March 30, 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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The Lady has no voice

Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, pictured during a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry in May 2016. - AFP

By Bunn Nagara
December 4, 2016

THE Myanmar of today was ruled by the aggressive and expansionist Konbaung Dynasty from the mid-18th to the late 19th century.

Konbaung kings attacked India’s Assam and Manipur Kingdoms, the Mon Kingdom to the south, and the Siamese Kingdom next door. They even irritated Qing Dynasty China, but despite battlefield victories they were no match for the Middle Kingdom.

After repeated attacks on Siam in the final decades of the 18th century destroying the capital of Ayutthaya, Siamese General (later King) Taksin drove the intruders back and built the new capital of Thonburi in today’s Bangkok.

Defeated and disoriented by the Siamese on its eastern border, Myanmar turned to raiding Laos – and attacking Arakan on its western border fronting the Bay of Bengal.

King Hsinbyushin defeated Arakan’s Kingdom of Mrauk U in 1785, driving 35,000 local people into Chittagong in today’s Bangladesh as refugees to escape persecution.

Myanmar’s dominant Bamar ethnic group killed many native Arakanese, and deported many of the survivors to central Myanmar. Arakan was renamed Rakhine, meaning “land of the dark-skinned beings,” believed in reference to the dark-complexioned people there.

Throughout history, many Myanmar Muslims living in Rakhine have been exploited and abused while being left powerless. In the 16th century, those of Bengali lineage were conscripted, enslaved or shunted elsewhere like chattel.

However, Myanmar’s expanding territorial ambitions rubbed against the interests of British India. British firepower defeated the Myanmar army in all three Anglo-Burmese Wars throughout the 19th century, ending the country’s dynastic rule.

The result was a subdued British Burma. But that did not extinguish the independent country’s ambitions from 1948.

While Myanmar Muslims were generally victims of discrimination, the Rohingya community in particular still suffer the most. Deprived of basic human, civil and political rights, they are denied citizenship and face daily restrictions on movement, marriage and childbirth.

Since 2012 and especially in the last quarter of this year, the Rohingyas have been subjected to genocide. 

Documentary and witness evidence shows widespread, systematic and state-sponsored murders, arson of whole villages, rapes, torture, forced labour, arbitrary arrests and detention, and deportation – or simply being pushed out to sea.

In the process, the Rohingyas often become victims of human traffickers. Thus Myanmar authorities also actively and wilfully contribute to a regional problem.

After Rohingya homes had been burnt down by agitators, starving families were denied food rations in the hands of the authorities.

Rohingya children cannot attend schools, and the sick cannot access clinics, hospitals or other medical services.

By killing the Rohingya population, Myanmar is conducting Stage One genocide.

By restricting Rohingya marriages and childbirths to stop future generations, state authorities are practising biological genocide.

And by insisting Rohingyas are non-persons and rejecting even the name “Rohingya”, extremist private and government groups are undertaking comprehensive genocide.

It amounts to a calculated policy of extinguishing the Rohingya people permanently, including their deletion from history.

Anti-Rohingya propaganda is strong and outrageous. And genocide depends on erasing a people’s very being.

The Rohingyas themselves lack education and are preoccupied with survival. To right the wrongs, it is vital to learn about Rohingya history and culture – and document and popu­larise them.

The fact that the majority of the Bamar perpetrators are “Buddhist” and the Rohingya are Muslim creates an impression of inter-faith conflict. That is a fiction that only compounds the tragedy and assists in the genocide.

By making the conflict look like a battle of “us” versus “them”, more Buddhists who form the country’s majority may be susceptible to anti-Rohingya propaganda, made to feel threatened, and be recruited to the cause.

Talk of such a Rohingya threat is an outright lie. At its height, the mostly penniless and uneducated Rohingya population was no more than 2% of Myanmar’s 50 million, and even that meagre proportion has dwindled through killings, forced deportations and voluntary migration.

For centuries before, the Burmese state was actively killing people and desecrating sites in other Buddhist countries in the region. Its lust for power and material gain has been enough motivation to overcome any sense of common religious identity or interests.

Meanwhile, although discrimination of other Muslim groups in Myanmar also exists, their plight is not as severe as the Rohingyas’.

The reasons seem simple enough, and they relate to the Rohingya community’s very vulnerability. Being mainly farmers, the people lack strong political organisation and effective coordination for defence.

Their land is also on the cusp of Myanmar and Bangladeshi territory, allowing for the convenient excuse that they are no more than illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

And ironically, their victimisation has also resulted from their passivity. Unlike many of Myanmar’s 135 other ethnic groups that had waged war against the government, Rohingyas have not been fighting back.

Only lately have there been reports of a few sporadic outbursts against isolated police outposts. But even these are minor and uncoordinated.

A legal excuse of Myanmar officials is a 1982 law banning citizenship for Rohingyas. They may claim to be only observing that law, but nobody has been able to justify the law itself.

Since Myanmar is a Buddhist-majority country, what of Buddhist law itself? By any measure, every act against the Rohingyas clearly violates Buddhist teaching.

The militant Ashin Wirathu, in a monk’s robe, has been recruiting monks released from jail after the 2007 “saffron revolution” when the monkhood took to street protests against the military government.

Since then, Wirathu has obtained funds to give the released monks supplies, an income and propaganda to turn them against the Rohingyas rather than the government.

Meanwhile, former President Thein Sein has since 2011 showcased some reforms to the sufficient satisfaction of the West to lift sanctions against Myanmar.

In this performance he was helped assiduously by Aung San Suu Kyi, the former opposition leader, “icon” of human rights and democracy, and now supposedly the country’s most powerful politician.

But even after suffering years of persecution herself, she is now parroting the statements of the previous military regime on the Rohingyas.

Even senior members of her party are among the racist extremists targeting Rohingyas. And she is still ineligible for the coveted presidency, being unable to amend the Constitution to allow for that.

So she may still have to toe the line until that day. Meanwhile, Rohingya lives will just have to be collateral damage.

Alternatively, she may be just as hard-hearted as the meanest of her compatriots. When cornered on the subject, she reportedly admitted that she had “always been a politician.”

If so, she certainly had the whole world fooled – even the Nobel Prize Committee itself, although that does not take much nowadays.

She and the rest of the government would then be pushing the Rohingyas to the brink. Islamist militants abroad have tried to infiltrate the community to foment terror attacks against the state but have so far been rebuffed.

That situation may change. Then Myanmar would again be a source of deadly conflict for the entire region.

And a famous nationalist’s daughter would shame the family name and be a blot on the regional landscape.

Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

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