April 04, 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...

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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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Burmese Govt Hits Back at Foreign Embassies Over Election Concerns

Burma’s Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin talks to reporters during a press briefing on situation in Arakan State in Rangoon on July 30, 2012. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

By Feliz Solomon
September 18, 2015

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is concerned that a statement issued by nine governments could cause “unwarranted, negative impacts.”

RANGOON — Burma’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rejected a joint statement issued by nine embassies urging tolerance and equal application of law in the lead-up to a general election in November.

State-run newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday that the ministry was “concerned that the Joint Statement could bring about unwarranted, negative impacts on the efforts being made by all the people of Myanmar.”

“The Ministry, therefore, categorically rejects the implications in the Joint Statement that instigate misunderstanding and doubts among the people,” it concluded.

On Tuesday, the embassies of nine foreign governments present in Burma issued a public statement calling the Nov. 8 vote a “critical marker” in the transition to democracy. Burma’s former military regime initiated a switch to quasi-civilian rule in 2011 when President Thein Sein took office.

The country has since undertaken a process of political and economic reform, sought a peace accord with ethnic armed groups at war with the government for decades, and welcomed engagement with foreign powers that once ostracized the former hermit state.

Burma’s path toward its self-styled “discipline-flourishing democracy,” however, has been marred by a rise in communal conflict and anti-Muslim sentiment, which has boiled over into deadly violence in several parts of the country since riots broke out in western Burma between Arakanese Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslim minority in mid-2012.

The embassies’ statement voiced shared concern over “the prospect of religion being used as a tool of division and conflict during the campaign season,” which officially commenced on Sept. 8.

In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “the Union Election Commission has already established the mechanisms to address concerns, large or small that may arise in the election process in accordance with the existing laws, rules and regulations in just and non-discriminatory manners.”

On the day the embassies’ statement was issued, an influential group of Buddhist nationalists known as the Ma Ba Tha, a Burmese acronym for the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, began a nationwide tour in celebration of the enactment of four controversiallaws restricting interfaith marriage, childbirth, polygamy and religious conversion.

The legislative package, initially drafted by the Ma Ba Tha, was staunchly opposed by the international community and domestic rights groups. Critics claim the laws risk violating women’s rights and could be used to target minorities.

Also on Tuesday, Buddhist monk U Wirathu, a central figure in the organization, told The Irrawaddy that the Ma Ba Tha had begun analyzing parliamentary candidates and plans to “inform” the public of their findings so voters can better “choose who deserves to win.”

Expressing gratitude to Thein Sein for his passage of the laws, Wirathu said he was especially grateful that the president defied international opinion on the matter in the interest of what he termed “the country’s security.”

A video shared on the President’s Office Facebook account last week further fortified the Burmese government’s indifference to international pressure. The four-minute clip detailed the president’s achievements, including passage of the four laws, securing visits from Western officials such as US President Barack Obama—who was pictured several times throughout the bulletin—and enabling the proliferation of mobile technology.

The video message maintained that “there are no Rohingya in Myanmar,” and that Thein Sein would not allow the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to open an office in Burma.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric has become a fixture of Burma’s social discourse in the years since the reform process began, exacerbated by what is viewed domestically as an increase in immigration from neighboring Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims, who the government and much of the population consider illegal “Bengali” immigrants, lost their right to vote earlier this year despite suffrage rights in all prior elections since the country’s independence from British colonial rule.

Beyond the disenfranchisement of what is believed to be hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, the Burmese government has also faced scrutiny over the disqualification of a number of Muslim candidates wishing to compete in the November poll. Of more than 100 rejected hopefuls, at least half were turned down on the basis of poorly understood citizenship criteria, many of them Muslim.

US State Department spokesperson John Kirby announced on Thursday that the United States was concerned by the vetting procedures, urging the Burmese government to “redouble their efforts” to address the issue.

“The move to disqualify some 100 candidates, through an opaque and discriminatory process, risks undermining the confidence of the Burmese people and the international community in these elections,” Kirby said in a statement.

The joint statement released earlier this week was backed by the embassies of Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Norway, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. When contacted on Friday, a full third of the embassies that endorsed Tuesday’s joint statement said they did not wish to comment on the government’s rejection of their concerns, remarking only that the statement produced earlier this week “speaks for itself.”

Additional reporting contributed by Kyaw Phyo Tha.

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