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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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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...

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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...

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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...

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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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Myanmar monk's U.N. whore rant 'could hurt Buddhism'

Wirathu, Buddhist monk and leader of the 969 movement, talks with other monks during a protest against visiting United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, in Yangon January 16, 2015. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

By Thin Lei Win and Andrew R.C. Marshall
January 21, 2015

BANGKOK -- A Myanmar Buddhist monk who called a U.N. human rights envoy a "whore" has violated his monastic code and could damage his religion, another prominent monk said on Tuesday, but he is unlikely to face censure.

Wirathu denounced Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, in a speech in Yangon on Friday, after she questioned draft laws that critics say discriminate against women and non-Buddhists.

"Just because you hold a position in the United Nations doesn't make you an honourable woman. In our country, you are just a whore," Wirathu told a cheering crowd of several hundred people in Yangon on Friday.

The monk also accused Lee of bias towards Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine.

"You can offer your arse to the kalars if you so wish but you are not selling off our Rakhine State," he said. Kalars is a derogatory word for people of South Asian descent.

His speech was condemned by Thawbita, a leading member of the progressive Saffron Revolution Buddhist Monks Network in Mandalay, where Wirathu is also based. 

"The words used that day are very sad and disappointing. It is an act that could hurt Buddhism very badly," Thawbita told Reuters.

The network was formed by monks who helped lead the 2007 Saffron Revolution, a nationwide democracy uprising brutally crushed by the military. It is influential among educated Buddhists, but has little power.

A senior official at the Ministry of Religious Affairs told Reuters there were no plans to act against Wirathu.

"Of course, he has the right to express his opinion but he shouldn't have used these terms," said the official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. "It can tarnish the image of our religion among those who don't really understand its essence."

Famed for his fiery speeches, Wirathu belongs to a radical anti-Islamic group whose monks preach that Muslims will one day overrun Myanmar. Buddhism is the country's predominant religion and its monks are revered.

A quasi-civilian government now runs Myanmar after nearly half a century of hardline military rule. But its reforms have been marred by deadly religious clashes, with rights activists warning that hate speech could foment further violence.

Lee responded indirectly to Wirathu's remarks in a statement released by her office on Monday.

"During my visit I was personally subjected to the kind of sexist intimidation that female human rights defenders experience when advocating on controversial issues," she said. 

(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon; Editing by Simon Webb and Nick Macfie)

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