May 04, 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...

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...

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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...

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 ...

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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...

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...

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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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UN warns Myanmar that demolishing Rohingya homes will ‘heighten tensions’

A camp outside the Ralhine State capital, Sittwe, for Rohingyas displaced by violence in 2012. CREDIT: David Longstreath/IRIN

By Emanuel Stoakes
IRIN
January 2, 2017

The UN has warned authorities that plans to demolish hundreds of homes belonging to ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims will “heighten tensions” in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the military is accused of abusing civilians during counterinsurgency operations.

The warning came in a 28 December letter, obtained by IRIN and addressed to Rakhine State Chief Minister Nyi Pu. It said that more than 100 structures have already been destroyed, and the UN has “received reports that the Border Guard Police have served orders to demolish 819 buildings owned by Muslims, including 696 houses.”

The UN is also concerned about a “household survey” underway in areas where tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled military operations, according to the letter. The survey could mean that the displaced are struck from the official list of residents, leaving them unable to legally return home once the violence stops.

UN officials have confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was signed by the UN’s senior advisor on Rakhine State, Chris Carter.

In the letter, Carter called the demolitions and the survey “provocative”.

The demolitions and survey are taking place in northern Rakhine State, where the military has been conducting "clearing operations" after a Rohingya insurgent group attacked border police posts on 9 October. Rohingya who fled over the border into Bangladesh have told journalists and rights groups that soldiers have committed widespread atrocities, including burning houses, as well as raping and killing civilians.

Government confusion

Demolitions are not unusual in Myanmar, where laws require the destruction of structures built without permits. But there is confusion among government officials as to why the survey and demolitions are taking place now, while the military is clashing with insurgents and about 80,000 civilians have been displaced.

“We already told them to hold their plan in this very sensitive situation,” said Zaw Htay, a spokesman for the office of President Htin Kyaw, referring to orders given to state officials. “The central government has already intervened.”

A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IRIN the UN has received similar assurances from the central government, but structures are still being destroyed.

“We are still trying to determine whether the ongoing demolitions are just actions by rogue local officials... or a more calculated move by others,” the official said.

Tin Maung Shwe, the deputy director for Rakhine State at the central government’s powerful General Administration Department, told IRIN there has been “a misunderstanding at the grassroots level”.

“We are making inquiries,” he added.

Growing tensions

Rohingya Muslims comprise about a third of Rakhine State’s population of just over three million, where the majority are ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. There have long been tensions between the communities, and violence in 2012 killed hundreds of people and displaced about 140,000. Almost all the victims were Rohingya, and about 100,000 still remain in camps.

Almost all Rohingya are stateless, having had their citizenship stripped by Myanmar’s former military rulers. Although Rohingya have lived in the area for hundreds of years, many in Myanmar consider them illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. They are forced to live under an apartheid system in which their movements are strictly controlled.

Rakhine State conducts the household survey on a yearly basis for the purpose of monitoring the Rohingya community. Only those on the “household lists” produced by this exercise are eligible to reside in their homes.

“It usually takes place in January in northern Rakhine, but began in November this year,” said the UN official. “It's not happening elsewhere in Rakhine at this time, only in the three northern townships.”

The three northern townships of Rathedaung, Buthidaung and Maungdaw have been highly militarised since 9 October. The townships are home to most of the state’s Rohingya – and most of those displaced by the counter-insurgency operations. That means tens of thousands of people who have fled their villages could be made permanently homeless, since they can’t take part in the survey.

The decision to conduct a household survey now and destroy homes will have the effect of “heightening a state-led campaign of atrocity crimes and ethnic cleansing,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights, a group that has recently collected testimonies from Rohingya of atrocities committed by soldiers.

“If they aren't on the list, they will have no choice but to flee to Bangladesh,” he told IRIN. “Giving people no option but to flee the country can be considered forced deportation.”

The UN has similar concerns. The letter refers to reports that the “names of missing people identified by the new household survey are being permanently struck from the household lists.”

More than 50,000 Rohingya have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh in the past three months, according to the government there, while the UN has said another 30,000 people are internally displaced.

As many as half a million Rohingya are already living in overcrowded camps Bangladesh, having crossed the border during attacks against their communities since the 1970s. 

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