April 04, 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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Rohingya say would rather die in Indonesia than go home



By Ainur Romah and Kaamil Ahmed
May 18, 2015

While Indonesia prepares to repatriate Bangladeshi contingent from boats, Rohingya say they would rather die than go home.

JAKARTA/COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- Indonesia said Sunday it is preparing to repatriate many of the Bangladeshi boat people who arrived on its shores this week, but for the Muslim Rohingya on board the situation is more critical.

"I asked them whether they wanted to go back to their home country, and all of them refused," Hilmi Bakar told Anadolu Agency.

The volunteer at humanitarian organization Hilal Merah Indonesia said that Rohingya had said they preferred to die in Indonesia rather than return to a place where they were discriminated against and tortured. 

"Some of them cried and asked to stay in Indonesia. Returning to their own country makes them feel so insecure," he said.

The 827 Rohingya are from a contingent of 1486 migrants who arrived in Aceh province on the northern end of Sumatra on boats after Thailand began to clamp down on smuggling camps in its south May 1 - the usual trafficking route to Malaysia.

Thousands of migrants have instead been stuck at sea, in many cases traffickers cutting their losses and dumping them on Malaysian and Indonesian shores.

Tin Soe, the editor of Kaladan Press Network - a Rohingya news group based in Bangladesh, where almost all of the migrants start their journey from - told Anadolu Agency that back in Myanmar they have no right to a livelihood, healthcare, or education.

"They have lost every right from the Burmese [Myanmar government]. They cannot get jobs in government, they cannot get an education, they cannot move, they cannot do anything," he said.

"So they go to Bangladesh or Malaysia [to survive].”

He underlined that the Rohingya's treatment by the Myanmar government is the reason they are leaving.

"People are not going for economic reasons, they are going because of persecution," he stated.

Albert Djalius, the head of monitoring and enforcement at Lhokseumawe immigration office, told Anadolu Agency by phone Sunday that Bangladeshis have been separated from Rohingya at the three temporary shelters they've been staying, and transferred to Aceh's immigration office.

"The new shelter facilitates administrative proceedings regarding repatriation," Djalius said.

He added that a team from the United Nations' refugee agency, the UNHCR, has been helping identify who is a genuine refugee and who is a job seeker. 

“The Bangladeshis want to look for jobs in Malaysia," he underlined, adding that the Bangladesh ambassador to Indonesia, MD Nazmul Quaunine, agreed to the repatriations when he visited the residents at the shelter Saturday.

Djalius said that the condition of the migrants - many of whom arrived from the cramped, overcrowded boats suffering from dehydration, wounds, trauma, and broken bones - has improved, with many of the children socializing with local children.

This has been done with great assistance from the government, the Indonesian Red Cross, the army, and Aceh society, he said.

In the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami, Aceh - in which around 163,000 people died or went missing - received almost $5 billion in international aid. 

Aceh resident Hendi Permana told the Anadolu Agency by phone on Saturday that those living near the Pangkalan Susu Shelter had been assisting Rohingya with food, clothing, and blankets.

"As Muslims we have to help each other," he said.

Meanwhile, former Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono claimed to be touched Sunday by the loacls attention to the boat people.

"With great emotion, I witnessed spontaneous humanitarian assistance given by Acehnese to Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees," he wrote on his Twitter account.

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