May 07, 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...

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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...

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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Myanmar police to arm, train non-Muslims in conflict-torn region

Policemen stand in front of the border guard headquarters at Kyee Kan Pyin village outside Maungdaw October 26, 2016. Picture taken October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun


By Wa Lone and Simon Lewis 
November 3, 2016

SITTWE, MYANMAR -- Myanmar police will begin arming and training non-Muslim residents in the troubled north of Rakhine State, where officials say militants from the Rohingya Muslim group pose a growing security threat, police and civilian officials said.

Human rights monitors and a leader of the mostly stateless Rohingya told Reuters the move risked sharpening intercommunal tensions in a region that has just seen its bloodiest month since 2012, when hundreds of people were killed in clashes between Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

Soldiers have poured into the Maungdaw area along Myanmar's frontier with Bangladesh, responding to coordinated attacks on three border posts on Oct. 9 in which nine police officers were killed. 

Security forces have locked down the area - shutting out aid workers and independent observers - and conducted sweeps of villages in Maungdaw, where the vast majority are Rohingyas. Official reports say five soldiers and 33 alleged insurgents have been killed.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has urged security forces to exercise restraint and act lawfully, but residents say civilians have been killed, raped and arbitrarily detained and houses razed to the ground. The government has denied abuses by troops.

Ethnic Rakhine political leaders have urged the government to arm local Buddhists against what they say is rising militancy among the Rohingya.

Rakhine State police chief Colonel Sein Lwin told Reuters his force had started recruiting new "regional police" from among the ethnic Rakhine and other non-Muslim ethnic minorities living in Maungdaw.

Candidates who did not meet the educational attainment standards, or criteria such as minimum height, required for recruitment by the regular police would be accepted for the scheme, he said.

"But they have to be the residents," said Sein Lwin. "They will have to serve at their own places."

Police Captain Lin Lin Oo said initially 100 recruits aged between 18 and 35 would undergo an accelerated 16-week training program, beginning in the state capital Sittwe on Nov. 7.

"They will be given weapons and other equipment, like police," said Lin Lin Oo, an aide to the commander of the border police in Maungdaw, who will oversee the auxiliary force.

Police and civilian officials said the auxiliary police recruits would not form a new "people's militia", like those that fight ethnic insurgencies elsewhere in Myanmar.

Such militias - which are often accused of abuses against civilians - raise their own funds and are overseen by the army. The new recruits in Rakhine will be paid and come under the control of the border police.

"CITIZENS ONLY"

Min Aung, a minister in the Rakhine State parliament and a member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, said the recruits would help protect residents from the militants, estimated to be 400-strong, responsible for the Oct. 9 attacks. 

The government has said the militants, who stole weapons and ammunition in the raids, have links to Islamists overseas.

Only citizens would be eligible to sign up for the police training, Min Aung said, ruling out the 1.1 million Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar. 

"The minority ethnic people need to protect themselves from hostile neighbors," said Min Aung, referring to non-Muslim ethnicities who are in the minority in the region. "That's why the government supports them as regional police, as well as with employment."

Suu Kyi's government has invited diplomats and the senior United Nations representative in the country on a visit to Rakhine from Wednesday to try to assuage concerns over aid access and rights violations.

But international experts working to rebuild relations in Rakhine, and human rights groups, say arming and training local non-Muslims could make the situation on the ground worse.

"It's sad and telling that the authorities regard this move as part of a security solution," said Matthew Smith, founder of Fortify Rights, a campaign group. 

Arming local Buddhists who may regard all Rohingyas a threat to their safety was "a recipe for atrocity crimes", Smith said. "It can only inflame the situation and will likely lead to unnecessary violence."

Kyaw Win, an ethnic Rakhine resident of Kyein Chaung village, in Maungdaw, told Reuters by phone on Wednesday that he was interested in signing up for the training, but said he doubted the plan would allay his community's security fears.

"It is not possible to live together with Muslims because they are invading and seizing our own land day by day," he said.

A Rohingya community leader in Maungdaw, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said he was concerned Muslims might come under attack form the newly armed recruits.

"If they have guns in their hands, we won't be able to work together as before," he said.

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