March 14, 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...

Event

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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 Rohingya problem is an Asean problem

Rohingya children gather at the Dar Paing camp for Muslim refugees, north of Sittwe in western Rakhine state. Asean must help in halting the violence against the Rohingya.

By Dr Paridah Abd Samad
December 14, 2016

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s strong rebuke of Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi that “enough is enough” was a landmark moment for Asean. For the first time in a long time, an Asean country leader condemned another Asean country. 

Najib’s reprimand implied that he is acting on a “universal duty of response”, and holding Suu Kyi to the global ideals that are seen to underwrite her status as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His position concurs with the Asean charter that Asean must uphold human rights. He added that “this is not an intervention”, that displaces the Asean tenet of “non-interference in domestic matters”. 

Suu Kyi had been praised in the past for her support of human rights, but she is losing her shine as an international beacon of democracy as she is being increasingly condemned for refusing to speak out to condemn the current Buddhist violence against the Rohingya. 

When forced, she has commented that the military is operating according to the “rule of law”. The military and police had “engaged in collective punishment of the Rohingya minority” after the murder of nine border guards on Oct 9, which some politicians blamed on a Rohingya militant group. 

Under international pressure, Suu Kyi has formed a special committee to investigate the violence. The committee, however, is headed by an army general from the very same army that is committing the violence, undermining the committee’s credibility to conduct a just and impartial investigation. 

Buddhist monks in Myanmar, from the Nationalist Monk Association, led a protest of about 150 people in Yangon, holding banners and chanting against the Malaysian prime minister. They called attention to the Asean principle of non-interference and accused Najib of stoking religious extremism in order to score political points in Malaysia. Tension continues to escalate as Myanmar decided to stop sending workers to Malaysia. 

Therefore, Myanmar and the monks’ protest cannot justify the fate of one million “stateless” Muslim Rohingya as an “internal problem”. Especially when the consequences include transnational migration into Asean countries making such circumstances less tenable for this as just a “traditional and intrinsic state affair”. 

The current situation also provides fertile ground for the spread of radical Islam. Neighbouring Bangladesh has suffered a number of attacks linked to the Islamic State (IS), and Southeast Asia has proven a successful source of recruits. This is an Asean and international issue. 

Surin Pitsuwan, a former secretary-general of Asean and a former foreign minister of Thailand, argued that “jihadists become radicalised by the Rohingya slaughter. Being denied their basic human rights has left them stateless and suffering and prone to radicalisation”. 

Neglecting their plight would entrench the segregation of Rakhine state along ethnic and religious lines, breed conflict, and potentially radicalise them. An outflow of these desperate refugees would implicate the security concern of the entire region. 

Thus, Asean needs to respond by providing humanitarian assistance to the displaced and alleviate the suffering of the Rohingya. Liberating the Rohingya is only the first fortification against radicalisation by giving them equal opportunity and building trust. The whole of Rakhine state should be integrated into Myanmar’s ambitious development plans, and also into the Asean Economic Community. 

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, hundreds of people from the hardline Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir, marched to the Defence Ministry, and demanded that Malaysia’s army conduct a jihad against Myanmar. 

The Rohingya crisis has become a rallying cry for jihad. Some social media users in Indonesia have gone to the extent of declaring their readiness to be suicide bombers for the sake of the Rohingya. Online extremists in Indonesia have expressed a desire to mount jihad on behalf of the Rohingya, with some supporters hoping that the mujahidin will be able to smuggle themselves into Myanmar. Last weekend, Indonesian authorities arrested two militants who were allegedly planning to attack the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. 

The Rohingya rally in Malaysia was not just thumbing our nose at our Southeast Asian neighbour. Accepting the additional influx of our Muslim brothers into Malaysia is not a viable, long-term solution to the crisis, especially when Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Therefore, the Rohingya problem is a Malaysian problem, too. 

Putting aside maps drawn among Asean countries, the Rohingya people are, after all, part of Southeast Asia. And Asean should live up to a people-centric Asean community. 

Dr Paridah Abd Samad is a former lecturer of UiTM (Shah Alam) and IIUM (Gombak), a Fulbright scholar and Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) fellow

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