April 04, 2025

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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...

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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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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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...

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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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New Religion Minister Visits Firebrand Monk Wirathu

Religious Affairs Minister Aung Ko, right, meets with U Wirathu at a monastery in Rangoon on Monday. (Photo: Ma Ba Tha / Facebook)

By Lawi Weng
April 5, 2016

RANGOON — Aung Ko, Burma’s new religious affairs minister, has twice in less than a week stirred controversy, with the latest involving his visit to nationalist Buddhist monks from the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion on Monday in Rangoon, including the firebrand U Wirathu.

Ashin Nya Neinda, a spokesperson from the organization better known by its acronym Ma Ba Tha, told The Irrawaddy that Aung Ko met eight senior monks from the Buddhist nationalist group on Monday before later meeting Wirathu. The spokesman did not provide details on what was discussed at the meetings.

“Our country’s majority are Buddhists. Eighty-five percent of the population in the country is Buddhist. Therefore, he came to visit our senior monks,” said Ashin Nya Neinda.

“Our senior monks told him to work for justice, and better treatment of other religions as our country has other religions,” he said.

A Facebook account linked to Ma Ba Tha posted photos from Aung Ko’s visit to a monastery in Rangoon’s Insein Township, where he appeared to offer a cash donation to the monks. One photo posted to the Ma Ba Tha Facebook shows Aung Ko bowing before the monk Wirathu in a traditional gesture of deference.

Some Facebook users criticized the minister’s visit to members of Ma Ba Tha, a group that was blacklisted in a 2015 US budget bill. The spending legislation states that US funding to Burma “may not be made available to any organization or individual the Secretary of State determines and reports to the appropriate congressional committees advocates violence against ethnic or religious groups and individuals in Burma, including such organizations as Ma Ba Tha.”

Tun Nyunt, who is a director of the Religious Affairs and Culture Ministry and joined the minister on his trip, said the visit was routine.

“[It was] just to pay a visit to them, and there was nothing special about the visit. He became a new minister, and he went for introductions,” said Tun Nyunt.

Aung Ko was a member of Burma’s junta regime and later served as a senior member of the formerly ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). He was one of two USDP members appointed to the National League for Democracy (NLD) government’s cabinet.

Aung Ko’s visit to the Ma Ba Tha monks came just two days after he suggested that Muslims in the country were not full Burmese citizens, drawing criticism from Islamic organizations both overseas and within Burma.

The former USDP government was accused by local rights groups and the international community of suppressing non-Buddhist religions including Christians and Muslims, the latter group also being a target of Ma Ba Tha.

Wirathu has been at the fore of anti-Islamic rhetoric in Burma in recent years and the Buddhist nationalist group last year all but endorsed the incumbent USDP over the NLD, viewing the latter as “weak” on the matter of protecting Burma’s majority Buddhist character.

Ma Ba Tha was a leading sponsor of legislation passed last year that was widely viewed as discriminating against Burma’s Muslims, including legislative measures to reduce the reproductive rights of the religious minority and restrict interfaith marriage.

Ma Ba Tha members have also been vocal critics of the international media’s coverage of the Rohingya crisis in western Arakan State, rallying demonstrators to protest against the United Nations and international news networks, which they accused of mischaracterizing inter-communal violence and discrimination. Ma Ba Tha, like the former USDP government, denies that Rohingya Muslims constitute a legitimate ethnic group.

Asked if the new minister on Monday discussed interreligious dynamics in Burma, Ashin Nya Neinda said they had not, but might bring up the issue at a later date.

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