April 04, 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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New Myanmar minister scolded over 'anti Muslim' comment



By Kyaw Ye Lynn
April 3, 2016

Religious Affairs and Culture Minister riles Muslim expat group by saying Islam a religion of minority associate citizens, but local Muslim groups claim he was misquoted

YANGON, Myanmar -- Muslim officials in Myanmar jumped to the defense of Aung San Suu Kyi's government on Sunday after its new religious affairs minister appeared to make comments detrimental to the country's Muslims.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) only took power Friday after a landslide win in December elections. Many international observers hope the change in rule will lead to positive steps to improve the plight of the country's religious minorities, in particular its persecuted Muslim Rohingya ethnicity.

In an interview with Voice of America radio on Saturday evening, Religious Affairs and Culture Minister Thura Aung Ko said Islam in Myanmar is “a religion by the minority associate citizens” who acquired citizenship through the 1948 Union Citizenship Law.

He went on to say that Buddhists were full citizens, and described Christianity as the country's minority ethnic group.

Buddhist nationalist have long used such allegations to suggest that Rohingya are not the Myanmar citizens they claim to be, instead interlopers from neighboring countries who have no right to be in Myanmar.

Many Myanmar nationalists refuse to even recognise the term "Rohingya", instead referring to the ethnic group as "Bengali" which suggests they are from Bangladesh.

In the interview, Thura Aung Ko -- who served as deputy religious affairs minister under the former military junta -- added that the religions of minority groups were not suppressed in the country -- as human rights groups have claimed -- but admitted that Buddhism was the country’s favored religion.

On Sunday, the London-based Burmese Muslim Association issued a statement strongly objecting to what it called "the irresponsible comments of Thura U Aung Ko”.

“Islam is stated as a religion of full citizenship [descendants of residents who lived in Burma prior to 1823, or were born to parents who were citizens at the time of birth] in three constitutions of the country drafted in 1947, 1974 and 2008," it said.

"The Islam religion had arrived in Myanmar since before Bagan era [AD 652-660],” it underlined

However, talking to Anadolu Agency on Sunday an official at the Yangon-based Islamic Religious Affairs Council for Myanmar (IRACM) said that they suspect the minister was misquoted.

“We don’t think the NLD has such discriminatory policy to minority groups. We feel sad for his comment, but still believe he made the comment unintentionally,” the man -- who did not wish to be named as he was not the IRACM's official spokesperson -- told Anadolu Agency by phone.

“We believe he is fair, and can work to bring religious harmony back,” he added.

Other Muslim organizations in Yangon contacted by Anadolu Agency on Sunday refused to comment, but agreed that the comment had been unintentional.

Analysts have said that the incident once again illustrates the pressure that the NLD is under to solve religious discrimination, while at the same time acting without offending Buddhist hardline groups such as Ma Ba Tha (the Race and Religion Protection Organization) which hold tremendous political sway.

Ma Ba Tha was formed after communal violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2013 left 57 Muslims and 31 Buddhists dead, around 100,000 people displaced in camps and more than 2,500 houses burned -- most of which belonged to Rohingya.

The organization has a focus on what one of the group's monks has called the Islamic "invasion" of Myanmar, and is responsible for a series of laws seen as designed to stop Muslims having multiple wives, large families and marrying Buddhist women.

It draws its support from the country's uneducated Buddhist masses, and has rapidly become one of the country's most powerful religious organizations.

Last week, international media reported that the NLD leader had lost her cool following a tense Oct. 24 2013 interview with BBC presenter Mishal Husain, in which she was heard to mutter "no one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim".

The incident is reported in a recently released novel by Peter Popham to have happened while the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace winner was being challenged on alleged anti-Islamic attitudes in the country, and violence towards Muslims.

Popham is the author of a previous autobiography about Aung San Suu Kyi titled “The Lady and the Peacock”.

Analysts have pointed out that the comment may not necessarily have been anti-Islamic, but rather a sign of frustration by Suu kyi with her advisors for an apparent failure to brief her on the religion of her interviewer, which would have been a hint to the line in questioning on what continues to be a highly sensitive issue in Myanmar.

Saturday's interview -- in which the controversial comments were made -- was, however, preceded by an announcement that suggested that the NLD may be making its first steps to tame unruly monks.

Earlier in the day, Thura Aung Ko's ministry of Religious affairs and Culture announced that monks and novices who breach laws and orders would be brought to the civil court and punished accordingly.

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