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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...

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...

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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...

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...

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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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Myanmar radical monk endorses ruling party in election, raps opposition


By Hnin Yadana Zaw and Antoni Slodkowski
October 4, 2015

Myanmar's firebrand Buddhist monk Wirathu has openly endorsed President Thein Sein's ruling party in the Nov. 8 general election, saying Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party was "full of themselves" and unlikely to win the vote. 

Hardline monks will push for laws banning Muslim dress and other Muslim customs, Wirathu told Reuters on Sunday before a rally held by thousands of members of the radical Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha.

The remarks could stoke religious tension, already high in Myanmar after Ma Ba Tha played a big role in securing passage of four so-called Protection of Race and Religion Laws seen as targeting women and the country's Muslim minority.

The group has emerged as a force ahead of the poll, criticizing Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which opposed the four laws.

"NLD people are so full of themselves," Wirathu, 47, who is a leading ultra-nationalist member of Ma Ba Tha, but does not run the organization, said in an interview. "They don't have a high chance of winning in elections."

Experts say pressure on the NLD can translate into support for the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

"If we have to choose the best, it is the President Thein Sein's government," Wirathu added. "They could open the doors and work step by step for peace and development." 

Asked about Wirathu's remarks, a senior NLD member, Win Htein, said, "He should go to hell ... According to the teachings of Buddha, monks shouldn't get involved in political affairs. They should be neutral."

Ma Ba Tha has recently sought to tone down its image, portraying itself as a peaceful and apolitical organization, but Wirathu's endorsement of Thein Sein underscores an appetite to influence politics.

Wirathu denied Ma Ba Tha was campaigning for the USDP, but said it was "grateful" to his party for supporting the race and religion laws.

"If the NLD forms the government and if they try to amend the laws, they will have to deal with Ma Ba Tha," he said.

SECTARIAN VIOLENCE

Wirathu and other monks have been linked to the sectarian violence that spread in Myanmar in 2012, killing hundreds and leaving thousands without homes. Anti-Muslim unrest simmered under the junta that ran the country for nearly half a century and erupted into clashes after the end of military rule.

Wirathu said that next on Ma Ba Tha's agenda were Muslim veils and customs, such as ritual slaughter of cattle during Eid, one of the most important Muslim holidays, and butchering of animals in halal tradition.

"We have plans. We will lobby the government first to stop the slaughter. If necessary, we will go to the parliament," the monk said.

"Slaughtering of cattle makes young Muslims familiar with blood. If they really want peace, they should stop slaughtering animals and the tradition of halal butchering," said Wirathu.

In January, the monk caused outrage by calling a U.N. human rights expert who said persecuted Rohingya Muslims should have citizenship in Myanmar a "whore". Wirathu previously has urged Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops and stop interfaith marriages, calling mosques "enemy bases."

Wirathu said he would campaign against the tradition of Muslim women covering their heads, and sometimes, their faces.

"They use the robes in suicide bombings, helping men to pretend they are women," said Wirathu. "It is a security concern and a threat to the sovereignty of the country. We will make that tradition stop."

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