April 05, 2025

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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...

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...

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(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...

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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...

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(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...

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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...

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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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First human trafficking case in Rakhine to head to court

(Photo: Reuters)

By Nyan Lynn Aung
August 13, 2015

The government has accepted the first official case of human trafficking in Rakhine State, after maintaining for years that no such crime occurs in the poverty-stricken region.

Twenty people accused of smuggling Bangladeshis and Rohingya asylum-seekers will be brought to court this month under the state’s first prosecution of trafficking, according to police.

The 20 suspects were already convicted in June of violating immigration laws and were charged but not tried for “habitual dealing in slaves”, which is an offence under the criminal code rather than under anti-human trafficking legislation.

On August 4, the Ministry of Home Affairs accepted a further lawsuit against the group explicitly for trafficking, according to U Min Naing, police major with the police force’s anti-human trafficking unit.

While the trafficking case has been approved, it has not yet been filed at the local court.

“They are at Buthidaung prison and they will face court if the case is opened under the trafficking law,” said Police Major Khin Win from Alaethankyaw police station in Maungdaw township.

The men, who were arrested after two boats carrying smuggled people were recovered and brought to land by the Myanmar navy, are from Aye-yarwady and Tanintharyi regions, according to the immigration office.

According to the initial arrest records, an officer in charge of the anti-human trafficking unit filed a lawsuit against the suspects on May 24. It is not yet clear what section of the 2005 Anti Trafficking in Persons Law will be used to prosecute them.

The new case was only entered into official logs after receiving ministry approval – too late for it to be included on a recently released national human trafficking report, which tallied cases in the first half of the year.

“It is not yet on the list that trafficking cases have been recorded in Rakhine State so far,” Pol Maj Min Naing said.

The government has long denied the existence of a trafficking route stemming from Rakhine State even though rights groups such as Fortify Rights and the Arakan Project have documented swells of people – mostly members of the stateless Muslim minority who identify as Rohingya – fleeing the state with the assistance or under the force of smugglers. The well-worn route is so profitable that rights groups have said fishing boats turn instead to hauling human cargo, and later extort and sell the passengers at camps in Thailand and Malaysia.

Even as a regional crisis erupted in May with thousands of Myanmar and Bangladeshis left stranded at sea, the government continued to reject assertions by the international community that treatment of the Rohingya – whom it officially refers to as Bengali – leads them to flee the primitive camps many are confined to.

The US State Department’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons report noted that the 146,000 displaced people in Rakhine State are especially vulnerable to trafficking and that reports have indicated that women and children from Rakhine have been subjected to sex trafficking, while others have been forced into labour, including for government and military forces. The report also noted that fewer traffickers were convicted in 2014 than in 2013.

From January to the end of June, the government has recovered 225 trafficking victims, including 108 women and 117 men. Seventy-four criminal cases have been initiated, across all states and regions except for Rakhine, Karen and Chin states and the Nay Pyi Taw Council area.

Pol Maj Min Naing said 125 “perpetrators” had been arrested, while police were still searching for another 65 suspects.

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