Asia should stay focused on unsolved migrant dilemmas
Arakan News Agency People are on the move across Southeast Asia, fleeing misery and violence. Just as Europe has become a favored destination for the hundreds of thousands fleeing war-torn Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, so Muslim minorities from the eastern and western fringes of Southeast Asia are finding their way to the region’s more prosperous […]
Thailand seizes more than $1.6 million from traffickers
Arakan News Agency Announcement of record seizure comes as junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha prepares to speak at United Nations general assembly in New York… Thailand’s Anti-Money Laundering Office (AMLO) says it seized a record 60 million baht ($1.6 million) in assets from a trafficking network in September as it sought to clamp down on […]
Displaced Rohingya rocked by devastating floods
Arakan News Agency Sittwe, Myanmar – Amid the mud and drizzle, Khin Maung Myint surveyed the scene from his single-room bamboo hut. With floodwaters reaching knee height in places, he worried about the damage inflicted on his ramshackle home by monsoonal storms. The father-of-six, who also goes by the religious name Elias, lives in the […]
Myanmar Buddhists and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims
Arakan News Agency Rabat – A few months ago, I wrote a note on the savagery with which minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are treated at the hands of their countrymen and countrywomen. What I did not address at the time was the manipulation of the Buddhist religious institution and its monks as part of […]
Myanmar must end its discrimination against minority Rohingya Muslims
Arakan News Agency Thailand has set the right course to helping end the plight of Rohingya Muslims by charging dozens of people, an army general and officials among them, for human trafficking. Southeast Asian nations have to ensure a policy of zero tolerance towards smugglers and those who profit from them by bringing them to […]
Amnesty International says more Myanmar prisoners of conscience remain behind bars
Arakan News Agency The release of at least 11 prisoners of conscience in a mass prisoner amnesty in Myanmar Thursday is a step in the right direction, but authorities must immediately clear the country’s jails of the scores of peaceful activists who still remain behind bars, Amnesty International said. The Myanmar authorities released 6,966 people […]
Burma’s path to democracy is being wrecked by lethal identity politics
Arakan News Agency The very word “Burma” was once shorthand for a brutal military dictatorship, but things have now changed dramatically. Burma (or Myanmar) has come to be viewed as a country firmly committed to the establishment of a new reality, founded upon respect for human rights and the rule of law. Behind this changing […]
BREAKING: Cyclone warning issued in western Burma
Arakan News Agency Cyclone Komen is expected to cross Chittagong, Bangladesh, into northwestern Burma on Thursday evening, bringing with it wind speeds of up to 80 miles per hour and torrential rain.… After suffering severe flooding and landslides across Burma earlier in the week, the Meteorology and Hydrology Department on 30 July issued a warning […]
Warning of a conspiracy to deprive Rohingya of citizenship
Arakan News Agency Congress chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Union (ARU) Dr. Taher Mohammad Siraj, which described the legal conspiracies by the Government of Myanmar to consider the Rohingya Muslims of outsiders in the country by granting them national identity cards instead of green. Siraj said in a statement to the Arakan news agency that […]
Barricaded In, Myanmar’s Rohingya Struggle To Survive In Ghettos And Camps
Arakan News Agency Habibullah is an ethnic Rohingya Muslim. He lives with his family in a wooden house in Sittwe, the capital of western Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Like all Rohingya, he is officially considered stateless. The 46-year-old father is luckier than many. He did not join the thousands of Rohingya fleeing abroad in rickety boats […]
Rohingya Muslims welcome Angelina Julie ‘s visit to Myanmar
Arakan News Agency Islamabad / Makkah (July 30, 2015): Rohingya Muslims have welcomed the visit of renowned Hollywood celebrity and U.N. Refugee Agency’s Special Envoy, Angelina Jolie, who arrived in Myanmar for four-day visit to understand the country’s situation, hoping that the visit would have positive impacts to end the ongoing humanitarian crises there.… In […]
Jolie in Myanmar, to visit displaced Rohingyas
Arakan News Agency Angelina Jolie has arrived in Myanmar for her first visit to the country. A press release issued on 29 July, said Jolie will carry out engagements in her capacity as Co-Founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, and as UNHCR Special Envoy will carry out field visits to displaced people, including Rohingyas, […]
Doctors were pulled out from the health centers for Rohingya
Arakan News Agency Resulting in the withdrawal of doctors in the state of Arakan by local government in displaced Rohingya camps in the city of Akyab to aggravate the health situation of Rohingya and risk them of diseases outbreaks and epidemics.… Observers have warned of poor sanitary conditions to a serious degree, if the doctors […]