journey on a ship operated by Myanmar smugglers and packed with hundreds of other people amid appalling conditions.

He was among about 300 Bangladeshi men who were being fed and tended to at a police detention centre badminton court, most of them shirtless and looking thin, weak and haggard.

"We were given only very little food and water. When I asked for more I was beaten with sticks and metal rods," he said, showing a two-inch gash on his back.

An Indonesian doctor (L) checks the health condition of a migrant believed to be Rohingya, after the latter was rescued from a boat, in Lhoksukon in Indonesia's Aceh Province May 11, 2015. Nearly 600 migrants thought to be Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshis were rescued from at least two wooden boats stranded off the coast of Indonesia's northern Aceh province, authorities said on Sunday. REUTERS/Roni Bintang

His ship had been bound from Bangladesh for Malaysia but the passengers were not expecting to be ordered into the surf off Langkawi.

Activists and refugee groups say the Thai crackdown may be leaving many migrants stuck on overcrowded ships or at risk of being dumped at sea by nervous smugglers.

"Thailand has tried to prevent traffickers from continuing their business... so that has forced them to go somewhere else," said Chris Lewa from The Arakan Project, a Rohingya rights group, who believes thousands may be at sea.

- 'The root' of the problem -

Migrants are "just trying to disembark before they die", she added.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar views its population of Rohingya, estimated at more than a million, as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, with an official from the Myanmar president's office insisting that Bangladesh was at "the root" of the problem.

"The issue is whether these people -- who say they are from Myanmar -- really come from Myanmar," Zaw Htay told AFP on Monday, adding that the government did not "accept" the term Rohingya.

Rohingya have been targeted in outbreaks of sectarian violence in Myanmar in recent years, prompting many to flee. The UN considers Rohingya to be among the world's most persecuted minorities.

Boatloads have arrived off Aceh in the past, typically after becoming lost or running out of fuel.

Those who straggled ashore in Aceh on Sunday had been en route from Thailand to Malaysia, according to accounts by migrants and officials there.

They were falsely told they had arrived in Malaysia -- a relatively prosperous magnet for migrants for surrounding nations -- and ordered to swim to shore.

They included 83 women and 41 children, said Darsa, a local disaster management agency official.

One woman was pregnant and some of the children were aged under 10.

"Some of them were not doing too well and needed medical attention," Darsa said.

Langkawi police said the 1,018 people found there included 555 Bangladeshi men.

There were 463 Rohingya, including 101 women and 52 children.

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus