July 26, 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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Grant Bayldon: Stop passing buck with refugees

Grant Bayldon
The New Zealand Herald
July 24, 2013


Getting tough is not the answer: Australia and NZ must work with Asian nations to help, writes Grant Bayldon.

Asylum seekers can end up in desperate conditions in receiving countries. (Photo/AP)
The Asia Pacific region is probably the worst part of the world to be a refugee in. Not only does it have more refugees, it has less protection for them than anywhere else in the world.

This month while in Thailand, I visited Rohingya women and children who had fled from appalling atrocities in Burma. I should be used to hearing such stories by now, working for Amnesty International, but the stories are always so far removed from my life in New Zealand that I don't think I ever will be.

These women had been so desperate to escape that they had fled to Thailand, a terrifying three-week journey in a small open fishing boat packed with 100 people. Some were pregnant - one delivered her baby on the boat. All had terrible stories: houses burnt, family members killed.

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in Burma who for centuries have faced severe discrimination, and are denied equal access to citizenship in their own country.

Now in Thailand, the women and children have some room to move around, but their husbands have been caged like animals in a separate detention centre where shocking conditions are standing room only - a desperate mix of disease and depression.

In some ways these are the lucky ones. It's believed that many other Rohingya fleeing Burma by boat over the past year have fallen into the hands of human traffickers who have sold them to become what amounts to slave labourers on fishing boats or into the sex industry.

Some have allegedly been towed out to sea by the Thai Navy, stripped of fuel and supplies and left to die.

For those who've made it to Thailand and other countries, their problem is that - like most countries in the region - Thailand isn't a signatory to the Refugee Convention, and therefore asylum seekers have no guarantee of protection.

What's worse is that Thailand even refuses to allow the United Nations to register the Rohingya for the UN refugee resettlement programme. But even if they did, places are scarce. In Thailand, as in most other countries, they are simply illegal migrants liable to fall prey to human traffickers or indefinite detention.

It's no wonder so many people are trying to get on boats to Australia.

But in Australia the issue has become what humanitarian issues should never be - a political football kicked around by politicians desperate to win an election. On Friday the Australian Government announced it will now refuse to resettle asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Instead they will be permanently deported to Papua New Guinea.

But if you've been listening to the political debate in Australia, everything you've heard is probably wrong. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd paints the arrivals as a catastrophe engulfing Australia. The Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott claims most are economic migrants seeking a better standard of living.

At first Rudd seems right. The numbers are significant, with almost 16,000 arriving so far this year. Until you look at it as a proportion of Australia's total annual migrant immigration, which brings in an additional 185,000 new Australians each year.

And Abbott's claim that most are not genuine refugees? As you'd probably guess, it's not easy to meet the requirements of being a refugee. Poverty won't get you there, you must prove that you are genuinely fleeing human rights abuses or war. But more than 90 per cent of arrivals in Australia are found to be exactly that: genuine refugees.

Then there's the deterrent claim - that tough policies are necessary to stop people dying at sea. Australia set up the offshore processing solution to achieve this, and New Zealand even had a go with our recent legislation to allow for mass detention of asylum seekers.

But the get-tough approach of making asylum seekers wait for years in inhumane conditions in Nauru and on Manus Island didn't work. They kept coming. The biggest group arriving in Australia are Afghanis, mostly the Hazara ethnic group so dreadfully persecuted by the Taliban. Could Australia or New Zealand's policies ever be so terrifying that they'd rather stay and face the Taliban?

The real tragedy is that the Australian move to send the problem on to Papua New Guinea, and the recent legislation change in New Zealand, diminishes what moral legitimacy we have to play the role of respected brokers in the region.

Because what's needed is not more failed get-tough policies, but to work with the receiving countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to increase recognition and support for refugees so they don't have to get on boats. We need to create opportunities for the most vulnerable people to be settled right across the region.

That's the role Australia and New Zealand need to play - to be leaders in the region, doing their bit and working with other countries to help them do theirs. Not playing pass the parcel.

Grant Bayldon is Amnesty International's New Zealand executive director.

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