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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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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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UN finding it harder to resettle refugees in new countries

Photo via Chinnewschannel.com 


By Shahanaaz Habib
May 10, 2015

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia can no longer expect refugees coming here to be re-settled to third countries like in the past because such places are “shrinking” internationally.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Malaysia representative, Richard Towle, says priorities have shifted to other places like the Middle East, the Sub Sahara area and Africa where there are greater humanitarian crises.

“Last year, we submitted approximately 15,000 applications for resettlement. This year the number will be half of that because there is no longer the same degree of interest from the resettlement countries,” he said in an interview.

There are currently 152,570 refugees registered with the UNHCR in Malaysia.

Towle said in the 1970s and the 1980s when the Indo-Chinese boat people fled to Malaysia, there was “a high degree of willingness” from the international community to find solutions for the refugees through resettlement, adding that those days were “very significantly gone.”

In 2014, the number of refugees worldwide grew to 14.2 million.

Towle said under the situation, the role of UNHCR too was changing and shifting to where the greater priorities were.

“Our ability to provide support in the way we have in the past to Malaysia is getting less and less because we have fewer resources available to do this,” he added.

Towle said based on the new realities, it was up to host nations like Malaysia to find different ways of dealing with the refugee situation.

Of the refugees registered with the UNHCR, 94% come from Myanmar.

He said they were forced to flee because of repressions, persecution and flagrant human rights violations.

He said the choice for Malaysia was whether to let them remain faceless in the black and grey market economy or act through some kind of registration programme.

“If no steps are taken to find out who is here, they will remain in this dark grey area of exploitation and criminality,” he said.

Last week, Thailand uncovered camps and mass graves in Songkhla and Padang Besar. They were the remains of Rohingya smuggled and trafficked into the country.

The former president of the Rohingya club in Thailand alleged that there were similar camps in Malaysia where Rohingya and Bangladeshi “slaves” were being brought in and kept by traffickers.

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