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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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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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Myanmar warns U.N. scolding could harm talks with Bangladesh on Rohingya crisis

A Rohingya refugee boy holding a chicken walks towards his temporary shelter after returning from the market in Balukhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

By Simon Cameron-Moore
November 8, 2017

YANGON -- Myanmar warned on Wednesday that a scolding delivered by the U.N. Security Council could “seriously harm” its talks with Bangladesh over returning home more than 600,000 people who fled to escape a Myanmar military crackdown.

In a statement on Monday, the Security Council had urged Myanmar to “ensure no further excessive use of military force” and expressed “grave concern over reports of human rights violations and abuses in Rakhine State”. 

Responding, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, whose less than two-year-old civilian administration shares power with the military, said the issues facing Myanmar and Bangladesh could only be resolved bilaterally, a point she says was ignored in the Security Council statement. 

“Furthermore, the (Security Council) Presidential Statement could potentially and seriously harm the bilateral negotiations between the two countries which have been proceeding smoothly and expeditiously,” Suu Kyi’s office said in a statement. 

In contrast, Bangladesh issued a statement saying Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali “appreciated the recent statement of the U.N. Security Council” during a meeting with a new resident coordinator of the United Nations in Bangladesh. 

The Myanmar statement said Ali had been invited to Myanmar on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17, but Bangladeshi officials told Reuters that the earliest the talks were likely to take place was during the minister’s visit for a regional meeting in the Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw on Nov. 20 and Nov. 21. 

The two sides have to agree a process for repatriation of Rohingya, with Bangladesh reluctant to fall back on the drill used for the return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar in the 1990s, as it wants a more lasting solution. 

A senior Bangladesh foreign ministry official said the United Nations should be involved in the process this time. 

“For years, we tried to resolve this issue bilaterally with Myanmar, but it was in vain,” the official told Reuters. “This problem is not going to be resolved anytime soon. The UN’s involvement in the process is a must.” 

A sour note was struck over the talks last week, as Bangladesh officials voiced outrage over Suu Kyi’s spokesman casting suspicion that Bangladesh might drag its feet over the repatriation process in order to first secure hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid money. 

Speaking at a conference for Commonwealth countries’ parliamentarians in Dhaka on Sunday, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for more international pressure on Myanmar. 

“I would request all of you to discuss Rohingya issue with utmost priority and exert pressure on the Myanmar government to stop the persecution of its citizens and take them back at the earliest,” she said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to visit Myanmar on Nov. 15, with moves afoot in Washington to table a bill calling for sanctions on Myanmar that specifically target the military and related business interests. 

In a nod to China, the Myanmar statement said it appreciated the stand taken by some members of the Security Council who upheld the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. 

To appease council veto powers Russia and China, Britain and France dropped a push for the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the situation and the 15-member body instead unanimously agreed on a formal statement. 

MORE BOATS REACH BANGLADESH

The United Nations has denounced the violence during the past 10 weeks as a classic example of ethnic cleansing to drive the Rohingya Muslims out of Buddhist majority Myanmar. 

Rejecting that accusation, the military says its counter-insurgency clearance operation was provoked by Rohingya militants’ synchronized attacks on 30 security posts in the northern part of Rakhine State on Aug. 25. 

Rohingya refugees say the military torched their villages, but the military say the arsonists were Rohingya militants. The refugees’ have given harrowing accounts of rape and murder. Myanmar says those accusations will have to be investigated. 

Meantime, the exodus from Rakhine continues. Several thousand Rohingya reached Bangladesh last week, many wading through shallows on the Naf river on the boundary between the two countries, and some making a short, but perilous sea crossing in small boats. 

On Wednesday, 52 Rohingya came ashore in Bangladesh on a raft lashed together from bamboo and plastic jerrycans, having been unable to find a boat to take them, Shariful Islam, a Bangladesh border guard official, told Reuters. 

On Tuesday, border guards told Reuters of at least two other boats with 68 Rohingya reaching Cox’s Bazar, where they would join the multitude sheltering in refugee camps. 

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who defied the junta that ruled Myanmar for decades, has been pilloried abroad for not speaking out more forcefully to rein in the military. 

Last week she visited Rakhine for the first time since the crisis erupted, meeting community leaders and seeing the efforts to deliver aid and return the region to some semblance of normality. 

She has spoken of plans for repatriation centers at which refugees will have to prove they once lived in Rakhine, before being allowed to return. But having been classed as stateless by former junta rulers, Rohingya could struggle to pass the test. 

Additional reporting by Shoon Naing in YANGON, Serajul Qadir and Ruma Paul in DHAKA, Ponir Hossain in COX'S BAZAR; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

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