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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...

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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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Hardline monks welcome Myanmar's 'anti-Muslim' laws



By Joshua Carroll
September 14, 2015

Buddhist extremists celebrate laws said to target religious minorities

YANGON, Myanmar -- Hardline Buddhist monks declared victory Monday as they celebrated the introduction of laws widely viewed as targeting Myanmar’s religious minorities.

Hundreds of monks and supporters of Ma Ba Tha, or the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, gathered to celebrate the signing of four laws governing religious conversion, population control, interfaith marriage and monogamy.

Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, has warned the legislation would “legalize discrimination” against women and religious and ethnic minorities.

Rights groups have also condemned the Race and Religion Protection Laws, drafted by Ma Ba Tha affiliated lawyers, as sexist and discriminatory.

Crowds arrived in trucks and buses at the sacred Shwedagon Pagoda in the commercial hub of Yangon Monday before riding in convoy to a monastery where a sign declared the new legislation as “the most important law for all Myanmar”.

Lakana Thara, a monk clad in dark red robes, indicated the target of the new laws. “We are hearing about many cases where ladies are forced into other religions,” he told Anadolu Agency. “The Muslim people want to make the ladies change to their religion.”

Standing before a large picture of U Wirathu, a prominent Ma Ba Tha leader, the monk added that Myanmar was at risk of being turned into an Islamic country.

Sam Zarifi, regional director for the International Commission of Jurists, said: “Though the laws do not specifically mention Muslims, in practice they are likely to affect the Muslim population disproportionately.”

He told Anadolu Agency that long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims, many of whom are confined to internal displacement camps, were especially at risk from the often vaguely worded laws.

“In this day and age, laws are rarely drafted with explicit discriminatory language,” he said.

The Rohingya have borne the brunt of bouts of religious violence between Buddhists and Muslims that have claimed hundreds of lives since 2012.

Supporters of the laws gathered before a stage for songs and speeches at the Tipidaka Nikal monastery in east Yangon Monday.

“These laws are there to protect the rights of the people,” Thant Myint, a Ma Ba Tha member standing in the crowd, said. “One religion shouldn’t invade another.”

Ma Ba Tha has become increasingly influential in Myanmar politics in recent months. Critics of the opposition National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi claim the party refused to propose any Muslim candidates for the general election in November in order to appease the group.

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