Articles by Maung Zarni

We found 240 results.


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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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?

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

“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.

→ read full article

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”.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

“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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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”.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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. 

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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

→ read full article

“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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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’.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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’.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.’

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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

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

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

‘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’.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

‘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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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…

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.

→ read full article

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.”

→ read full article

Why Do Myanmar Public Hate Rohingya So Much?
Dr. Maung Zarni | Japan National Press Club – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Nov 2018

25 Oct 2018 – During the Q and A at the National Press Club of Japan, the country’s ruling class venue, a Japanese reporter asked me this question in English. She had been to Burma and said she found difficult to understand the palpable and pervasive hatred that Burmese public display towards Rohingyas.

→ read full article

Free Rohingya Coalition Condemns Premature Repatriation of Rohingyas
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Nov 2018

1 Nov 2018 – The Free Rohingya Coalition is deeply troubled by yesterday’s announcement by Bangladesh and Myanmar that both countries will begin repatriating Rohingyas in mid-November. We are extremely disturbed that the Government of Bangladesh might be prepared to resort to the unconscionable and internationally illegal practices that characterized previous waves of repatriation.

→ read full article

Five Concrete Measures Can End Rohingya Genocide
Dr. Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Oct 2018

Five steps can be taken towards achieving justice, repatriation and the rebuilding of Rohingya communities in Myanmar.

→ read full article

Rwanda to Rohingyas: The US Genocide Whitewash
Maung Zarni – The Citizen (India), 1 Oct 2018

27 Sep 2018 – The message from Washington is loud and clear: we will not call any international state crime genocide unless doing so serves America’s commercial and strategic interests. Rohingyas, still sitting ducks for the next round of slaughter in Myanmar, are not the first victims of the failure of American leadership – and for that matter, moral and political failure of the entire post-Holocaust Human Civilization.

→ read full article

[Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi Is Most Polished Mouthpiece of Myanmar Military
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Aug 2018

25 Aug 2018 – Free Rohingya Coalition co-founder Maung Zarni, a member of the TRANSCEND Network, says time to reject false messiahs in Myanmar beginning with Aung San Suu Kyi.

→ read full article

Rohingyas Declare Their Crime as GENOCIDE: Join Them in Their Radical Act
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Aug 2018

16 Aug 2018 – One fundamentally misguided thinking regarding genocides and atrocity crimes is this: only the UN-supported judicial process and lawyers can determine what is and what is not genocide. I for one reject any neo-colonial thinking that looks to powerful politicians and networks to call atrocity crimes by their names.

→ read full article

Remembering Rohingya Survivors of Genocide in August
Maung Zarni – Prothom Alo [Bangladesh], 20 Aug 2018

Forgetting is a crime in the face of mass atrocities. So let’s remember the Rohingya victims this 25 August. However empty the words “Never again!” have become for the UN member states, we, the people of this world, must not let our Frankensteinian and immoral states destroy our human spirit and universal compassion.

→ read full article

Take Today’s Enveloping Fascism Seriously
Maung Zarni – Prothom Alo [Bangladesh], 6 Aug 2018

1 Aug 2018 – The signs of the contagion of cultivated fascist mindset, its institutionalisation and popular mobilisation by those in power–abstract ideas are nothing without institutional backing or concrete structures–are everywhere, for those with trained eyes to detect fascism. We either wake up and fight back, or find ourselves on the receiving end of the impacts, sooner rather than later. Yes, things are that bad. Look closer. And think harder.

→ read full article

My Unadulterated Thoughts on Ahmed Tamimi: “During My Lifetime I Have Never Seen Peace”
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jul 2018

30 Jul 2018 – Israel is no exception: the persecuted and the oppressed have more often than not morphed into monstrous executioners and oppressors themselves. The United States, Canada, Australia–all settler colonies (genocidal colonies, that is)–spring to mind. My own birthplace, Burma/Myanmar, is another despicable human community–once colonized, exploited and abused; now it is the colonizer, exploiter, and a bloody mass murderer as a nation.

→ read full article

Is Oxford University Complicit in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Genocide Denial?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jul 2018

26 Feb 2018 – Just as Suu Kyi dismisses allegations of Myanmar’s international human rights crimes as designed to tarnish the image of Myanmar, the administration at Oxford University considers this a “public relations” issue.

→ read full article

A Plea to TMS Readers for Peace Journalism-Peace by Peaceful Means
Dr. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Jul 2018

In most cases of realities that involve blood, invasion, genocides, war crimes, exploitation, systematic acts of state propaganda, “all sides” and “balance” in journalism, are not simply acts of moral cowardice, but the total absence of intellectual substance. Peace, nonviolence, social justice, are TMS ideologies rooted on basic human rights and needs, non negotiable principles. Think about it and Please Act making your financial contribution TODAY! Thank you.

→ read full article

[Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi’s Lies, Distortions Hinder International Accountability
Dr. Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Jul 2018

24 Jun 2018 – Myanmar’s leader is at it again: using her Office’s Facebook, she is peddling lies that are easily exposed. Her growing list of provable distortions and denials must not go unchallenged.

→ read full article

UN and the Four-Word Mantra for Myanmar Genocide Survivors
Maung Zarni – Prothom Alo [Bangladesh], 25 Jun 2018

19 Jun 2018 – “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” George Orwell observed, in the middle of the 20th century. Let’s take a look at the four adjectives that have come to be the pillars of UN policy mantra.

→ read full article

New Secretive Deal between UN, Myanmar Smells Foul
Maung Zarni and Natalie Brinham - Andalou Post [Turkey], 20 Jun 2018

Newly-organized UN in Myanmar has shelved organization’s own governing principles of transparency and inclusivity, as evidenced by freshly-inked MOU with Myanmar.

→ read full article

Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi Actively Attempting to Manipulate UN
Dr. Maung Zarni – Anadolu Post, 20 Jun 2018

16 Jun 2018 – No political regime, civilian or military, that commissions international crimes against its own national minorities should be given the benefit of the doubt when its smooth-talking Oxford-educated politician says it is on the path towards incremental liberalization and constructive resolution of the crisis confronting a people whose existence she herself denies.

→ read full article

12 Features Zionist Israel Shares with Nazi Germany
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 May 2018

The souls of the nearly 6-millions Jewish victims of the Holocaust must not be at rest, I can imagine, as long as the Zionists continue on with its version of Final Solution with respect the Palestinians. They would feel extremely pained that the State built on their ashes, tales of pains and horrors has morphed into, or simply conceived along the lines of the Third Reich of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and Eichman.

→ read full article

Factsheet on the Rohingya: Group Identity, Citizenship, Persecution
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 May 2018

17 May 2018 – Rohingyas are a native, pre-colonial ethnic minority group of Rakhine State of Western Myanmar (formerly Burma), which shares 170 miles of long modern-day borders with Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Rohingya people view Myanmar as the country to which they belong.

→ read full article

News from Burma/Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 May 2018

11 May 2018 – Travels and intense activist work, and observing INGOs, old and new, treating the ongoing Rohingya genocide as if it were a business item among rivals, have drained me tremendously… Everyone remotely familiar with international justice–if at all–knows that by the time the lawyers arrive and the Court set up, the targets are all dead, their villages bulldozed in the case of Rohingyas, and they have nowhere to go or no place they can call ‘home’ or their homeland.

→ read full article

May the Korean Peace Deal Trigger Anti-Militarist, Anti-Fascist Movements in Asia–and Globally
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Apr 2018

Today–27 April 2018–will likely be chronicled in history as the day that gave little people like us, grassroots activists, to feel that PEACE is possible and that PEACE is the way. I hope Western mass media will stop its demonization of N. Korea which has, with good historical reasons, lived with the fear of being genocided by the United States.

→ read full article

A Plea for Peace Journalism — Peace by Peaceful Means
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Apr 2018

TRANSCEND Media Service is having a fund drive to keep its valuable service tailored to those of us who want in-depth critical analyses not sensationalist corporate media reportage. I’d rather throw TRANSCEND a lifeline than watch BBC, for example, and pay the license fee. Who in their right mind would pay to be brainwashed by yet another military-industrial complex?

→ read full article

Facebook, Myanmar Genocide and Its Dehumanizingly Sexualized Discourses
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Apr 2018

19 Apr 2018 – But whatever, whoever is shaping the public opinion in today’s Myanmar anyone monitoring genocidal discourses in the public domains in Burmese language cannot fail to notice the Nazi parallel: Myanmar public, in my assessment, is in the mental world of the Nazis. I don’t use this word lightly – and for the effect. The paradox of a genocidal system: the system creates the problem which it cannot itself resolve.

→ read full article

A Grassroots Initiative to Adopt 25 Aug as Rohingya Remembrance Day
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Apr 2018

Sharing a Few Updates: 12 Apr 2018 – I was in Ireland. The Irish supporters of Rohingya’s needs for protected homeland in collaboration with Irish Rohingya community had packed meetings with educators, religious leaders, activists, parliamentarians, media interviews, and two public talks.

→ read full article

The Tragic Farce in Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Apr 2018

Belfast, 12 Apr 2018 – Last night, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire’s Peace People hosted a Burma talk. I spoke on the urgent need to inform and mobilize grassroots communities about Myanmar genocide in order to build pressure on respective EU governments, as well as others to help end the genocide and support the Rohingyas’ NEED–not simply RIGHT–to a protected homeland. Plus: Saudi Gazette Editorial

→ read full article