May 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...

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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...

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 ...

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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...

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...

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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...

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...

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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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Protecting cows - a Buddhist tradition revived?

A roadside shop in downtown Yangon sells pictures of Buddha. (Photo: Khun Lat, Myanmar Now)

By Swe Win
September 17, 2015

A campaign by members of the nationalist group Ma Ba Tha to shut down cattle slaughterhouses, which has hit many of these Muslim-owned businesses in Ayeyarwady Region, is not the first Buddhist monk-led campaign that has tried to save cows from slaughter in Myanmar.

At the turn of the 20th century, influential abbot Ledi Sayardaw espoused the idea that Burmese Buddhists should stop killing cattle because farmers depended on them as beasts of burden to maintain their livelihoods.

British colonial administrators posed a threat to Myanmar’s cattle, according to Ledi Sayardaw, as they had no qualms about eating beef. The beef boycott movement became very successful, was promoted by other monks, and took on particular significance for Burmese nationalists seeking independence from Britain. 

“The idea was that Nwas (cows), they work in the fields, they sustain [farmers] with milk and they are the capital for the Burmese,” said Dutch anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman, adding that India’s Hindu and Brahman practice of venerating bovines also influenced Buddhist traditions of respecting cows. 

“The two things combined, that's what makes it an issue for Ledi Sayadaw. The idea was that the British would come in and set up abattoirs, and they would kill all the buffaloes in the fields [to eat them],” said Houtman, who has studied Myanmar for decades. “He didn’t target Muslims. On the contrary, because it was the British that they were worried about… They might kill all the working capital of the people,” he said.

In 1961 under Prime Minister U Nu, who was a devout Buddhist, the government enacted a law that largely banned the slaughter of cattle. The law, which was later abolished when the military staged a coup in 1962, required Muslims to apply for exemption licenses to slaughter cattle on religious holidays.

Than Than Nu, U Nu’s daughter, told Myanmar Now that her father never intended to discriminate against Muslims but banned killing cattle out of his convictions about bovines, which echoed those of Ledi Sayadaw.

“Our family never eats beef simply because we all have to depend so much on cattle. There is no other reason. We owe them a lot. Personally, I do not eat the meat of any four-footed animals, and now I have become a vegetarian,” she said.

Despite this history of caring for bovines out of Buddhist compassion, many restaurants in Myanmar serve beef and many people, including monks, have no problem with eating it. Opinions are divided among the clergy over the importance of abstaining from beef or meat in general, with some monks citing the Buddhist canon that states that one can eat anything available as long as it is done “with an awareness” and “without attachment to the taste”.

Even among prominent figures in the Ma Ba Tha there appeared to be diverging opinions when the issue of cattle slaughter and beef eating was debated during a nationalist monks convention in Yangon in June.

Firebrand monk Wirathu tried to raise the issue of whether mass slaughter of animals for religious purposes should be banned, in what appeared to be an attempt to provoke a negative reaction from the audience about the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival, which entails ritual cattle slaughter.

A nun in the audience responded by saying that she was a strict vegetarian in accordance with Buddhist principles and stated that no animals should be killed, nor should meat be served during religious meetings such as the convention. The remarks raised eyebrows among the hundreds of Ma Ba Tha monks and abbots, who had just enjoyed the pork curries served to them. 

Wirathu, visibly irked, said the nun had misunderstood his argument and had digressed from the issue he was raising. Soon after, he lost control of the discussion again as some monks began to argue that banning a ritual of a different faith would be a violation of a Myanmar citizen’s fundamental human rights.

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