The transit camp in Myanmar’s Rakhine state stands ready to welcome back 150 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh every day. But on most days it lies completely empty, as members of the stateless minority dread returning to a place they were violently driven from by the military, and Myanmar makes little effort to reassure them things […]

New satellite imagery reveals the Burmese government has been bulldozing scores of depopulated Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said Friday. The United Nations Security Council, the UN and its agencies, and Burma’s donors should demand the Burmese government immediately halt the demolition of Rohingya villages, which should be treated as crime […]

TEHRAN  – Bangladesh has called for a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to discuss the human rights issue of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Recently, Bangladesh had sent a notice along with Saudi Arabia to the UNHRC in this regard, Dhaka Tribune has reported. Their notice has received support of 33 of […]

TEHRAN – Pope Francis on Friday used the word “Rohingya” for the first time during his current trip to Asia to refer to Muslim refugees who have fled in large numbers from violence in Myanmar. “The presence of God today is also called Rohingya,” he said in an improvised remark after meeting 16 refugees brought […]

A sea of worshippers crowded into a football field in Yangon Wednesday for a historic open-air mass by Pope Francis, whose visit to Myanmar has been framed so far by his public sidestepping of the Rohingya crisis. Ranks of nuns sang in Latin, accompanied by organ music, as Francis — making the first papal visit […]

TEHRAN – Aung San Suu Kyi has been formally stripped of the Freedom of the City of Oxford award over her response to the repression of her country’s Rohingya Muslims. Oxford city council voted unanimously to permanently remove the honor given to the de facto leader of Myanmar in 1997, and said it did not […]

TEHRAN – Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday for the return home of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled to the neighboring country to escape a Myanmar army crackdown. “We are ready to take them back as soon as possible after Bangladesh sends the forms back to us,” […]

TEHRAN  – Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday she hopes talks with Bangladesh this week will result in a memorandum of understanding on the “safe and voluntary return” of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh in the past three months. A counter-insurgency operation launched in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has driven […]

TEHRAN – The EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Monday hailed “extremely encouraging” talks with Aung San Suu Kyi on the Rohingya crisis, welcoming steps towards the repatriation of Muslims driven from Myanmar into Bangladesh. But her optimistic tone appeared sharply at odds with the realities on the ground in a crisis that has […]

TEHRAN – Myanmar’s security forces committed “widespread rape” against Rohingya women and girls as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the country’s Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report. A 15-year-old Rohingya girl told HRW that soldiers stripped her naked and dragged her from her home to a nearby tree […]