July 27, 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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Burma clashes could put transition to democracy at risk

Thein Sein declares state of emergency after sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims on Sunday kills several people


Thein Sein, the Burmese prime minister warned that racial and religious divisions could affect Burma's stability. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Sectarian violence could put Burma's transition to democracy at risk, President Thein Sein has warned as the government declared a state of emergency in the country's west after clashes between Buddhists and Muslims left at least eight people dead and 17 wounded.

Earlier on Sunday, authorities imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew on four towns in Arakan state, where tensions have been steadily growing since the killing of 10 Muslims aboard a bus in early June.

In a televised addressed, Thein Sein said the violence had been fanned by hatred and the desire for revenge. "If we put racial and religious issues at the forefront, if we put the never-ending hatred, desire for revenge and anarchic actions at the forefront, and if we continue to retaliate and terrorise and kill each other, there's a danger that [the troubles] could multiply and move beyond Arakan," the president said.

"If this happens, the general public should be aware that the country's stability and peace, democratisation process and development, which are only in transition right now, could be severely affected and much would be lost."

The announcement marked the first time since he took office last year that the president has imposed a state of emergency, which effectively allows the military to take over administrative functions. The order will "remain until further notice", he said.

A 12-year-old girl identified as Razen Bibi became the eighth person to die in the unrest after reportedly being shot on Sunday by riot police outside her home in the town of Maungdaw. Foreigners are barred from entering Maungdaw, but local staff working undercover for the Arakan Project, an international NGO that monitors the situation in Burma's westernmost state, said they saw the body being taken away by police.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is due to visit the UK later this month, appealed for calm amid the rioting. It is not yet clear if the state of emergency will affect her decision to travel, but the violence threatens to take the shine off her tour, which is being billed as a potent signal of progress in her country.

The unrest appears to have its roots in the 3 June incident in which a group of Muslim pilgrims were beaten to death by Buddhists from Arakan, allegedly in response to the gang rape and murder of a 26-year-old woman by three Muslim men in late May. The three accused had already been arrested, and are awaiting trial.

Ethno-religious tension is not new in Arakan, which sits on the border with Bangladesh and has the country's highest concentration of Muslims. But the current violence is the worst seen in over a decade, and state media warned of anarchy unless the situation is brought under control. Maung Zarni, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, said the situation was all the more tragic considering both sides of the conflict have experienced persecution by the Burmese authorities. He added that the nominally civilian government could well benefit from the unrest, given that it diverts attention from the military's continued attacks on other ethnic groups.

In a statement, Christian Solidarity Worldwide deplored the "rising racism [and] intolerance" in Burma, which it says "follows a steady increase in racist propaganda against Muslims generally". Several Facebook groups have been set up since the 3 June lynching, including one called "Kalar Beheading Gang". Kalar is a pejorative slur popularly employed by Burmese to refer to Muslims of south Asian descent.

The CSW statement singled out the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group denied citizenship by the government, as subject to particularly inhumane treatment. Up to 300,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape state-sanctioned abuse and discrimination by Arakanese locals. They are the only ethnic group in Burma subjected to a two child policy and severe travel limitations, while Rohingya babies born out of wedlock are placed on blacklists that deny them entry to school and forbid marriage.

Chris Lewa, who runs The Arakan Project, told the Guardian that contrary to media reports claiming calm has been restored to the western state, the situation was getting "worse and worse", particularly in Maungdaw where hundreds of additional soldiers have been deployed. Several quarters in Sittwe, the state capital, have been set ablaze and Lewa said that with an equal ratio of Muslims to Buddhists in Sittwe, turmoil there could dramatically escalate.

Various overseas Rohingya groups have blamed Arakanese locals for the deaths over the weekend, although Lewa said that it was largely troops who had been attacking Muslims. That was echoed by Tun Khin, head of the Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, who said that the Friday unrest was triggered by security forces firing at a crowd leaving a prayer ceremony for the 10 people killed on 3 June, killing two.

The flames of animosity have been fanned even by prominent members of Burma's pro-democracy movement. Ko Ko Gyi, a former political prisoner and leader of the 1988 student uprising, earlier this week referred to the Rohingya as terrorists, adding: "We want to say clearly that Rohingya are not one of the Myanmar [Burma] ethnic nationalities."

Benedict Rogers, East Asia team leader at CSW, told the Guardian: "The exact history of the Rohingya can be discussed and debated among scholars in a civilised way, but no one can dispute that they have lived in Burma for generations, and as such should be recognised as citizens of the country."

Concerns have extended to the potential for the rioting to destabilise Burma's fragile reform process. The military-drafted constitution allows for the army chief to retake power in a national emergency, but remains vague on what exactly that constitutes.
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