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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...

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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...

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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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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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(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...

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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...

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(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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Census-takers fail to count Rohingyas

A census enumerator takes answers from a family in Rangoon. (Photo: DVB)


By Colin Hinshelwood
April 2, 2014

The current census of the Burmese population is failing to include thousands of Rohingya Muslims due to a standoff over semantics – on one hand, enumerators refuse to record the subjects as “Rohingya” on their questionnaires, while in other cases the householders refuse to answer any further census-related questions if their request to record their ethnicity as such is ignored.

Speaking to DVB on Monday, Rohingya activist and community leader Aung Win said that enumerators in the Sittwe neighbourhood of Bumay, when faced with a Rohingya family, had been writing in “Bengali” – the preferred term for the stateless minority among many Burmese – while other census-takers had left blank the column: “Question 8 – Ethnicity”. He said in either case, the Rohingyas refused to continue to answer the survey.

However, the following day, Aung Win said that the approach had changed in Rohingya homes in Sittwe’s Thay Chaung neighbourhood. He said that on Tuesday, it was the enumerators who refused to continue the survey.

“When the census-collectors enter homes in these [Rohingya] areas, they immediately ask the people: ‘What is your race?’ When the people say ‘Rohingya’, they walk out.”

He said that the same version of events had been relayed to him by Rohingya residents in Maungdaw and Budithaung on Tuesday.

Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya support group, said that she had received similar reports from residents in Maungdaw.

“Local Arakan authorities have been putting pressure on Rohingya community leaders to get their people to take part in the census, and they have threatened those who do not participate with punishment,” she said.

“I have been told that when people identify themselves as ‘Rohingya’, the enumerators just stop writing,” Lewa told DVB on Tuesday. “I also hear that they are taking photographs of those who proclaim their ethnicity as ‘Rohingya’.”

She added that she believed “tensions are mounting”.

A source in the Aung Mingalar enclave of Sittwe, where more than 4,000 Rohingyas are sheltered, albeit under strict security conditions, said that the census enumerators had yet to conduct the survey in that neighbourhood. However, he said on condition of anonymity, many people were anxious because reports from Maungdaw indicated that census-collectors were arriving at the doorsteps of Rohingya households accompanied by police, military personnel and immigration officials in a bid to force the Muslims to comply with the census conditions whereby they register themselves as “Bengalis”.

Oo Hla Saw, the general-secretary of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, said he backed the enumerators’ actions. “Actually there are some Muslims identifying their ethnicity in the census as ‘Bengali’ and some as ‘Kaman’,” he said. “However, others are bitter and defiant, and insist on calling themselves ‘Rohingyas’, a term that is recognised by neither the Arakan State government nor the central government.”

The Arakanese politician continued: “If they refuse to cooperate with the schoolteachers who are collecting the data, then there is little more they [the enumerators] can do but to turn around and walk out. This is my understanding of the situation.”

He pointed out to DVB that although there were some hiccups with the census in some places, it went smoothly in other areas.

William Ryan, the regional communications adviser to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which is a major international backer of the census, confirmed to DVB that he had been made aware of reports alleging that Rohingyas had not been counted in the census in some parts of Arakan State.

Ryan said the UNFPA was looking to the Burmese government to protect the rights of the populace and conduct the census according to international standards.

In a statement on Tuesday, UNFPA said it is “deeply concerned about the Myanmar [Burmese] Government’s decision not to allow census respondents who wish to self-identify their ethnicity as Rohingya to do so.

“In its agreement with the United Nations on the 2014 census, the Government made a commitment to conduct the exercise in accordance with international census standards and human rights principles. It explicitly agreed with the condition that each person would be able to declare what ethnicity they belong to, including those who wish to record their identity as of mixed ethnicity. Those not identifying with one of the listed ethnic categories would be able to declare their ethnicity and have their response recorded by the enumerator.”

The nationwide census, Burma’s first in more than 30 years, started on Sunday, 30 March, and is due to conclude on 10 April. Teams of more than 80,000 enumerators – made up mostly of schoolteachers who have been trained to conduct the survey during school holidays – are accompanied by domestic and international observers as they fan across the country.

By Colin Hinshelwood

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