March 18, 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

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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...

Event

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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 ...

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

Who Are the Rohingya and Why Are They Fleeing Myanmar?

Indonesian rescue team members in Lhoksukon distribute food to migrants on May 11 inside a shelter after they were rescued from boats. RONI BINTANG/REUTERS

By Lucy Westcott
May 11, 2015

Around 1,600 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh were rescued off the coast of Indonesia on Sunday and detained in Malaysia on Monday.

Malaysian officials said Monday that 1,081 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees landed on the country’s Langkawi Island. On Sunday, 600 “sad, tired and distressed” migrants were stranded off the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh. On Monday, another 400 were found aboard a ship, the BBC reports.

Hundreds of those people are believed to be Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim minority in Myanmar who for decades have faced discrimination and persecution in the majority-Buddhist country. The government of Myanmar considers the country’s approximately 1.33 million Rohingya illegal settlers, and the United Nations classifies them as one of the most persecuted refugee groups in the world.

On her visit to the country earlier this year, Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, saw “no improvement” in the way the Rohingya were being treated.

“The conditions in Muslim [internally displaced person] camps are abysmal, and I received heartbreaking testimonies from Rohingya people telling me they had only two options: stay and die or leave by boat,” she said in a statement.

Malaysia and Indonesia are both majority-Muslim countries.

An Indonesian policeman distributes used clothes to migrants believed to be Rohingya inside a shelter in Lhoksukon on May 11. RONI BINTANG/REUTERS

Between January and March this year, around 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis boarded boats run by smugglers, twice as many as in the same period in 2014, according to the U.N. refugee agency. Thailand is the usual destination for the migrant boats, but a recent crackdown on human trafficking means the smugglers have had to set their sights elsewhere, Reuters reports.

Between 1826 and 1948, the Rohingya were brought from India by the British during their colonial rule to work in Myanmar. Since then, their origin has been disputed, with some believing they hail from Bangladesh and others saying they came from Rakhine state in southeastern Myanmar.

Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, denies there have been human rights abusesagainst the Rohingya, calling such reports “pure fabrication.” He also denies that the Rohingya are a people and refers to them as “Bengalis.” Calling the Rohingya “Bengali” is “a discriminatory, xenophobic way of erroneously implying that Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh,” says theU.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based nonprofit. Sein has called on the U.N. to facilitate the deportation of the Rohingya to other countries, but the U.N. rejected the proposal.

Last year, Myanmar unveiled a controversial plan offering Rohingya citizenship if they changed their ethnicity to Bangladeshi in origin. For the Rohingya, calling themselves “Bengali” implies they are illegally in the country, which most of them reject.

In 1982, the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship by the government of Myanmar, then known as Burma. The Burma Citizenship Law also restricted their access to education, services and freedom of movement, and allowed property to be taken arbitrarily. More than 140,000 Rohingya live in internally displaced persons camps around Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, in southwest Myanmar, where they are entirely dependent on international assistance, Human Rights Watch said in 2014. More than 200,000 Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh, according to Refugees International. They are effectively stateless.

Advocates fear violence and discrimination against the Rohingya is escalating, fueling a surge in treacherous boat journeys. Last year, more than 40 Rohingya were massacred in the village of Du Chee Yar Tan by local men, the U.N. confirmed. Among the findings were 10 severed heads in a water tank, including those of children.

Earlier this month, dozens of bodies were discovered in smugglers’ camps in Thailand. Many of the victims were believed to be Rohingya.

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Rohingya Exodus