Articles by Zarni

We found 279 results.

Where Is the US Evil Empire Heading Now?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Nov 2024

7 Nov 2024 – I keep the faith. This Evil Empire too has its own expiry date. Take the long view, if you feel dejected by the Second Coming of Trump. Genocide Joe and thick-headed, unprincipled Kamala Harris, who went to the same elementary school as my daughter, are also not good for humanity. Ask the Palestinians. 

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Myanmar Looks more Like ASEAN’s Syria Than a Democracy in Waiting
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2024

6 Nov 2024 – Myanmar’s armed conflicts are no longer a binary tale of Good vs. Evil. The Tatmadaw remains the largest armed organization and commits atrocities. The anti-junta adversaries fighting “the Common Enemy” also perpetrate atrocities against localized “enemy” ethnic populations.

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Hoax?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2024

31 Oct 2024

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2024 Nobel Peace Winner Has Compared Hiroshima-Nagasaki to Gaza–We Must Listen to Him
Maung Zarni | The Wire – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Oct 2024

24 Oct 2024 – The now elderly child survivor of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima and his Hiroshima-Gaza parallel must be taken seriously. His words must be seized by the world of conscience to end Israel’s mass extermination in Gaza.

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The Death of Old Burma or Myanmar as a Burmese Nation-State and the Birth of ASEAN’s Syria
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Oct 2024

19 Oct 2024 – Myanmar’s post-independence history since 1948 is a history of conflicts among different ethnic and ideological groupings. Ethnic majority Bama or Burmese political elite, civilian and military, with colonial mindset towards the others, bear the greatest share of responsibility.

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“Israel Cannot Build Peace on Genocide”–Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
Maung Zarni interviews Mairead Maguire | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Oct 2024

Mairead Maguire (80) has a message for Israel and western leaders who finance, arm and protect the worst Zionist government in Israel’s history, from its founding in May 1948.

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Palestinians’ Liberation Struggle Needs Solidarity: Cambodians Respond with Love & Art
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Oct 2024

5 Oct 2024 – “Cambodians have spoken against the hypocrisy of Western governments preaching human rights, international law and the rule-based world order while condoning, aiding and abetting genocide in Cambodia in 1975-1979 and again today in Palestine.”

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We Have a Moral Obligation to Speak Out against Genocide
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Oct 2024

30 Sep 2024 – Dialogue with Prof. Alex Hinton, a leading anthropologist of genocides at Rutgers Univ.

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Standing at Gaza Border Felt like Visiting Auschwitz: Burmese Genocide Scholar Maung Zarni
Amy Goodman interviews Maung Zarni | Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Sep 2024

19 Sep 2024 – TRANSCEND member Burmese scholar, dissident, and human rights activist Maung Zarni discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses.

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Beyond Palestine, International Law and White Supremacy: A Personal Reflection
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Sep 2024

12 Sep 2024 – Even if the issue is organically tied to you, if you offer a perspective that challenges the White Supremacist World’s prevailing analyses and views, you would very likely find yourself swimming against the currents.

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Israel Has Built a Vast Ecosystem of Genocidal Practices in Occupied Palestine
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Sep 2024

8 Sep 2024 – Dr Maung Zarni recently travelled to the Occupied Palestine and the occupying Israel with a US delegation of anti-Zionist Rabbis – Rabbis for Ceasefire – and spent nine intense days witnessing the institutionalized textbook Lemkinian genocide. — “This is beyond what the Nazis embodied. I’ve never seen such sadistic violence.”

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Blinken Marks Anniversary of Rohingya Genocide Even as US Finances Genocide of Palestinians
Maung Zarni | The Wire – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2024

27 Aug 2024 – The US secretary of state’s genocide memorial tweet is a Zombie-esque, self-unaware act of supreme hypocrisy.

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Reading Chinese FM Wang Yi’s Meetings with Myanmar Military Leaders
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Aug 2024

15 Aug 2024 – Despite Wang Yi’s carefully worded diplomatic message designed to convey China-Myanmar bilateral relations as “friendship with all Myanmar peoples, the political significance of his official and public meetings for the embattled military cannot be overstated.

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The Assassination of Aung San in 1947 also Killed the Federalist Democratic Myanmar
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Aug 2024

30 Jul 2024 – Aung San and his post-World War II colleagues hammered out the twin framework for the nature of the post-colonial political state, namely the federalist power-sharing arrangement, which recognized the right of self-determination of ethnic communities, and an inclusive citizenship framework.

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Myanmar’s Rohingya People: A Documented History, Identity and Presence
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Jun 2024

8 Jun 2024 – While there are multiple inter-communal tensions and attacks among Myanmar’s ethnic communities, there is no other case where a group’s ancestral history and identity have been singled out for sustained and vicious assault in the same way Rohingya people have been.

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Renowned Burmese Genocide Scholar & Rights Activist Sounds Rohingya Genocide Warning on BBC
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2024

Dr Maung Zarni (member of TRANSCEND and Nobel Peace Prize nominee) told the BBC World Service Newsday on 22 May 2024 that the genocidal process is unfolding again in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, albeit the principal perpetrators are ultra-nationalist Arakan Army of ethnic Rakhins.

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Myanmar: Probability of Return to Peace and Restoration of Human Rights
Taing Rinith interviews Maung Zarni | Khmer Times - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2024

23 May 2024 – Maung Zarni, Myanmar peace activist and 2024 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, talks about peace and human rights.

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Palestinians as “Human Dust”: Israel’s Genocide and Its Anglo-American Imperialist Patrons
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 May 2024

9 May 2024 – Israel Uses the Holocaust as a Cover for its Ongoing Genocide in Gaza – Israel has institutionalized a national policy of ethnic cleansing of the native people of Palestine while progressively depopulating the land with people to establish the Jewish majority state, from its very inception in 1948.

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What Choice Do the Rohingya Have?
Maung Zarni | Democratic Voice of Burma – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 May 2024

6 May 2024 – Who will protect the Rohingya in Myanmar? This is becoming an urgent question. And yet there are no easy answers.  The latest tactic by the Myanmar military is the forceful conscription of Rohingya males to fight against the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army.

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Beyond Palestine: A Burmese Activist Salutes Anti-Genocide US Campus Protestors
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 May 2024

5 May 2024 – US students’ courageous and passionate activism is inspiring their peers in other institutions of higher learning in places as diverse as Waseda University in Tokyo, the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, the Sorbonne and Sciences Po in Paris, and Britain’s universities at Warwick and Bristol.

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Arakan Army Leadership Displays Deep-Seated Genocidal Racism Towards Rohingya in Myanmar
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2024

2 Apr 2024 – The extreme racism that Rakhine nationalists display–-their sense of racial and religious superiority vis-à-vis Rakhine state’s largest minority population of Rohingya Muslims, their dogged attempts to deny and destroy Rohingya identity–appears to be their Achilles’ heel.

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On St Patrick’s Day, Mairead Maguire Led Public Condemnation of the Irish American President Joe Biden’s Genocidal Role in Gaza
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Mar 2024

17 Mar 2024 – Quoting St Patrick of the 3rd Century AD who preached, “in Christ, there is no killing”, the TRANSCEND Member, Northern Irish Nobel Peace Laureate, peace activist, and co-founder of the Peace People grassroots movement, delivered a scathing indictment of non-stop killings over centuries by the “allegedly Christian” West.

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A Personal Tribute to Johan Galtung (24 Oct 1930 – 17 Feb 2024): The Man for Just Peace
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Mar 2024

“USA? I love the Republic, but I hate the Empire.” Galtung made unparalleled intellectual and practical contributions to the advancement of our understanding of peace, its social objectives and the conditions for peace, in terms of our global understanding of such an elusive goal.

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Rohingya, the Palestinians of Southeast Asia: A Forgotten Genocide
Maung Zarni | VOICESEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Mar 2024

27 Feb 2024 – A talk with Maung Zarni, a scholar of genocide who explains the context in which Rohingya people are so marginalised and vulnerable that they have no choice but to seek asylum in neighboring countries. How can solidarity among people of the world advocate for the human rights of victims of genocide, people fleeing political persecution, conflicts, and other human rights violations?

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Burma Undergoes Quasi-Balkanization and the Embattled Junta Resorts to Mass Conscription
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Feb 2024

23 Feb 2024 – No Burmese in their right minds have bought into the spin “service to the nation” from the junta leadership. Reportedly, young men and women are frantically finding ways to exit the country.

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“Depopulating” Palestine: Israel Through the Bifocal Lens of Hitler and Lemkin
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jan 2024

20 Jan 2024 – As a human rights campaigner and a student of genocides, in my attempts to understand Israel’s physical destruction of Gaza in particular, and its foundational Zionist policies in Palestine, I find most helpful to turn to Raphael Lemkin’s grounded and multi-faceted conception of genocide and Hitler’s “blood-based” ideas of “race-state” and racialized land.

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Israel Defends Itself at the International Court of Justice: From Genocide Victims to Perpetrators
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jan 2024

11 Jan 2024 – Israel’s legal team, a member of which is a Holocaust survivor and the country’s ex-Attorney General, will likely frontload the politico-legal mantra of Israel’s right to “self-defence”.

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Moral and Strategic Consequences of S. Africa’s Case against Israel at the World’s Court
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jan 2024

5 Jan 2024 – The post-apartheid Republic of South Africa filing a genocide case against Israel is a significant act pregnant with positive moral consequences while handing the Palestinian liberation struggle an unprecedented strategic weapon.

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Dr Mahathir on Euro-North American Imperialist Crimes and the Need for Cooperation against Climate Change
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2023

9 Dec 2023 – Former two-time Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad (98) shared his no-hold-barred reflections on the sordid state of the world, still in the grip of the Euro-North American powers.

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“One Holocaust Does NOT Justify Another”: Britain’s National March for Palestine and the World’s Moral Majority
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Nov 2023

Saturday’s [11 Nov 2023] march that drew 300.000 Britons is a clear testament to the global consensus moral position among hundreds of millions of people around the world.

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ASEAN and Its 50 Years of Failure in Ending Wars and Genocides
Maung Zarni | Prothom Alo – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Jul 2023

16 Jul 2023 – The gulf between the impact of ASEAN in Myanmar affairs and the spins – “centrality” “cohesion” “inclusive dialogue” blah blah blah – is jaw dropping.

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My Childhood Connection with Nalanda and Its Uncompromising Tradition of Intellectual Freedom
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Mar 2023

14 Mar 2023 – Buddhist intellectual tradition institutionalized Freedom of Inquiry and Debate 2,600 years ago. Nalanda was an institutional embodiment of this principle… The Pursuit of Knowledge and Human Understanding based on ‘Reason’ and what is termed ‘empiricism’ took place outside the Greco-Romanic World, typically presumed to be the philosophical cradle of Western Civilization and the European Enlightenment.

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The Moral and Intellectual Disconnect between the Memories of Shoah and Today’s Jewish State
Maung Zarni | Islamic Renaissance Front – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Feb 2023

6 Feb 2023 – Every time I hear about the Shoah or the Nazi genocide of the Jews, I can’t help but make a sad and rage-filled link between it and the present day Israel – the officially Jewish State with echoes of the ideology that served as the foundation of Nazi Germany.

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Western Myanmar as a Genocide Triangle
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Sep 2022

The Triangle:
– Myanmar’s Military-State;
– Separatist Rakhine Nationalists;
– Rohingya Genocide Victims.
– The erasure of a Genocide Convention-protected identity is a crucial part of any genocidal process. The Arakan Army is engaged in this process.

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Extend the Spirit of Partisans to Fight New Fascisms: Homophobia, Discrimination, Exclusion and Racism
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2022

9 May is officially the Europe or Victory Day, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies–-USSR, USA, France and UK–-in 1945. For the first time since the ethnic cleanings in 1992-95, Bosnian human rights activists explore the possibility of international solidarity networks, linking their local activism with those from other parts of the world.

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Democracy in France 2022: Conversation with Sorbonne Constitutional Scholar and Leftist Intellectual Marie Gren
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2022

29 Apr 2022 – In the fascinating 60-minutes discussion, Professor Gren touched on various aspects of contemporary democracy in France, ranging from the sordid state of the Left and its “caviar socialists” and the increasing acceptability and mainstreaming of Far Right ideologies which Le Pen personifies, to the economic hardships that inflict immense pains on the great majority of the French public.

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Myanmar Mothers’ Cries Do Not Bode Well for the Nation’s Future
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2022

19 Apr 2022 – The musician of resistance Mun Awng reminded the viewers, “The revolution must prevail, against all odds.” Tain Sway was seen nodding her head profusely when Mun Awng spelled out the pervasive sentiment – that “it is better to die fighting for the cause than living under the boot, again”.

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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine through My Burmese Eyes
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Mar 2022

13 Mar 2022 – None of the leading liberal democracies of the West really honours the principles they loudly espouse such as nonviolence, popular and state sovereignty, human rights, or democracy, nor do they support democratic resistance, armed or nonviolent, unless such support serves their hidden interests, whether commercial or geostrategic.

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Genocide: Why We Let It Happen
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Feb 2022

5 Feb 2022 – As a detour, judicial demand for PROOF, beyond reasonable doubt, THE INTENT is one of the stupidest anti-THOUGHT and anti-INTELLECTUAL elements in the rich collection of legal and other literature. This question is raised – and answered – typically by lawyers and legally minded individuals. 

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ICJ Must Not Allow Myanmar’s Coup Regime to Leverage Genocide Hearings as a Source of Legitimacy
Maung Zarni | Anadolu News Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jan 2022

20 Jan 2022 – Court’s failure to deal head-on with highly contested issue of legitimacy of regime will hamper efforts of other int’l state actors to deny mass-murderous military international acceptance, legitimacy.

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A Myanmar’s Military That Burns Civilians Alive Ought to Be Designated as Terrorist
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Dec 2021

9 Dec 2021 – While governments and human rights organizations were occupied with the farce of the coup junta’s trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and the expected guilty verdict on 6 December 2021, the junta’s back-to-back acts of terrorism have not been reported in the ways they deserve nor have they received worldwide scrutiny and condemnation.

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After Afghanistan, Time to Review and Reset ASEAN & International Policies towards Myanmar
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Nov 2021

27 Oct 2021 – The vicious dialectic of “failed international policies AND failed Myanmar state”, will need to be placed at the right, left and centre of the new international policy debates on Myanmar. Repeating the same strategy of dangling the sweet discourse of mediation before the intransigent mass-murderous generals of Myanmar without the serious stick of international accountability will simply not do.

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The International Crisis Group Report on Burma/Myanmar–An Analysis
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Oct 2021

22 Oct 2021 – Over the nearly 20 years, I have generally viewed ICG’s reports as little more than polished, but low quality, slanted analyses of Myanmar affairs, and have written extensively and critically on ICG’s policy briefs. However, 20 Oct 2021 ICG policy brief is an empirically grounded prognosis – the Deadly Stalemate in Post-Coup Myanmar.

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US and UK Usurp Rohingya Voices while (Miss)Framing Myanmar Genocide as “Ethnic Cleansing,” Slobodan Milošević’s Euphemism
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Aug 2021

28 Aug 2021 – It’s one thing for the United States and its British poodle to abandon dissidents worldwide during their hours of needs, yet it is a moral low for the British and American officials and leaders to coordinate acts of genocidal denial as they have done with their official statements on the 4th anniversary of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Rakhine State.

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Transnational Activism vs White Saviourism in Myanmar Affairs
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Aug 2021

18 Aug 2021 – As a Burmese who has been angry – very angry – for decades over numerous forms and countless instances of oppression and injustices in Myanmar, and emphatically, around the world, I am less concerned about the morally corrupt desire of revenge and vengeance of the oppressed towards their oppressor or the System than the enveloping White Saviourism with its corrupting coloniality.

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Defining Refugees in the Era of Climate Displacement
Dewi Zarni | BIMI at UC Berkeley - TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Aug 2021

27 Jul 2021 – July 28th marks the 70th anniversary of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. This historic document, signed by 149 nation-states, defines refugees as those with a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to their country of origin on the basis of their “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” It also outlines the rights afforded to refugees.

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The End of the World (as we know it)
Dewi Zarni | Medium - TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Jul 2021

In many ways, depression is a natural response to the circumstances. My childhood was fundamentally shaped by protests, school projects on global warming, and dinnertime conversations about rising sea levels. Our generation is the first to grow up at a time when the existence of climate change is no longer the subject of debate. We are also the last with any chance of mitigating its effects.

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Myanmar Coup Regime’s Handling of COVID-19: Is It Genocidal?
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jul 2021

15 Jul 2021 – It is conceivable that the Myanmar terrorist regime of the SAC may be genocidally minded in its approach in tackling COVID-19 within the military and its sub-social system, while deliberately putting at risk the lives of millions of anti-military Burmese of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.

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Myanmar’s Twin Curse of Murderous Military and Cultist Opposition
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jul 2021

29 Jun 2021 – The last few days saw heated debates and name-calling between national minority activists who are completely fed up with the ethnic majoritarian colonial mentality, and the political practices of majoritarian democrats who treat Aung San Suu Kyi’s words like Holy Scripture. This is her lasting gift to Myanmar and her dark legacy from which society will reel for decades.

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Myanmar Anti-Coup Opposition’s Happy Birthday Parties for Aung San Suu Kyi Do Not Augur Well for the Country’s Future
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Jun 2021

24 Jun 2021 – The mass hysteria around Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday is the clearest indication of deeply entrenched cultist neo-totalitarian thoughts, mental habits and political behaviour among Ms Suu Kyi’s populist base. It confirms how indifferent this base is to the democratic ethos, international law, and normative principles of human rights.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 3)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Jun 2021

17 Jun 2021 – Those of us Burmese who have made overthrowing our country’s well-entrenched military dictatorship, our business – or Doe-Ayay, as we say in Burma in specific reference to protests against any Oppressive Order – do not look to the UN or the EU, let alone ASEAN, for help.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 1)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Jun 2021

9 Jun 2021 – The Burmese military regime remained, as intransigent towards any compromise with the democratic opposition, as it was repressive, towards Burmese dissidents.

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Burma: Engaging with State Power without Losing Principles or Head (Part 2)
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Jun 2021

11 Jun 2021 – In those years, the Burma policy world was caught in the emerging Orwellian duality of ‘Sanctions Bad, Engagement Good’ of international debates which took place with respective proponents talking past one another, pursuing their own concealed interests.

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The Real Crimes of Myanmar’s Suu Kyi and the Farce of Her Trial
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 May 2021

28 May 2021 – Suu Kyi Being Charged under Same Draconian Law She Defended while in Power – There is absolutely no question about the farcical nature of this trial of the deposed Myanmar state counselor by the regime that has committed — and continues to commit — all the gravest crimes in international law.

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Purge Genocide Culprits from Democratic Leadership: Myanmar
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 May 2021

8 May 2021 – Hesitating to take stand against Rohingya genocide is costing $1B to National Unity Government and blocks its global recognition.

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တရက်ဆိုတာမြန်မာပြည်သူတွေရဲ့အသက်ပါ A Typical Day in the Life of People in Myanmar under Terrorist Siege
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Apr 2021

13 Apr 2021 – A thoughtful but painful comment on the situation in Myanmar written by an anonymous Burmese Facebook user. English Translation by Maung Zarni

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“Federal Army for Federal Democracy”: The Dawn of Myanmar’s New Politics
Maung Zarni | FORSEA Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Apr 2021

9 Apr 2021 – Myanmar’s peoples of all ethnic backgrounds are undergoing a revolutionary process. Ms Suu Kyi may have to be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice: give up her centre stage in order that a revolution can grow and succeed in its revolutionary mission: a federal army and federal democracy. Otherwise, the pursuit of federalism in Myanmar will continue to be the Achilles’ heel for all democrats and federalists, the majority and minorities.

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Analysis–Burma/Myanmar Today
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Apr 2021

24 Mar 2021 – States do not go to war to save humans – only for oil, trade dispute, settling ethnic scores, boundary disputes. We have learned our bitter lessons. We have no interest in Peace Industry, or INGO business or research this or research that crowd. The beauty amidst all these ugly scenarios of Burma is at least the People woke up – that the Wretched of the Earth must band together for their own liberation. No free lunches in international politics. No Messiahs on the horizon.

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Revolutions and Revolutionary Acts
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

23 Mar 2021 – I do not have the moral or intellectual option of telling those on the ground who risk their lives and livelihoods that their resistance is futile. Nor do I share the view that resistance is futile or that another world is not possible. History does not change through normal politics. What Myanmar and her people are undergoing is nothing less than a textbook example of Revolution.

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The Myanmar Military Is Destroying Its Public Image–Politics Won’t Be the Same
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

26 Mar 2021 -The images from the streets of Myanmar cities tell a brutal story. The sense of rage is palpable. Hundreds of thousands of social media comments and public speeches, group posts, communal discussions and personal conversations attest to the deepening popular anger at the armed forces. It has become customary to refer to the troops as “terrorists” or even as “dogs of war,” an especially harsh term in Myanmar-language discourse.

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Myanmar’s Once Nationalist Military Has Just Lost the Nation
Maung Zarni | Politics Today – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Mar 2021

15 Mar 2021 – Whatever the outcome of the violent confrontation between civil society and the military will be, one thing is certain: the Burmese military has lost the nation irretrievably.

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China-backed Junta’s Murder and Violence Aggravates Myanmar Economy
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Mar 2021

16 Mar 2021 – While the ongoing confrontation between Myanmar society and the criminal junta negatively impacts Myanmar’s economy, China is also responsible. Its short-sighted, human-rights-indifferent approach to pursuing its interests, is further aggravating the economic and political conditions with potentially dire consequences for all.

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60 Years of Int’l Impunity for Myanmar Military’s Mass Murder
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency - TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

11 Mar 2021 – Until Feb. 1 Coup, West and Rest Were Coasting Bogus Narrative of ‘Fragile Democratic Transition’ with Suu Kyi at Its Helm

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We Should Call the Myanmar Coup Regime a Terrorist Group
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

8 Mar 2021 – Myanmar today has become a textbook example of failed and collapsed state with the national armed forces, having morphed into gangs of heavily armed terrorists, still commanding the air force and navy. Myanmar’s military regime should no longer be treated as a state actor. They are terrorists, no less.

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Nine Things That Need to Happen for New Inclusive Myanmar
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Mar 2021

23 Feb 2021 – Yesterday, millions of Myanmar’s people took to the streets in open defiance of the officially televised threats of a brutal crackdown by the Tatmadaw or military usurpers who thwarted their democratic aspirations with a pre-dawn coup of 1 Feb. Myanmar undergoing societally revolutionary moment with emerging new popular consciousness.

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Designate Myanmar Coup Group as Terrorists
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Feb 2021

21 Feb 2021 – Concerned about another wave bloodbath by Myanmar Tatmadaw or military. They issued a chilling warning to the public, that the coup leaders are going to use lethal force should the protesters take to the streets tomorrow (22 Feb in Myanmar), along with “shoot to kill”, needless to say. Protesters have an overwhelming support of the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement. It is all Déjà vu:1962, 1975, 1988, 2007, and now 2021.

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A Coup in Burma: Did Military Seize Power to Avoid ICC Prosecution for Rohingya Genocide?
Amy Goodman and Maung Zarni | Democracy NOW! - TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2021

3 Feb 2021 – We speak with Maung Zarni, a Burmese dissident, about the military coup underway in Burma as de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been arrested. The coup unfolded hours before lawmakers were to take their seats in the opening of parliament. “The military decided that they could no longer play this democracy game with Aung San Suu Kyi,” says Zarni.

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Myanmar Military and Its Coup
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Feb 2021

1 Feb 2021 – Myanmar’s military staged a coup, detaining the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint early today, just hours before the scheduled start of the first session of the new parliament. With tanks, armored vehicles on streets, military sends message to public: ‘we are still here as arbiters of democracy’.

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Leading UN Member-States Fail to End Rohingya Abuse
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2021

20 Jan 2021 – With an air of renewed optimism, Bangladesh side has widely reported on the Beijing-brokered meeting yesterday to resuscitate the repatriation process of 1 million Rohingya. However, the China-brokered tripartite meeting will bring no solution for either Bangladesh or Rohingya refugees.

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What is Activism?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2021

What is activism?
For 30 years, I have asked myself that perennial question.
Now that a New Year has dawned, I must ask and answer it, again.
Activism is Conscience, triggered by acute pain,
The pain of witnessing and living the state of the troubled world.

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Leading Scholars’ Consensus Was Clear: Neither ICJ nor ICC on Their Own Will Deliver Rohingyas from Hell
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2020

On 15 December 2020, a group of leading scholars and experts from Canada, USA, and Ireland involved in the global campaign to end Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingyas held a legal roundtable, jointly organised by the Free Rohingya Coalition and FORSEA.

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Myanmar’s Perennial Ceasefire Talks
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Dec 2020

4 Dec 2020 – Myanmar is witnessing world’s longest ‘peace talks’ and continuation of longest-running ethnic wars.

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Putting Myanmar Election Results in Perspective
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Nov 2020

19 Nov 2020 – Election cycles will neither reverse colonial treatment of non-Burmese population, nor end genocide against Rohingya.

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Votes Have Changed Little in Myanmar since Suu Kyi Assumed State Counsellorship 5 Years Ago
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2020

13 Nov 2020 – Myanmar’s second experiment with the parliamentary democracy is irredeemably flawed: The constitutional framework in which democratic process is located is categorically anti-democratic.

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Myanmar’s Colonial Policies and Crimes Trigger Renewed Liberation Struggles
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Oct 2020

9 Oct 2020 – Lack of action from UN and world community encourages Myanmar to commit atrocities against ethnic communities. The decades of failures by the UN and external actors will force the oppressed minorities to resort to armed liberation struggles.

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Arakan Resistance Assist Rohingya in Their Common Quest for Int’l Accountability
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2020

9 Sep 2020 – Arakan Army/ULA emerging as an unseemly ally and collaborator of Rohingya victims seeking justice and a peaceful homeland.

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Time to Add Myanmar’s Most Influential Genocidal Monk Sitagu to ICC List
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2020

5 Aug 2020 – As the ICC proceeds with its full investigation, it needs to look into the instrumental role of Sitagu Sayadaw, Myanmar’s most influential Saffron-robed hate preacher, in the genocidal and other crimes against predominantly Muslim Rohingya. He offered scriptural justifications for ‘killing millions of non-Buddhists’.

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Revolutions, Revolutionaries, and Me the Facebook Ninja
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2020

15 Jul 2020 – At a tender age, I was turned on by tales of subversion of repressive political authority or defiance of unjust laws and social order. Retroactively, I hold my beloved mother who impressed upon me that revolutions and revolutionaries, not to mention political defiance and civil disobedience, are noble, worthy of giving up one’s life, career, property, family and all the rest.

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Myanmar’s Double Contagion: The COVID-19 and the Viral Discourse of Islamophobia
Maung Zarni | FORSEA - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

15 Apr 2020 – Over the last 8 years, another type of virus, namely Islamophobia, has effectively spread across all segments of Burmese society, with devastating impact on Muslim communities and, more acutely, the community of Rohingyas, numbering 2 million in total.

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Visiting Auschwitz the Day Poland Locked Itself Down
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2020

30 Mar 2020 – Genocides start with an act of framing human community, with their distinct group identity, typically vulnerable and weak, as ‘a virus’ or ‘existential threat.’

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A Hard Look into the Genesis of Myanmar’s Genocide
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Feb 2020

12 Feb 2020 – Genesis of sustained, institutionalized destruction of Rohingya is anchored in group’s identity as Muslims. This faith-based framing of Rohingya, a borderland population, as a threat is precisely what qualifies Myanmar’s policies as genocidal.

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What Does the Myanmar Provisional Measures Order by the International Court of Justice Mean for ASEAN?
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Feb 2020

12 Feb 2020 – It is long overdue for ASEAN to sync its policies towards Myanmar with international opinion, legal and human rights, and the global public. It needs to prove that it is a part of the solution, rather than being a Bystander in yet another genocide in its backyard after Khmer Rouge genocide four decades ago.

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ICJ Interim Genocide Ruling on Myanmar Vindicates Rohingya
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jan 2020

24 Jan 2020 – Rohingya around the world yesterday shared a pervasive sense of vindication after four-decades of policy-inflicted sufferings at the hands of Myanmar state which has systematically sought to destroy their identity and physical existence in the country. Historic decision of World Court makes voice of Rohingya Muslims eventually heard.

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Myanmar Continues to Make Mistakes of the Past
Maung Zarni | Free Rohingya Coalition – Asia Times, 20 Jan 2020

14 Jan 2020 – January 4 marked the 72nd anniversary of Myanmar’s independence from Britain. The story of Myanmar today is a textbook example of a multi-ethnic country where the spectacular failures on the part of the successive breeds of the ruling nationalists have created the very real conditions for ethnic balkanization, something the Burmese nationalists say they are most concerned about.

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Why Myanmar’s Genocide Denial Will Come Back to Haunt It
Maung Zarni | Free Rohingya Coalition/The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jan 2020

17 Jan 2020 – As the International Criminal Court proceeds with its own separate investigation into Myanmar’s crimes against the Rohingya, it is imperative that the prosecutor name Aung San Suu Kyi, along with the generals, as partners in crime. The international community must stand firm in holding her to account.

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Boycott Myanmar Campaign
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Dec 2019

We urge you to stand with the country’s oppressed national minorities.

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Report: Seoul International Conference on Protection of Rohingya Survivors and Accountability for Genocide
Maung Zarni | FORSEA – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2019

30 Aug 2019 – The Seoul International Conference focused on the illegal and barbaric uses of sexual violence and rape of target victim population as a matter of strategy and policy by genocidal and militaristic regimes, past and present, in Asian region, from the WWII-era Fascist Japan, Suharto’s Indonesia and General Yaya Khan’s West Pakistan in the civil war in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) to Pol Pot’s Cambodia of the late 1970’s to present-day Myanmar. The conference attracted 150 activists, engaged scholars and experts from 12 different countries, far and near.

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Inaction on China and India’s Crimes Emboldens Myanmar
Maung Zarni – Al Jazeera, 2 Sep 2019

25 Aug 2019 – How can Myanmar reverse its anti-Rohingya policies if it has China and India as an example? Today, Rohingya refugees and survivors in refugee camps, as well as their diasporic communities, commemorate the second Rohingya Genocide Memorial Day.

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‘The World Never Learns’, Rohingya Pay the Price
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Aug 2019

25 Aug 2019 – Today, Rohingya communities and their international supporters commemorate the 2nd anniversary of what is widely acknowledged as a textbook genocide commissioned by the UN member state of Myanmar. ‘Without UN, external intervention, Rohingya will remain most persecuted, vulnerable population’.

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Rohingya Poets Turn Words into Art of Resistance
Natalie Brinham, Yuriko Cowper-Smith, and Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Aug 2019

7 Aug 2019 – Rohingya poets featured in an anthology, I am Rohingya, write with an urgency and passion of genocide survivors. They reclaim their experience, their group identity and their agency from the victimhood that has framed their existence for so long.

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Bangladesh Can Make Myanmar Pay for Crimes against Rohingya
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jul 2019

8 Jul 2019 – Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors. It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone without adequate financial support from the international community. Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide.

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‘Suu Kyi and Virtually the Entire Opposition Were Completely Enamoured with US Power’
Maung Zarni | The Citizen – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jul 2019

24 Jun 2019 – An extended interview with Maung Zarni, an educator and political activist in exile who was closely associated with Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy and erstwhile face of democratic politics in Myanmar. Zarni recalls the hopes many vested in Suu Kyi after her father Aung San was assassinated in 1947, and his own journey towards disillusionment.

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Myanmar: Building Businesses over Killing Fields
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jun 2019

21 Jun 2019 – Bleak future lies ahead of Rohingya, as Myanmar is getting away with genocide amid UN ‘system failure’. Governments and firms from Canada, U.S., Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, France, and Germany are in numerous partnerships with the country. The World Bank’s latest proposal to give Myanmar $100 million in grants is just one of many signs that it has gotten away with genocide.

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Myanmar’s [Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi Is Turning Far-Right
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

8 Jun 2019 – Pictures from Budapest of a smiling Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi shaking hands with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, strikes fear for my Muslim friends back home in Myanmar, including the systematically persecuted Rohingya. The two reportedly exchanged their unconcealed fear and loathing of Muslims and migrants.

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How ‘Never Again!’ World Deals with Modern Genocides
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2019

9 Apr 2019 – If your people suffer genocide, here is the package deal you will get from our indifferent world:
The mass media will descend on the crime scene as long as there is blood to be filmed;
Western media corporations will send your spokesperson a chauffeured Mercedes for a three-minute TV interview;
The UN General Assembly will pass a resolution or annual resolutions — as long as the genocide has not stopped — in order to try to appear to be doing something for the victims;
The Security Council will debate and adopt a non-binding resolution;
The secretary-general, the glorified chief clerk of the world’s most bloated bureaucracy whose purpose is long gone, will mention “Never again!” and lament his — never her — impotence;
Read on…

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Rohingya Genocide Survivor Censored by American Patrons in His Testimony before the US Senate
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2019

9 Apr 2019 – It came to my attention that Tun Khin was, in effect, instructed to NOT mention the Genocide Convention in his testimony, because it would undermine a Burma legislation that IS SUPPOSED TO help Rohingyas. When a fact such as that the Genocide Convention exists – and was envisaged as a tool to actualize this post-Holocaust mantra “never again!” – is unwelcome at one of the most powerful chambers of power, US Senate – it becomes categorically questionable why the Senate sub-committee even holds such a hearing, wasting American taxpayers’ money and giving millions of victims FALSE HOPES – not just Rohingyas, but Uyghurs and Tibetans.

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Conference Calls for Action to End Rohingya Genocide
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Feb 2019

16 Feb 2019 – On Feb. 8 and 9 at Barnard College in New York City, the Free Rohingya Coalition held an extremely productive conference, drawing an audience of 200 researchers, activists and renowned academics from around 12 countries. Victims demand that ‘Never again!’ must be more than an empty slogan.

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US Genocide Resolution Welcome, but Rohingya Need More
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Dec 2018

US will not intercede, and Myanmar’s neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed.

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An Open Letter to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche from a Burmese Buddhist Activist
Maung Zarni and Matthew Gindin | Tricycle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Dec 2018

A former ally of Aung San Suu Kyi responds to the Tibetan Buddhist teacher’s support for Myanmar’s controversial leader.

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Forced Return of Rohingya Crime against Humanity
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Nov 2018

15 Nov 1018 – From the Red Cross to the UN High Commission for Refugees, the world is screaming foul at the Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral repatriation scheme scheduled to begin today. Red Cross’ Robert Mardini based in Myanmar told reporters that “we still believe that the conditions are not right for voluntary, safe, dignified returns …. Nobody can claim today that the security in Rakhine is so well established that people can return safely.”

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