March 27, 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...

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

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Rohingya only part of 150,000 migrants in country

Malaysia is host to more than 150,000 migrants who come from as far as Somalia and Iran besides ethnic groups from Myanmar. — Picture by Choo Choy May

By Jonathan Edward
June 7, 2015

PETALING JAYA — The plight of Rohingya migrants is well known but Malaysia hosts more than 150,000 migrants who come from as far as Somalia and Iran besides ethnic groups from Myanmar.

There are also Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians and Palestinians here.

Malay Mail had an opportunity to meet some of the migrants at the Art for Grabs event at Jaya One held in conjunction with World Refugee Day.

Ben Ting, 32, an ethnic Rvwang from Kachin state, arrived here with a group four years ago after leaving his family in Myanmar.

“My life was in danger. The ethnic Bamar peole who form the majority kept coming to my village and taking away young men for forced labour and none ever came back,” he said.

“I took the land route through Thailand and spent many nights walking through the jungle until I reached Malaysia.”

Ben hand-makes traditional clothing and accessories which are sold through a church that supports him and others from his community.

Sa Nine, a 17-year-old ethnic Karen from Mon state, was forced from her family’s farm at gunpoint by Bamar militiamen.

“My father said it wasn’t safe for us to stay. So we came to Malaysia through Thailand with the help of an agent who we paid to guide us across the border,” she said.

Asked if she would return to Myanmar, she said: “Some states have been declared safe but they really are not. So, we will continue to appeal for resettlement elsewhere.

“Malaysia is a nice country but it is not my home. I’m just a guest here.”

Komeil, 32, from the northern Iranian province of Guilan, fled his homeland because of religious persecution.

“I had been jailed off and on for several years. After the last time I knew I had to leave or I would not live see tomorrow, so I just got on a plane and left,” he said.

He has been in Malaysia for the past four years and expects to be resettled in America as he has relatives there.

“You don’t get to pick which country they (UNHCR) will send you to but having relatives increases your chances. I used to be an engineer but now I paint for a living,” he said, pointing to his canvass with a half-finished painting of a broken vase.

Asked if he would consider going back if things changed there, he said it would take time for change to come.

“If there could be change I would have stayed back and helped that change happen. Nothing is going to change there,” he said.

Meida Noor Bakr, a former mathematics teacher from Gorgan in northern Iran, has been in Malaysia for nearly four years with her husband and two children.

Her husband was a journalist who was arrested in a government crackdown and jailed for two years.

“They beat him every day and told him they would jail me and my children. They made him understand that we would all be punished for what he had done,” she said.

“Staying in Malaysia is hard as we cannot work legally and my husband can only do odd-jobs. In Iran, this was my hobby. Now it’s my only income,” she added, holding one of her paintings.

Mahshar, 40, a former schoolteacher from Kurdistan, fled her homeland because of ethnic tensions.

“They made us understand we would be killed if we didn’t leave,” she said, declining to elaborate.

“I never want to return. I still have nightmares of what I have seen,” she added, when asked if she would return to her hometown some day.

Kurdistan is split between Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. It is not recognised as a country, with the Kurds among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

As of May, there are 152,830 registered migrants registered with UNHCR in Malaysia comprising 49,600 Chins, 45,910 Rohingya, 12,320 Myanmar Muslims, and 7,280 Rakhines and Arakanese from Myanmar.

There are also 3,890 Sri Lankans, 1,210 Pakistanis, 1,090 Somalis, 950 Syrians, 830 Iraqis, 540 Iranians and 430 Palestinians here.

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Rohingya Exodus