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

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...

Event

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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 ...

Interview

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Arakan: An Un-decolonized Colonial Territory

Aman Ullah
RB Article
December 31, 2015

“Decolonization not only refers to the complete "removal of the domination of non-indigenous forces" within the geographical space and different institutions of the colonized, but it also refers to the "decolonizing of the mind" from the colonizer's ideas that made the colonized seem inferior.” Karl Hack (2008) 

Arakan with an area of about 20000 square miles was long famous and widely known to Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, and British traders as centre of international trade and commerce. It is situated in the tri-border region between modern day – Burma, Bangladesh and India. Although it is made a part of Burma now, it had never been so in the past.

Culturally, socially, economically and politically the people of Arakan were independent for centuries. Chiefly for its geographic location, it had not only remained independent for e most part of history but also endeavored to expend its territory in the surrounding tracts whenever opportunity came. Completely cut off from Burma by high mountain range of Arakan Yoma, the peoples of Arakan neither drank from the same water with Burmans nor dependant on them for trade and commerce. Neither of a single river flows from Arakan to Burma nor Burma to Arakan.

Whatever relation Arakan maintained politically, geographically, culturally and historically with Bengal, history has proved beyond doubt the Bengal never had any aggressive design on Arakan. According to DGE Hall, a modern historian, ‘there was time to time Burmese and Mon interference before establishment Mrohoung by Narameik Hla in1433.’ And it was by the invasion and occupation of Burmese king, Bodawpaya, in 1784, Arkan’s history as an independent kingdom came to an end. After 40 years of Burmese rule the British colonialist annexed Arakan to a British India in the first Anglo-Burma war of 1824 and it remained under British administration till Burmese independence on January 4, 1948.

January 4 was marked in the history of Arakan as unfortunate day that has lost of the legitimate right to independence of the people of Arakan by transferring of their sovereignty to the so-called Independent Sovereign Republic, which was to be known as ‘Union of Burma’. It was a joint-stock company of old-colonialism with neo-colonialism, a joint venture between the British and the coalition of Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) that was to form Burma’s first independent government, to fabricate the artificial and false nationhood of ‘Burma’. And in this process the people of Arakan lost their right to independence, on account of these monstrous imperialists’ creation. This imperialist imposed administrative ‘unity’ or ‘nationality’ that has no legal validity under the Decolonization Law, and they cannot, legally deny the right to self-determination, and the right to separate legal existence of the people of Arakan.

Resolution 2625-XXV of the general Assembly of the United Nations that now constitutes a part of International Law regarding decolonization stated that “all colonial territories have ‘juridical status’ that is ‘separate’ and ‘distinct’ from the colonialist country, and ‘from their colonial territories’, and this separate juridical status remains as long as the people of each of this colonial territory have not yet exercised their right to self-determination.” The Britishers violated this principle of separate juridical status of colonial territories, when they transferred their legal ‘sovereignty’ over Arakan to the Burma Union.

Another fundamental principle is that a colonialist power has no sovereign right over a colonial territory, that it cannot transfer sovereignty to other power regarding territory that has also been trampled on. Sovereignty over a colonial territory resides with the people of that colony and not with the colonialist power. This has been stipulated in the UN Resonation 1514-XV. British’s transfer of ‘sovereignty’ over Arakan to Burma was therefore downright illegal. Britain has no sovereign power over Arakan. ‘Nemo dat quod non habet’, ‘No one gives what he does not have.’

The concept of ‘Union of Burma’, which was invented by the colonialists and based on the sanctity of the illegal boundaries of the colonial empire, was established by conquests. It is a state that is based on colonialist conquered territories without reference to the conquered peoples, their cultures, languages, histories, identities, and inalienable rights. Union Burma is thus admittedly a state based solely on British colonialism—without decolonization. M. Dillard, judge of the international Court of Justice, had stated that ‘it was the people who should determine the destiny of a territory and not the territory should determine the destiny of the people’. In the case of Arakan, the British conquered territory determined the destiny of the people of Arakan.

There can be no compromise between the concept of ‘Union of Burma’ and the principle of ‘decolonization’, because the one goes directly against the other. Decolonization requires ‘liquidation of all colonial empire’ with specific steps and definitive procedures, but Union of Burma exists on the principle of the total preservation of the territorial integrity of the previous colonial empire; an empire is not liquidated if its integrity is preserved. ‘Union of Burma’ is still an un-liquidated and un-decolonizes colonial empire with Burma replacing Britishers as the colonial masters.

In addition to these, there is no legality and judicial values of the Treaty on the transfer of ‘sovereignty’ between British and Burma signed on October 7, 1947, especially concerning the transfer of ‘sovereignty’ over Arakan to Burma.

Firstly, the glaring incompatibility of the Treaty with the decolonization principles of the UN, that had been imposed universally.

Secondly, this Treaty clearly violated the right to self-determination of the people of Arakan. 

Thirdly, the Treaty was neither signed by any representative of the people of Arakan nor given mandate from them. 

Fourthly, the power and authority of the people of Arakan was arbitrarily ignored in the Treaty.

Finally, the transfer took place without consulting the people of Arakn through plebiscite or referendum, and doing it outside all established procedures of the United Nations Decolonization Law and precedents set up by the International Court of Justice.

It is irony of the fate that the portion of time preceding Burmese independence was a very dark period for the people of Arakan. The people of Arakan hardly believe that the Burmans govern them; but they strongly feel that they are colonized. After being integrated into Burma the people of Arakan have been a part of unitary state of the Union of Burma during which time they have been subjected to brutal and inhuman treatment such as; human rights abuses, killings, rapes, ignorance, poverty and social injustice and have been subjected to virtual ethnic and cultural genocide.

BURMANS NOR DEPENNDANT ON THEM FOR TRADE AND

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