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The Rohingya military group Arsa carried out deadly massacres and abductions of the Hindu community in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last year, a new report by Amnesty International has revealed. Testimony collected by Amnesty from dozens of witnesses and survivors of the attacks in Rakhine in August have detailed how up to 99 Hindu men, women and children were killed by Arsa militants armed with knives, swords and sticks. Only those who agreed to convert to Islam were spared. They rounded up all 69 Hindu men, women, and children, before executing 53 of them. Some who agreed to convert from Hinduism...

When five Myanmar journalists were sentenced to decadelong prison terms for reporting the alleged existence of a military-run chemical weapons factory in Myanmar a few years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi — then an opposition lawmaker — condemned the harsh punishments as “very excessive.” The journalists, from the now-defunct Unity publication, had been convicted for violating the nation’s Official Secrets Act — the same colonial-era law now being leveled against a pair of Reuters reporters who are facing a staggering 14 years behind bars each. […] Three and a half years on, the thinking of Suu Kyi, who now heads...

The Resolution calls on Myanmar to allow access for aid workers, ensure the return of all refugees and grant full citizenship rights to the Rohingya.The UN general assembly has urged Myanmar to end a military campaign against Muslim Rohingya and called for the appointment of a UN special envoy, despite opposition from China, Russia and some regional countries. A resolution put forward by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation was adopted by a vote of 122 to 10 with 24 abstentions.

Pope Francis on Saturday said he wept hearing the plight first-hand of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, adding that this meeting was a condition set for his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Rohingya meeting was a highly symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Muslim minority fleeing violence in Myanmar, and the pontiff told journalists on his plane flying back to Rome that the refugees cried as well. “I knew that I was going to meet the Rohingyas, but I did not know where and how; for me, it was one of the conditions of the trip,” he said. The usually...

The United States sharply escalated pressure on Burmese officials Wednesday, describing apparent state-backed violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority and their massive refu­gee flight as “ethnic cleansing.” The statement by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signals a greater push by the Trump administration to possibly impose targeted sanctions against Burmese authorities and others blamed for the humanitarian crisis. But it does not automatically trigger broader action against Burma, also known as Myanmar.

The Oxford college where Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi studied has taken her portrait down from public display. This follows international criticism over her role in her country’s humanitarian crisis. St. Hugh’s College at England’s Oxford University said on Thursday that it had decided to remove the painting of the Nobel laureate from its main entrance, the UK daily The Guardian reported. Her portrait was replaced with a Japanese painting, St. Hugh’s College communications manager Benjamin Jones said. “The college received the gift of a new painting earlier this month, which will be exhibited for a period. The painting...

Thousands of cows and goats grazed in abandoned fields and wandered through charred out Rohingya Muslim villages after a military crackdown sent nearly a half-million members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted religious minorities fleeing across the border. Now, more than a half-dozen witnesses told The Associated Press, soldiers and police are cashing in on the humanitarian catastrophe. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. In violence-wracked northern Rakhine state, where village after village has been burned to the ground, security forces and local administrators have been collecting the livestock and bringing it by foot, truck and sometimes boat...

Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are facing a catastrophic humanitarian situation, according to the UN secretary general. Antonio Guterres said alleged attacks by security forces on Rohingya villagers were completely unacceptable. The army says it is fighting militants and denies targeting civilians. Later the UN Security Council called for urgent steps to end the violence. Some 379,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since violence began last month. Whole villages have burned down. The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority Rakhine state, have long experienced persecution in Myanmar, which says they are illegal immigrants. They have lived in Myanmar, also...

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has canceled plans to attend the U.N. General Assembly, with her country drawing international criticism for violence that has driven at least 370,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims from the country in less than three weeks. […] Attacks by an insurgent Rohingya group on police outposts Aug. 25 have set off a wave of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, with hundreds dead and thousands of homes burned — mostly Rohingya in both cases. …

Rohingya rebels, whose attack on Burma security forces last month triggered military reprisals, have declared a month-long truce as refugees continue to flood across the border into Bangladesh — and scant basic resources, hunger and illness. The band of Muslim insurgents calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army issued the truce statement on its Twitter account and urged Burma’s government to reciprocate in order to assist all victims regardless of their background. The rebels, who say they are fighting to protect their minority members against government-sponsored persecution, launched their first known attacks last October and again on August 25. According...

Is it just me? What does "searching for motives" mean? As if Islamist like this Abdul Razak didn't clarify himself well enough. An Ohio State University student posted a rant shortly before he plowed a car into a campus crowd and stabbed people with a butcher knife in an ambush that ended when a police officer shot him dead, a law enforcement official said. Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, wrote on what appears to be his Facebook page that he had reached a "boiling point," made a reference to "lone wolf attacks" and cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.Stop interfering with...

While primarily a Buddhist country, Burma is one nation where Christians are severely persecuted for the last 60 years. Christians and missionaries are routinely arrested, tortured, and killed over there. The persecution is so bad that the last movie in the Rambo series with Syvester Stallone was about him helping persecuted Christian minorities and captured American missionaries by the Burmese government, in which in the final end scene he with the Christian missionaries and fellow Burmese Christians take up arms against the Burmese military and wipe them out. In a recent story out of Burma, two Christian pastors have been...

The ship docked on the outskirts of the commercial hub, Yangon, where it was due to unload 500 tonnes of food and emergency supplies, with the rest of its 2,200 ton cargo bound for southeast Bangladesh. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh in the past four months from a security force crackdown. The aid shipment from mostly Muslim Malaysia has stirred opposition in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where many see the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Malaysia has been an outspoken critic of Myanmar over the crisis in Rakhine state, which erupted after nine policemen were killed in...

A story that has not received much attention, is the growing hostility towards Muslims by Buddhists in Thailand and Burma. After the killing of 20 Buddhist monks by Muslims, a leading Thai Buddhist monk called for Buddhists to defend themselves against Muslims http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/prominent-buddhist-monk/2497804.html

Emails released by the State Department on Friday show that Hillary Clintons longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reached out to her on behalf of a former United Kingdom diplomat who was interested in setting up secret channels between insurgents and governments. Clinton was receptive to the idea which came via Blumenthal from Jonathan Powell, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blairs chief of staff. (Quote) Hillary, Jonathan Powell has launched a new NGO that has already initiated some very interesting work below the radar, (Unquote) Blumenthal wrote in the March 18, 2012 email. (Quote)Sid We are trying to replicate what we did...

After a productive trip abroad, President Barack Obama headed home Sunday on a collision course with Republicans on immigration and an oil pipeline project, showdowns that threaten prospects for cooperation over his remaining two years in office. Given his faltering political support in the U.S. and his party's recent election losses, his trip to China, Myanmar and Australia appeared to offer respite. The president, who was due to arrive in Washington late Sunday, basked in policy breakthroughs with China and warm welcomes in Myanmar and Australia. "I intend to build on that momentum when I return home," Obama said at...

Myanmar's ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu has called the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Burma a "whore" during a public address in Yangon. The leader of the controversial 969 nationalist movement hit back at Yanghee Lee for an earlier comment in defence of the stateless Rohingya Muslims, who are persecuted in the country's western Rakhine state. "We have already made public our Race Protection Law, but without even studying it, this bitch [kaungma in Burmese] keeps on complaining about how it is against human rights!" Wirathu shouted. "Can this whore really be from a respectable family background?" he asked...

<p>Indonesian police arrested a third Islamic State-linked militant Sunday accused of plotting to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, as anger grows at a violent military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.</p> <p>The militants -- all from a domestic cell affiliated with the Syria-based jihadist group -- had amassed enough explosives to create bombs more powerful than those used in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, police say.</p>

The European Parliament on Thursday (7 July) urged Myanmar to end what it termed “brutal repression” and “systematic persecution” against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi insisted in May that her new government was determined to address deep hatreds in western Rakhine State, where tens of thousands of Rohingya are confined to squalid displacement camps after waves of deadly unrest with local Buddhists in 2012. But Kyi and her administration have been widely criticized for not speaking up sufficiently for the group in a country where nationalists even refuse to use the term “Rohingya,” which...

He's been described as the "Buddhist Bin Laden," but Ashin Wirathu thinks he has more in common with the world's most famous fictional spy. "James Bond is a nationalist," the cherub-faced monk said in a recent interview. Flashing a smile, he offered a vague recollection of a movie in which 007, in order to extract information from a woman, took her to bed. "While he did not take much pleasure in the act," Wirathu said, "he did it for his country." His questionable reading of Bond aside, the firebrand Wirathu firmly says he is defending Myanmar against the people he...