March 16, 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...

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...

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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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Pope Francis: 'The presence of God today is also called Rohingya'

Pope Francis meets Rohingya Muslim refugees.

By Joshua Berlinger and Delia Gallagher
December 2, 2017

Dhaka, Bangladesh -- Pope Francis referred to the Rohingya people by name on Friday, the first time he has directly addressed Myanmar's persecuted Muslim minority in his Asia tour.

"The presence of God today is also called Rohingya," the Pope said after speaking to an interfaith audience in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.

He did not use the term in public earlier in the week in Myanmar, to the dismay of campaigners for the Rohingya, whose stories of escaping violence in the country have provoked international condemnation. Friday is the final full day of his trip.

After his speech, the Pope met a group of Rohingya refugees one by one, giving some of them blessings and listening to the stories of others.

"Your tragedy is very hard, very big. We give you space in our hearts," the Pope said. "In the name of everyone, of those who persecute you, those who hurt you, and especially of the world's indifference, I ask for your forgiveness. Forgive us."

"Many of you talked to me about the great heart of Bangladesh, which offered you refuge. Now I appeal to your heart to give us the forgiveness we are asking from you," he told the group of refugees after meeting them.

Pope Francis shakes hands with Rohingya refugees during an interreligious and ecumenical meeting for peace on Friday in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled across the border from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since a spate of violence began in August. Many say they were forced to flee atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.

Myanmar's government does not use the term Rohingya to refer to the group. It considers the Rohingya people to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though some families have lived in Myanmar for centuries. The Rohingya are not recognized as an official minority in Myanmar, effectively meaning they are denied citizenship.

During a speech Tuesday alongside Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, Pope Francis did not use the term Rohingya despite hopes he would do so.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke dismissed the idea that Francis -- who has used the Rohingya term before -- diminished his moral authority by avoiding a direct reference to the group during his visit to Myanmar, the first by a Pope to the Buddhist-majority country.

"People don't expect him to solve impossible problems," Burke said.

Activists argued that because Francis did not use the term while he was in Myanmar, he was complicit in the country's strategy to delegitimize the Rohingya plight by questioning their name and identity.

"The term Rohingya is not a racial slur. It is a dignified term for more than two million people who are living across the world," European-based Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin told CNN in an email. 

After the Pope's remarks in Bangladesh, Lwin told CNN that he and other Rohingya advocates felt like "winners."

"Unexpectedly he used the correct term. He didn't avoid when he met the Rohingyas in person," Lwin said.

The international community has been outraged by the stories of fleeing refugees.

Jafar Alam, a 24-year-old Rohingya who was due to speak with the Pope in Bangladesh, told reporters before the meeting that the army lined up 30 people in his village and killed them all.

The United Nations, the US and the UK have accused the Myanmar military of ethnic cleansing, systematically driving the minority Muslim population from their homes through murder, rape and terror.

Myanmar's military claims it is pursuing terrorists responsible for a deadly attack on security forces in August. It denies that it has systematically persecuted the Rohingya. 

During his visit to Myanmar, Francis met the country's two most important leaders: Suu Kyi and Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar's armed forces.

During a brief meeting with Pope Francis Monday, Hlaing insisted that all faiths were able to worship freely in Myanmar.

But many Myanmar watchers said Hlaing's claim is false, pointing to the Rohingya crisis. 

"The mind boggles when you're confronting such blatant falsehoods and incredibly bogus narratives that have been formulated by people covering up atrocities," said Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

Suu Kyi, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner for her nonviolent resistance to the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades, has also denied that ethnic cleansing is going on her country. 

She addressed the crisis in general terms during a speech alongside Francis Tuesday, saying her government aims "to bring out the beauty of our diversity and to make it our strength, by protecting rights, fostering tolerance, ensuring security for all." 

CNN's Rebecca Wright contributed to this report

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