July 28, 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 ...

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

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Uncertain Rohingya stuck in limbo

July 3, 2013

Around 2,000 Rohingya are trapped in limbo in two dozen government-approved shelters around Thailand, often without recourse to the legal system despite abuses during their flight from Myanmar.

Officials indicate that the Muslims who fled their homes, often because of persecution, now have little hope for the immediate future as they languish in government custody.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra promised the international community to care for the Rohingya for six months, while the United Nations and other groups tried to come up with a solution for the shattered emigrants from the Myanmar-Bangladesh border area.

That deadline runs out on July 26, but there is no more hope for the Rohingya today than there was last January, during a wave of flights into Thailand.

The decision to shelter the Rohingya made life tough from the start, and it has not got much better. One serious drawback, for example, is the necessity to use already overcrowded immigration detention facilities. This has split families, as men and women are housed separately at the facilities.

International aid agencies have got involved, and supply food and basic essential items. They include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), Muslim communities, and National Human Rights Commission.

These and other groups have visited, interviewed and recorded details of the Rohingya, but aside from giving them some aid items are powerless to provide hope. In addition, the groups say the Rohingya remain vulnerable and prone to trafficking gangsters. Officials say those at greatest risk are in shelters operated by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.

At the 24 official holding centres for the immigrants (see chart below), there are wildly different standards, for reasons that range from a simple lack of interpreters at the local level to pressure or intimidation from human trafficking rings that answer to influential local figures.

The Rohingya themselves often are to blame for problems. Officials say many lack education. Quarrels often occur, especially among those who want to leave the official camp to try to contact their loved ones in other locations. Many have tried to sneak out of the shelters to try to travel to Malaysia.


Aid workers said human trafficking and rape cases in Phang Nga province illustrated the vulnerability of the Rohingya. Officials in charge of the immigrants were dispirited and tired, especially by the communications problem, and uncertainty about how long the boat people would be staying.

"They are not criminals after all, so how can we keep 24-hour surveillance on them?" asked a shelter official in southern Thailand rhetorically.

Immigration officials share the problem. "We are seeking approval to build a fence so that at least they can roam around exercising or play football within this open-air compound while waiting for the government comes up with a concrete plan on where else to house them,” said one official at a Songkhla immigration centre.

Villagers in Nakhon Si Thammarat's Cha-uad district have protested against planned improvements of the facilities used to house the Rohingya - former Border Police Patrol housing.

The government was reportedly searching for remote areas of Songkhla or Prachuap Khiri Khan province to erect a type of refugee centre. Some Muslim countries have pledged to donate for a one-stop detention facility for the Rohingya, diplomatic sources said.

According to a survey carried out by the UNHCR, at least 60 Rohingya people were Bangladeshi citizens. The UN group was trying to coordinate efforts to repatriate them.

UNHCR spokesperson Vivian Tan said her agency had interviewed all of the approximately 2,000 Rohingya men, women and children in the shelters and immigration detention centres.

"Many say they left because of the inter-communal violence (between Buddhists and Muslims) in Myanmar's Rakhine state last year," she said. "Some of the women and children had planned to join their menfolk in Malaysia."

Because the situation in Rakhine remains unsettled, the UNHCR has appealed to Thai authorities to extend the six-month temporary protection promise, and to relocate the Rohingya to a site in Thailand that is less crowded and allows for family reunification.

However, immigration officials with long experience with the Rohingya said that while half of the Rohingya detainees were legitimately fleeing persecution, at least half were economic refugees hoping to get jobs and send money back home, and had no desire to be sent to third countries.

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