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

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

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

Why Rohingya? Equality and identity in Myanmar

By Wai Wai Nu
Myanmar Times
May 20, 2016

I belong to an ethnic group that, according to my government, does not exist. In the past few weeks, ultra-nationalist protestors have proudly proclaimed, “There are no Rohingya in our country.” And then the NLD government requested foreign embassies to refrain from using the term “Rohingya”, reportedly stating that “the controversial term does not support the national reconciliation process and solving problems”. Their statement was disappointing because it was a capitulation to the hardliners and because I, as a Rohingya, want nothing more than national reconciliation. I want to live in a Myanmar where all of Myanmar’s peoples can live together in equality and peace.

I was born in Myanmar, my parents were born in Myanmar, and their parents were born in Myanmar. My family members have served in the Myanmar government and fought for Myanmar democracy. My father served as a teacher in government schools in Rakhine State for 30 years and was elected as a member of parliament in the 1990 elections. My mother, sister, father, brother and I were all imprisoned because of my father’s work alongside Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD in the democratic opposition. Even so, under the new NLD-led government, describing my ethnicity, language and culture has become a “controversial” political act.

It has not always been like this.

Growing up in Rakhine State, I knew myself to be Rohingya, and was thought of as such by my ethnically Rakhine neighbours. Depending on the context, we also referred to ourselves, and were referred to, as simply “Muslims”. Sadly, we were also frequently called “Kalar”, a derogatory name forced on us by our Rakhine and Bamar neighbours.

To be Rohingya is, in our language, to be the people of Rohang, the geographical region in modern Rakhine State that we have inhabited dating back to at least the Mrauk-U Kingdom in the 15th century. If you go to Mrauk-U today you will find inscriptions in our language at ancient historic sites.

Before the 1980s, the Myanmar government freely used the word Rohingya to describe us in many contexts. My family’s “household list” maintained by the local government in northern Rakhine State, where a majority of Rohingya live, listed our family’s ethnicity as Rohingya. My elder brothers’ birth certificates state Rohingya as their ethnicity.

The debate over the word Rohingya is much more than an argument over terminology. The effort to scrub the Rohingya name from Myanmar’s official lexicon has been part of a broad campaign by the previous military government and hardline Buddhist ultra-nationalists to label us as “foreigners” and “invaders” and deny our right to inhabit Myanmar. These groups have labelled us as “Bengali”, to suggest that we are from Bangladesh, despite the fact that we have resided in Myanmar for generations.

In part, we feel strongly about our identity as Rohingya because we have seen a direct correlation between the denial of our identity as a “national race” in Myanmar and the deterioration of our rights. Under the 1982 Citizenship Law, only certain “national races” identified by the government automatically qualify for citizenship.

When the government created its list of national races, Rohingya and several other Muslim groups were omitted. In the 1990s, the government targeted our community with discriminatory policies, including restrictions on movement, marriage and childbirth. Under the previous military government, we were subject to many of the same abuses that other ethnic nationalities of Myanmar suffered, such as forced labour, arbitrary detention and sexual assault.

Since 2011, when the first nominally civilian government took power, conditions for Rohingya have deteriorated even more rapidly. Mass violence in Rakhine State in 2012 resulted in hundreds of our community being killed and hundreds of thousands internally displaced, while thousands more have risked their lives to flee the country by sea. We were omitted from the first census held in 30 years. The vast majority of our community was denied the right to vote for the first time in the historic November 2015 elections that brought the NLD to power. Our candidates were singled out for disqualification. We have been segregated from our Buddhist neighbours and restricted in our movement. We have been denied access to hospitals, schools and jobs. As the situation for us has gotten worse, the call for us to deny our identity has gotten stronger.

Meanwhile, we watch as our brothers and sisters who have also suffered under the military dictatorship – democratic activists, ethnic nationalities and other marginalised groups – approach the new “democratic era” with great hope. We too have had hope, but wonder why we have been left behind. If the NLD is really concerned with “national reconciliation” as they suggest, they should seek to include all Myanmar’s peoples in the process. The first step is to allow us to join our brothers and sisters as equals, as human beings with the right to decide the name we think best reflects our culture and our history.

Wai Wai Nu is a human rights and peace activist from the Rohingya community and a former political prisoner.

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus