March 29, 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: Silent Abuse



August 10, 2017

Denied citizenship, forced from their homes, and subjected to cruelty; we investigate the plight of Myanmar's Rohingya.

Filmmakers: Salam Hindawi, Ali Kishk, Harri Grace

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has a population of around 51 million people. The Burman ethnic group constitutes around two-thirds of this figure and controls the military and the government. But there are also more than 135 ethnic groups in the country, each with their own culture.

Many of them have become internally displaced by government moves to exploit land, provoking long-standing friction. 

In fact, the conflict between Myanmar's ethnic minorities and the ruling Burmese majority represent one of the world's longest ongoing conflicts.

One group, the Muslim Rohingya, are not recognised as an ethnic nationality of Myanmar, so they suffer from arguably the worst discrimination and human rights abuses of all. The Rohingya population is somewhere between one and two million and they are living mainly in Rakhine State in the north of the country.

In this film, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Salam Hindawi goes to Myanmar to investigate the situation surrounding the Rohingya.

Myanmar has been tightly controlled for decades and Hindawi has enormous difficulties gaining access to certain areas of the country that the government simply doesn't want anyone from outside to see.

"I think the military and the government are blocking people from going into northern Maungdaw [a majority Rohingya town], because they have something really horrible to hide," says David Mathieson, a former director of Human Rights Watch in Myanmar and now an independent analyst and observer. 

"There are signs of this in satellite pictures and by the government's own admission and through credible reporting coming out of the area, saying there have been extensive human rights violations. They want to hide the extent of the abuses against the civilian population. It's a cover-up," he says.

In 2012, the capital of Rakhine state, Sittwe, saw a wave of violence in which hundreds of Rohingya were killed and tens of thousands forced to leave their homes and move to camps.

"Our houses were burned down by the Rakhine people," says Sander Win, a Rohingya refugee. "We stayed at a friend's house and were then sent here. I've been here for five or six years."

Muhammed Yasin, the so-called camp doctor, says: "Our lives are very difficult. All our houses have been destroyed. In cold weather, we sleep on the floor ... our children get diseases and die."

The government restricts their movement, ability to marry and access to education and healthcare. The refugees Hindawi met seemed to have been in the camp for years - and the children appeared to never have lived anywhere else.

At the heart of the Rohingya's problems lie Myanmar's citizenship laws which deny them full nationality and therefore rights. This mirrors the widespread official and public prejudice against them.

"As a Buddhist, I feel sorry for them," says Buddhist monk U Par Mount Kha. "But these Muslims living in Myanmar, we can't just look at their human rights. They're not qualified to be citizens under our citizenship law ... If we let them out, the terrorist attacks will increase in Myanmar. There are 57 Islamic countries in the world, so if the leaders of those countries would take these people into their countries, there will be no problems in our country at all. We should consider that idea."

This discrimination has created tension and in October 2016 at least nine police officers were killed and four injured in multiple assaults along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh. The attackers were identified only as "terrorists" but were believed to belong to an armed Muslim group.

There was an immediate violent backlash and the army began a siege on Maungdaw. There were reports of mass killings, torture, rape - and of tens of thousands of Rohingya sought refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The government says these reports are exaggerated - but the UN has since reported a raft of human rights violations. It has even gone as far as suggesting that Myanmar's strategy may be to expel the Rohingya altogether. It announced a fact-finding mission to Myanmar but the government said in June that it would deny entry to officials taking part in the UN investigation.

Former Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi now holds the post of State Counsellor and is effectively the head of the Myanmar government. But since her days as an anti-government campaigner, she has been accused of ignoring the plight of the Rohingya in Rakhine state.

"[Aung San Suu Kyi] stays relatively silent about the abuses going on," says Mathieson. "She's really been absent when her voice as a leader needs to be heard."










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