March 19, 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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Foreign minister fires back at UN from Gen Assembly podium

Wunna Maung Lwin with Ban Ki-moon on September 24, 2015 (Photo: Reuters)

By Laignee Barron
October 5, 2015

After nearly a week of taking blows for everything from the peace process to “atrocious” conditions at internally displaced persons camps to the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority voters, foreign minister U Wunna Maung Lwin struck back at the UN this weekend.

Taking the floor at the 70th UN General Assembly, U Wunna Maung Lwin questioned the effectiveness of the intergovernmental body, and called for wide-sweeping reforms to keep pace with the “daunting challenges” of social and economic conflicts inherited through the divisive “colonial legacy”.

“Time is now opportune to do soul-searching on the future of the organisation,” U Wunna Maung Lwin told the 193 gathered member states on October 2.

In particular, he called for an overhaul of the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council, UN arms with which Myanmar has had a checquered relationship. In May, during a regional trafficking crisis, the Security Council held its first-ever, closed-door briefing on Myanmar, focusing on the treatment of the Muslim minority in Rakhine State. In a statement following the brief, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein held Myanmar responsible for the root cause of the smuggling route due to “widespread and systematic human rights violations”, against the Rohingya, who, he added, deserve a “rightful place in the country where they were born.”

As the body responsible for appointing the special rapporteur on Myanmar, the Human Rights Council has drawn ire from Nay Pyi Taw, which rejects the critical reports regularly issued by the rapporteurs. The position has been especially contentious in Myanmar, where the volunteer appointees have sparked protests and been personally attacked with gendered hate speech.

“Human rights issues are increasingly politicized and exploited,” said U Wunna Maung Lwin. “Myanmar firmly believes that the Universal Periodic Review is the forum where promotion and protection human rights can be best addressed with objectivity and impartiality on an equal footing.”

Earlier in the week, the foreign minister also compared the temporary white-card holders to foreign residents allowed to live and work in the United States through “green cards”.

“I think that those holding these [white] cards cannot be eligible to vote in the elections … I don’t know whether the green card holders in the United States are allowed to give votes in the elections in America also,” he said during a discussion at the Center for Foreign Relations just ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting.

During his own statement on Myanmar at the General Assembly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the government’s last-minute decision to revoke the white cards and strike an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 ethnic minority voters from the electoral rolls just ahead of the elections “a step in the wrong direction”.

“I am deeply disappointed by this effective disenfranchisement of the Rohingya and other minority communities,” he said, adding that the disqualification of Muslim parliamentarians up for re-election “particularly egregious”.

High commissioner on human rights Ra’ad Al Hussein also reiterated concern for minority voters during his summary of rights abuses in Myanmar.

“Given that a whole sector of the population has been disenfranchised by these measures, this raises serious questions as to the fairness and integrity of the upcoming elections,” he said.

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