March 15, 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...

Video News

...

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...

Event

Editorial by Int'l Media

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

Push to implement 'anti-Rohingya' law falls flat

A Rohingya Muslim woman prepares to cook in a small makeshift room in an internal displaced camp near Sittwe in April, 2014. (ucanews.com photo by John Zaw)

By John Zaw
UCA News
May 27, 2016

Buddhist hard-liners want Myanmar government to strictly abide by controversial citizenship legislation

A hard-line Buddhist party's proposal for the Myanmar government to urgently enforce citizenship laws that target the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state has been voted down in the country's parliament.

The proposal raised by an Arakan National Party member calling for the authorities to urgently verify the citizenship status of people in the troubled state received 154 votes in favor and 228 against, with seven abstentions in the Lower House according to the Global New Light of Myanmar May 21.

The failed bid has been seen as a way to pressure the new National League for Democracy-led government to do more in enforcing the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law, a law that "effectively [denies] the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring a nationality," said the United Nations.

The 1982 law states that only ethnic nationalities, and others whose families entered the country before 1823, are entitled to Myanmar citizenship. Through the law the Rohingya's have been denied citizenship and accompanying rights.

The majority of lawmakers appeared to agree that parliament doesn't need to agree with the Arakan National Party's motion because the government is already planning to carry out a nationwide citizenship verification program. Called the "100 days plan," the government's initiative is set to target all so-called noncitizens residing in the country.

Pe Than, a Lower House Arakan National Party lawmaker, said that the citizenship verification process is an urgent national issue.

"We must stick to the 1982 law or we might have to accept all illegal immigrants if we amend it," he said.

Anti-Rohingya protesters take part in a demonstration in Mandalay on May 13. (ucanews.com photo by John Zaw )

Hard-line Buddhist monks from the Committee of the Protection of Race and Religion, known as Ma Ba Tha, have been at the forefront of campaigns against the Rohingya.

U Parmaukkha, a prominent nationalist monk from Magwe monastery in Yangon, said that he supports citizenship verification under the 1982 law.

"We must protect our sovereignty through the law for the country may become Islamic if we amend it," said U Parmaukkha a Ma Ba Tha member.

Most Buddhists in Myanmar identify the Rohingya as being Bengali because they are considered illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Khin Mg Myint, a Rohingya from the Thetkaepyin internally displaced persons camp near Sittwe, said that he couldn't accept the use of the term Bengali.

"We are born here in Myanmar, we can speak the Burmese language and live with the traditions and culture of this country so we have a right to self-identify as Rohingya and be eligible for citizenship," he said.

Authorities halted a pilot project for citizenship verification for Muslims in Rakhine in February 2015 after facing resistance from the Rohingya community.

Write A Comment

Rohingya Exodus