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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...

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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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(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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Myanmar's Rohingya minority sceptical about Suu Kyi, new government

Myanmar's Rohingya divided over Suu Kyi and new government - © Bennett Murray, DPA

By Bennett Murray
January 30, 2016

A new opposition-led government augurs hope for many in Myanmar after decades of military dictatorship, but a stateless ethnic minority has seen no signs of change in their situation.

Sittwe, Myanmar -- Adu Lakim says he has nothing to do these days but to while away the time sitting outside his shack in an internment camp Myanmar's Rakhine state.

The recent national elections meant nothing to 61-year-old member of the stateless Rohingya ethnic minority, who has been denied citizenship and confined to the camp after his house was torched during sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.

"We don't know about the NLD or other parties, because we don't believe in them," said Lakim, referring to the National League for Democracy led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi that won November's national elections by a landslide.

"I don't know anything about change, it's decided by Allah," he said.

With the first NLD-dominated parliament set to convene on Monday, hopes are high across the country that five decades of military dictatorship are coming to an end.

Among Rohingya Muslims in the south-western region, Suu Kyi's victory was met with optimism by some but apathy by others, who doubt that it will lead to much of an improvement for their community.

Suu Kyi has been regarded as a defender of democratic rights, especially in the West, after spending more than a decade under house arrest. But she has been silent on the plight of the stateless.

Around 140,000 Rohingya have been living in a guarded complex of squalid camps outside Rakhine's state capital Sittwe since conflict erupted almost four years ago. Barred from leaving by armed guards, the residents are given little access to food or medicine.

Suu Kyi, whose party was under pressure from anti-Muslim nationalist groups aligned with the former ruling party on the campaign trail, has barely mentioned the group's plight.

Nevertheless, some Rohingya still hope that Suu Kyi's reputation as a civil rights activist will be realised in Rakhine.

Omar Sidik, 44, said he was encouraged by the legacy of Suu Kyi's father Aung San, who is nationally revered as Myanmar's founding father.

"The NLD may take action for us, because her father did good things for both communities, and gave full rights to humans," he said.

Although Aung San was assassinated in 1947 just prior to independence, the Rohingya enjoyed citizenship rights under his successors until a new law took effect in 1982.

Sidik said he was hopeful that the new parliament would return to the relatively harmonious days of Myanmar's early independence. But he cautioned that Buddhist nationalists could influence the party against the Rohingya's interests.

"We've never expected the Bamar to take action for us," he said, referring to the nation's ethnic majority, also known as Burmans.

"If extremists interfere, then the UN must take action."

Kyaw Hla Aung, a 76-year-old retired court stenographer and Rohingya community leader, said he took the NLD's silence as evidence that the party had sided with the anti-Muslim camp.

Suu Kyi "wants to hand over this problem to her party, and Win Htein is denying that all Rohingya are from this country, that we are from Bangladesh," said Aung, referring to comments made by a senior NLD official to media shortly after the election.

The citizenship law excludes the Rohingya from the 135 legally recognised ethnic groups, and the camp dwellers were not permitted to vote in November.

"She is avoiding this problem," Aung said, noting that the Rohingya have resided in Rakhine for generations.

Ronan Lee, a researcher at Australia's Deakin University, said the Rohingya have reason to be impatient.

"Circumstances in the camps have barely improved for the Rohingya, who have lived like this since the time of the 2012 violence - that's a long time to wait for changes that might bring your human rights," he said.

At the On Daw Gyi West camp on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, 44-year-old Abu Sidik said the situation had become hopeless.

"I'm thinking we have no future here, only darkness, just because we are Muslims," he said, adding that local police had recently tried to rape his daughter while she was collecting firewood.

Hobir Ahamand, 22, said he would take any opportunity to leave even if it meant risking his life fleeing across the ocean.

"It would be better for us to drink poison and die than stay here," he said.

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