April 04, 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...

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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Floods cause acute water shortage in hundreds of Myanmar villages

A boy moves his boat in a flooded village outside Zalun Township, Irrawaddy Delta, Myanmar, August 6, 2015. (Photo: REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun)

By Htet Khaung Linn
August 19, 2015

NYAUNGDON, Myanmar - Authorities are racing to clean contaminated water sources in flood-hit parts of Myanmar, while distributing bottled water, chlorine powder and purification tablets as they struggle with diarrhea outbreaks.

Torrential rains since late June triggered floods and landslides across central and western Myanmar, killing more than 100 people and affecting 1.3 million, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In four hard-hit states and regions - Rakhine, Sagaing, Magway and Ayeyarwady - tens of thousands of people lack access to clean water for bathing, washing and drinking, officials and aid organizations told Myanmar Now.

Ponds and wells have been contaminated by floodwaters, including seawater in coastal Rakhine state, as well as faeces from farm animals that have sought safety on embankments around ponds, officials said.

"We need to pump floodwater out of these ponds. Only then can we use them to store rainwater in the remaining monsoon period," said Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the Rakhine government.

"If we cannot clean the ponds in time, the locals will face drinking water scarcity in the hot season," he said, noting that about 1,000 ponds in 300 villages in his state were contaminated.

Local media reported that 30 villagers were treated for acute diarrhea in Magway region's Pwintbyu township earlier this month, and 40 were treated for diarrhea last week in a village in Sagaing region, Dr Soe Lwin Nyein, of the Ministry of Health said.

Dozens of villages around Pwintbyu suffered severe flooding, forcing residents to seek shelter in temporary camps.

"In Pwintbyu, we found that there is not enough drinking water in the camps," said Lynette Lim, communications manager for Save the Children, adding that poor hygiene caused by a lack of latrines was further heightening health risks.

Authorities were handing out chlorine powder packets and purification tablets, but the water in many ponds and wells in Rakhine was brackish and could not be treated, local government spokesman Hla Thein said.

Authorities and aid agencies have begun to empty and clean ponds and wells across the country.

In Rakhine, the International Committee of the Red Cross is focusing on installing rainwater collection systems.

In Nyaungdon township in the Ayeyarwady delta region, an official at a displacement camp said 200 villages in the area faced an acute drinking water shortage.

Hundreds of people at the camp, living on bamboo platforms raised above the floodwaters, were relying on donations of bottled water.

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