March 18, 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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A tale of two Sittwes

By Kayleigh Long
November 18, 2015

Were it not for the handful of burnt-out and dilapidated mosques that dot the dusty Rakhine capital of Sittwe, a tourist could be forgiven for thinking that there were no Muslims in the town at all.

Rohingya men sit in a shop in Sittwe’s Aung Mingalar neighbourhood. (Kaung Htet/The Myanmar Times)

Just a few blocks back from the main street, however, 4530 Rohingya Muslims reside in an area known as Aung Mingalar – and the vast majority have not left for the better part of three years.

Comprising five quarters and occupying at most a couple of square kilometres, the area is protected at several checkpoints manned by a handful of young police officers.

They sit beyond the barbed wire blockades, swatting at flies, rifles between their knees, playing on their smartphones.

A legacy of the violence that shook the state in 2012, many Rakhine taxi drivers refuse to go past these checkpoints, convinced they might fall victim to retributive attacks.

A November 10 preliminary statement from the Carter Center’s election observation mission noted that former white-card holders – the vast majority of whom identify as Rohingya – are “marginalised from the political process and living in conditions that prevent them from exercising most civil and political rights, including basic freedom of movement”.

While the entire Muslim population of Rakhine State faces varying degrees of restrictions on movement, the enclave of Aung Mingalar has often been described by rights groups as a ghetto.

During the state-wide conflict that left scores dead and more than 100,000 displaced, security forces blocked angry mobs from entering Aung Mingalar. The neighbourhood has been under guard for over three years. Residents report that two weeks out from the elections, a mob formed outside and yelled threats before being dispersed by the police.

For Aung Mingalar’s residents who voted in 2010 and 2012, the November 8 ballot saw them take on the role of anxious spectator.

Just 26 of the enclave’s inhabitants cast advance votes, but all of them were Kaman Muslims – recognised as one of the state’s national races.

Two disenfranchised men said that, if they had been able to cast a ballot this time around, they would probably have opted for the National League for Democracy. Another said he had been a staunch Union Solidarity and Development Party supporter.

Speaking with The Myanmar Times after results had begun to trickle in, one man who requested not to be named sounded a note of cautious optimism over the NLD’s landslide win around the country.

“We welcome their victory. It is some sort of hope for us, even though they are not talking about us. Maybe all the citizens of Myanmar will become safe ... and have stability [provided by] the state. But there are many things they need to do [first]. They need to find a president.”

Sittwe’s Aung Mingalar has been described by some rights groups as a ghetto. (Kayleigh Long/The Myanmar Times)

On the success at the polls of the Arakan National Party, which defends the interests of the state’s Rakhine Buddhist majority, he is tight-lipped: “We are worried about it.”

While some taxi drivers now use the road that skirts Aung Mingalar as a shortcut, and some maintain contact with friends and colleagues, the communities remain almost entirely separate. There has been a minimal resumption of trade.

With the enclave’s economy reliant on private donors and internal grey markets there is little in the way of work. People who had jobs before 2012 are cut off from their means of earning a living. Food is brought in from the outside.

Not considered refugees, the almost 5000 men, women and children are given meagre rations – less than a cup of rice per day per person.

Young children attend the state school, which was built with assistance from Japan in 2005. There are three mosques and three madrassas.

The Myanmar Times visited prior to the elections, on November 4. A 21-year-old named Jamal Hussein had died in the early hours of November 2, following a drawn-out battle with TB.

Twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, doctors enter Aung Mingalar. Patients requiring more complex treatment must apply to be transferred under police supervision to the hospital, or to an IDP camp mobile clinic. Residents report a high infant mortality rate.

Despite being less than 1 kilometre from the state hospital, administrative hurdles and a near-total distrust of hospital authorities means many are unlikely to seek out treatment.

Some of the former Muslim areas around Sittwe no longer exist. One major Rohingya stronghold called Narzi village was all but razed and most of its former inhabitants now reside in one IDP camp several kilometres from Sittwe proper.

One man described the difference between life in Aung Mingalar and an IDP camp he had seen on an authorised visit. Those in the camps, he says, “have only [their] body, and identity”. He gestures at the buildings around him: “For us, things haven’t changed. But we cannot leave.”

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