July 27, 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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Questions surround Rohingya census in Bangladesh

Rohingya children pose for the camera at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman)

By Bill O'Toole
March 4, 2016

The Bangladeshi government will next month conduct a census of Rohingya refugees living on the nation’s shared border with Burma.

The count has the potential to bring much-needed security to hundreds of thousands of undocumented refugees, many of whom have lived in Bangladesh for decades. However, key questions regarding the methodology and goals of the process remain unanswered, leading some to criticise the government for a lack of transparency.

“Overall it sounds very promising,” said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the Rohingya human rights situation, “The problem is that everything is unclear.”

As Lewa and other observers have pointed out, the Bangladeshi government has yet to release basic information about how the data will be processed or what kind of documentation the cooperating refugees will receive.

Alamgir Hossain, director of the census for the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, declined to comment when contacted by DVB last week. Mohammad Wahidur Rahman, deputy-head of the district statistical office at Cox’s Bazar also declined. A spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign affairs referred all questions to the embassy in Rangoon.

A Bangladeshi diplomat, who asked not to be named, said the government’s chose to handle the census internally in order to avoid antagonising Naypyidaw. The Thein Sein government and hardline nationalist groups have previously accused the international community of meddling in northern Arakan State.

The only outside group involved in the process is the International Orgainzation for Migration (IOM) which is providing outreach and awareness workshops separate from the actual count. Speaking over the phone from Dhaka, Asif Muneer, head of the IOM in Bangladesh, admitted that there were several points that the government “hasn’t clarified yet.”

Muneer acknowledged the criticisms of the count, saying “We can certainly see both sides of this argument”, but went on the say that the program has the full confidence of the IOM, and emphasised that the census represents a “big step” towards giving aid to isolated communities. “This will have a lot of implications for the future.”

Many Rohingya Muslims, who are referred to as “Bengalis” by the Burmese government, fled across the border from northern Arakan State into Bangladesh in the late 1970s and early 1990s. An additional wave came after the anti-Muslim violence in June 2012.

According to the UNHCR, today Bangladesh is home to somewhere between 200,000 to 500,000 Rohingya refugees. Of that number, 32,000 are registered in two official refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar, the rest are undocumented.

While the UNHCR spearheaded several initiatives that allowed some Muslim refugees to voluntarily return to northern Arakan in the mid-1990s, they and other INGOs have been denied access to the undocumented Rohingya camps since 2005.

Speaking to DVB, Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, said this undocumented status leaves the Rohingya vulnerable to isolation and abuse. “Not only are they not able to access services, the greatest problem is they are forced to remain outside the criminal justice system.”

Ganguly speculated that the Bangladesh government has so far resisted international involvement because inviting UN participation will “draw more [Rohingya] to come”.

While she emphasised that the Bangladesh government should allow the international community “full access” to the undocumented Rohingya, she expressed sympathy with their position.

“The government says that the international community, instead of forcing Bangladesh to protect their rights, should press upon the Burmese authorities to end the discrimination and abuses that are forcing the Rohingya to flee.”

Preliminary surveys of undocumented communities ran from 13-17 February, the census itself will begin 1 April.

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