Articles by Zarni
We found 334 results.
Open Letter to [Nobel Peace Laureate] Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Sep 2017
As your fellow countrymen, with deep roots in our troubled birthplace, we are writing to you to share our sadness and concern about your personal legacy as the nation’s leader, the plight of our people, and the future of Myanmar as a nation. When you delivered your first speech in 1988, declaring that “as my father’s daughter I could no longer remain silent when the public remains subject to decades of oppression”, we were deeply moved and inspired by your determination and courage.
→ read full articleMyanmar, Moderate Your Genocide!
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Sep 2017
My country is committing pogroms
Pogroms against Rohingyas.
I knew this day would come. And it did come sooner!
Wait! Rohingyas don’t exist.
Are the Rohingya Militants Responsible for Derailing Kofi Annan Commission’s Recommendations?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Sep 2017
“Who is terrorising whom”” is the question that needs to be confronted head on. There is something else that needs to be called out: the mass media’s misframing of Rohingya militants as “jihadists”. Both the realities on the ground and the media narrative covering the realities are quite skewered in favour of the perpetrating Burmese regime’s framing.
→ read full articleStudent Activism Is Vital to Burma’s Future
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Aug 2017
In the Burmese society today so violently fractured by the regressive politics of racism, bigotry and exclusion it is these idealistic and principled students who are best positioned to serve as the moral compass. Their activism needs to be cherished and nurtured – not trampled on and repressed.
→ read full articleIs Irrawaddy News Group Leading the Genocide Propaganda in Burma/Myanmar?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Aug 2017
6 Aug 2017 – Myanmar Groups whipping up Genocidal Racism against Rohingyas (& Muslims). Irrawaddy News Group has joined the likes of ex-Chief of Military Intelligence, Wirathu, & Rakhine Racist Groups.
→ read full articleWhat Are the Essential Differences between Communism and Capitalism?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Aug 2017
Communism treats the notion of Private Property as a major obstacle to building its classless heaven on earth attempts to make Saints out of humans. In the process the Beasts inside fought back and destroyed the Communist Mission and devoured its Missionaries. In sharp contrast, Capitalism rests on the Inalienably Holy Idea of Private Property attempts to pursue its Sacred Mission of Wealth Accumulation by unleashing the Beasts in humans, thereby triggering the unstoppable process of all around destruction.
→ read full articleMyanmar to Humanitarian Groups: THOU SHALL NOT FEED THE MUSLIMS – without Gov Knowledge & Monitor
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jul 2017
4 Jul 2017 – Thou shall not feed the Muslims without approval from NLD-Gov (and police). All food supplies to Muslims in Meikhtila and Ramadan month food donations must be distributed only under the monitoring mechanisms and with the prior knowledge of local authorities.
→ read full articleMyanmar Leaders Must Nurture the Country’s Many Potential ‘Aung La Nsangs’
Maung Zarni - Coconuts Yangon,
10 Jul 2017
3 Jul 2017 – On Friday [30 Jun], in Yangon, something extraordinary happened to lift the spirit of all Myanmar’s peoples. Mixed martial arts fighter Aung La Nsang made history by becoming the first-ever world champion from Myanmar in any sport. In our long-running civil wars and waves of racial and religious violence, how many Aung La Nsangs have we killed, maimed or otherwise destroyed?
→ read full articleMyanmar Cardinal Bo Calls Human Rights Campaigners, Researchers and Scholars on Rohingyas “Extreme” and Joins Aung San Suu Kyi’s Genocide Denial
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jul 2017
26 Jun 2017 – My response to Myanmar Cardinal Charles Maung Bo’s Statement of his public denial of Rohingya ethnic cleansing.
→ read full articleBurma/Myanmar: “Communal Violence” Argument Being Peddled Again
Dr. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 May 2017
What is fundamentally wrong with the “communal violence” argument in the paper below, ‘Interpreting Communal Violence in Myanmar,’ by Nick Cheesman.
→ read full articleAn Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide
Alice Cowley and Maung Zarni | Middle East Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Apr 2017
Waves of state-directed violence and communal destruction … have been occurring since 1978 and are part of a process of ‘slow-burning genocide.’ Decades of facts relating to the instrumental role of the Myanmar State in the abuses of Rohingya are buried alongside very real human corpses.
→ read full article“Rohingya Resistance”: The Media Is “Bigging It Up” without Analysis or Insights
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Apr 2017
31 Mar 2017 – For the mass media is now bigging up Rohingya Resistance, but it isn’t telling you anything I consider intelligent, analytical, researched or factual.
→ read full articleLearning to Be Fascists
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Apr 2017
Learning to be fascists, victims, and bystanders (and everything in-between). We learn to love, hate, kill, slaughter, rape, torture, etc. In my view, the Burmese society is undergoing this experience regarding the Rohingya victims of state terror, social ostracism/exclusion and the emerging sadistic culture of those who call themselves “Buddhists”.
→ read full articleGenocides Have No Winners
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Mar 2017
Genocides are what students of politics call ‘path-dependent’. Once a genocidal process is set in motion it is hard to recall. All genocides end in tears and destroy humanness in all involved in it, as perpetrators, on-lookers, whitewashers, collaborators, and victims.”
→ read full article
Maung Zarni’s Analysis of the Military in Burma/Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Mar 2017
Understanding Myanmar Military and Its Strategic Paradigm
→ read full article[Nobel Peace Laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi and the World of Buddhist Islamophobia
Maung Zarni – Al Jazeera,
13 Mar 2017
Myanmar’s Muslim minority, demonised and persecuted for decades, is facing a fresh wave of violence amid media silence. “Suu Kyi’s denial of what Human Rights Watch has called “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity” deserves international scrutiny,” writes Maung Zarni.
→ read full articleTrump’s Muslim Ban Emboldens Myanmar Racists: Suu Kyi’s Sole Muslim Adviser Shot Dead Upon Return from Jakarta
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2017
29 Jan 2017 – Shooting U Ko Ni dead in the head at a high profile place like Yangon Airport, upon arrival from the official visit to Jakarta to go and study peaceful, interfaith life in Indonesia, was, in my view, to make the point that Muslims assuming advisory positions to NLD and ASSK would cost life.
→ read full articleBurma: Four Decades of International Media Coverage on the Rohingyas
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2017
Myanmar government has been committing crimes against humanity at best and genocide at worst.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Nazi Parallel: Merging of Power Institutions (Faith/Race, Guns & Populist Party)
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jan 2017
26 Dec 2016 – Around the issue of Rohingya, the merging of the anti-Rohingya racist society (all classes), the ruling military, the semi-autonomous NLD leadership, and most influential leaders of the Buddhist Order parallels the rise of Nazism in Germany. The consequences will go beyond the destruction of the Rohingya people as a self-identified group.
→ read full articleRealities
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Dec 2016
I can’t be taken down.
For my feet have always been firmly on the ground.
My career can’t be destroyed.
For I have never pursued one.
Sorry, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Rohingya Crisis Is No Laughing Matter
Maung Zarni and Gregory Stanton – The Wire,
12 Dec 2016
The world is reacting with horror to the massacre of Rohingyas in Rakhine State, but Suu Kyi and her government continue to turn a blind eye to what increasingly appears like a genocide.
→ read full articleDr. Maung Zarni on the Rohingya Muslim Genocide in Buddhist Burma/Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Nov 2016
26 Nov 2016 – A journalist asked me a few questions to get sound bites and quotes. I turned them into a more comprehensive interview. Thought this may serve as a succinct backgrounder if you are interested in the contextual view of the current annihilation phase of the Rohingya genocide.
→ read full articleWhy and in What Ways Is Myanmar Military Protecting Buddhism and Buddhist ‘Race’?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2016
25 Jun 2016 – Now Myanmar is officially a Fascist State, with the military claiming itself as the protector of Buddhism and Race: Aung San Suu Kyi is crippled, intellectually and strategically. Why does Myanmar Tatmadaw intend to protect “Buddhism” and “Bama race”? And in what specific ways do the military strategists “protect” Buddhism?
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Democratic Transition: What Does That Mean for the Persecuted Rohingya?
Prof. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2016
One-Day Open Research Conference, the University of Oxford: 11 May 2016. To continue shining the spotlight of university and independent research onto Myanmar’s slow genocide of the Muslim Rohingya among international genocide and legal scholars and world’s icons such as Desmond Tutu, George Soros, Mairead Maguire, Amartya Sen, the Dalai Lama etc.
→ read full articleThey Would Call Me an ‘Extremist’: Why I Don’t Celebrate Or Send Anyone Any New Year’s Greetings
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2016
A Hindu-Buddhist New Year Note – Though a Burmese from Mandalay , Burma’s most popular site for the Thin Gyan or water throwing new year festival, I do not celebrate the New Year–because my country that likes to call itself “Buddhist” is committing a slow genocide against the Muslim Rohingya stigmatizing them as “Bengali”.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s New President Might Not Be Aung San Suu Kyi, but He Does Represent Progress
Maung Zarni – The Guardian,
21 Mar 2016
For the first time in decades, the Burmese people have a civilian president. Now they must weather the clash of military and opposition proxies to come.
→ read full articleThe Lady and the Boat Rides [in Burma/Myanmar]
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
Brother, be kind, she is in a bind…
Experts say the Silence of the Lady is owing to the election maths
Her soul isn’t really dead, yet.
Orientalisation and Manufacturing of ‘Civil Society’ in Contemporary Burma (Myanmar)
Maung Zarni - TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
After two decades of post-Cold War hostilities between Burmese generals and their former Cold War ‘friends’ in London, Berlin, Washington and Tokyo, a danse macabre is set in motion. The backdrop this time is the West’s need to contain an increasingly powerful China in Burma’s eastern neighbourhood and the worsening economic decay in Europe and North America. In this new geopolitical drama both the generals in Naypyidaw and the liberals in Western capitals have found a new role for iconic Aung San Suu Kyi.
→ read full articleMyanmar Nazi Monk Wirathu, TIME Magazine’s “Face of Buddhist Terror”
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Feb 2016
Myanmar’s “Nazi monk” Wirathu (and networks), plot to unleash new Islamophobic waves of violence against Myanmar’s Muslims and Rohingya.
→ read full articleSuu Kyi Govt Must Not Continue State Persecution of Rohingya
Dr. Maung Zarni, DVB – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
As Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to take over the reins of the new government [Burma/Myanmar], the international community – of diplomats, world leaders, journalists, human rights researchers and world citizens – needs to press the Burmese leader to reflect critically on her stances on the Rohingya.
→ read full articleA Perfect New Year Gift: A Calendar Dedicated to the Rohingya Victims of Myanmar’s Slow Genocide
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
Here is a perfect gift for this holiday season, especially for those with a social conscience. And Myanmar authorities will arrest you if it is found in your possession!
→ read full articleNorthern Arakan as Rohingya’s Ancestral Land: G.H.Luce Citing the Stone Inscription from Ava Period
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2015
According to the late Gordon H. Luce, essentially the founder of modern historical studies of the ancient Myanmar or Burma and the mentor of Professor Than Tun, the presence of the Rohinjas in Burma was evidenced in the stone inscriptions from the Ava period (AD 1400).
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Myanmar’s Leaders
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
May I, from the bottom of my heart, urge you to use your most precious time, while alive, to endeavor to end the hell of a slow genocide of the Rohingya and to bring about the cessation of all armed conflicts and wars against our own ethnic brethren in Eastern Myanmar, namely the Kachin, the Shan, the Pa-Oo, the Kokant, etc. May the Rohingya be free from the State’s genocidal persecution.
→ read full articleWhy Did the “Retired” Senior General Than Shwe Meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
5 Dec 2015 – The prevailing view is that the Old Man wants to ensure that he is safe from any form of retribution, that his extended family are safe and that their ill-gotten gains – estimated at US$ billions – remain intact. And for the Rohingya, the deal excludes their genocide.
→ read full articleWhy Aung San Suu Kyi’s ‘Mandela Moment’ Is a Victory for Myanmar’s Generals
Maung Zarni – The Guardian,
16 Nov 2015
With a constitution that safeguards its immense power and wealth, the military knows that, unlike in 1990, it doesn’t need a crackdown to keep its regime intact.
→ read full articleThe Stubborn Regime
Maung Zarni - Himal Southasian, Nepal,
9 Nov 2015
2015 Elections in Burma Will Be neither Historic nor Consequential – The military has internalised the self-serving justification that without its strong hand – that is, concentration of power and control in the military and its loyalists – the multi-ethnic country is going to disintegrate.
→ read full article
2-Minute Speech Dedicated to Rohingya Victims of Burma/Myanmar’s Genocide
Dr. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Nov 2015
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire was the presenter on behalf of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Salt Lake City, Utah, 18 Oct 2015. Both Dr. Zarni and Mrs. Maguire are members of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Neo-Nazi Buddhists Get Free Rein
Maung Zarni, Ph.D. – Asia Times,
2 Nov 2015
As a new nationalist movement with a clear message of ”racial and religious purity”, a false sense of Buddhist victimhood, and cultural and economic nationalism – not dissimilar to Germany’s Nazism in the 1930s – 969 is gaining popularity for three main reasons.
→ read full articleIn Myanmar, Peace for Ethnic Rights
Maung Zarni – International New York Times,
28 Sep 2015
Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups must stand together and hold out on signing the nationwide cease-fire until all of them are included in the deal and they have secured concrete military and political concessions. If the government is as serious as it claims about wanting peace, it must let go of its oppressively majoritarian mind-set and recognize ethnic minorities’ legitimate aspirations for more autonomy.
→ read full articleBurma: Divisive Ceasefire Won’t Bring Peace
Maung Zarni and Saw Kapi, DVB – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Sep 2015
Burma’s leaders, particularly generals past and present, lack both genuine acceptance of multi-ethnic peace on equal terms and an appreciation for the decades of bitter experiences of war-torn communities. Without these two essential pillars, sustainable peace in my country of birth is not conceivable, formal ceasefire or not.
→ read full articleOne Lesson from Srebrenica
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2015
12 Jul 2015 – World is busy commemorating yet another anniversary of a genocide. One major lesson from Srebrenica is that there is no lesson learned or incorporated into today’s responses to Myanmar’s genocide. The world of power and influence is in the final instance a world of shameful deeds, dishonest policies and business-as-usual inhumanity. Sad, unconscionable and outrageous – but painfully true.
→ read full articleThe Full Text of the Oslo Communique on Myanmar (Burma)
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2015
Today (28 May, 2015) the Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingya ended. It was held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Voksenaasen. The call made by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to end Myanmar’s genocide is supported by six additional Nobel Peace Laureates: Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams, Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
→ read full articleMyanmar Officially Rejects the Oslo Conference to End Systematic Persecution of the Rohingya Since 1978
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2015
Read press release from 31 May 2015.
→ read full articleWhy Myanmar Is Committing a Slow Genocide against Nearly 2 Million Rohingya Muslims
Maung Zarni, Rohingya Blogger – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jan 2015
Jan 18, 2015 – Myanmar’s slow Rohingya genocide is a brilliant strategy that kills several birds with a single stone – as far as the country’s ruling military Bama regimes.
→ read full article#Freespeech, but We Won’t Cover Your Skin or Honor Your God
Maung Zarni, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jan 2015
A poem in solidarity and honor of persecuted and targeted Muslims, the latest victims of the “Civilization.”
→ read full articleMyanmar and Its Manufacturing Genocidal Racism towards Rohingya
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
There was inter-ethnic solidarity for the Rohingya/Muslims of Arakan dating back to 17 May 1978. Now in 2014, even the Kachin Independence Organization’s spokesperson ex-Colonel James L. based in BKK denied any knowledge of Rohingya and denied showing any sympathy for the Rohingya.
→ read full articleBurma’s Struggle for Democracy: A Critical Appraisal (DRAFT)
Maung Zarni with Trisha Taneja – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
Reclaiming Activism – Drawn upon the author’s direct political engagement in Burma’s pro-change opposition, and on his own research, to reflect critically on the struggle of the last twenty-five years between the ruling military and the opposition movements.
→ read full articleBurma: What Obama Should Tell Thein Sein
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
17 Nov 2014
The country’s various oppressed constituencies are intensely resentful of both meek, mild and ineffectual UN officials and China’s narrow interests and slanted policies in favor of their common oppressor in Naypyidaw. They still hold out hope that the US’s involvement and pressure on the country’s current military leaders will eventually bring genuine democratic reforms and an end to decades of internal conflict.
→ read full articleNo Country for Refugees
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
No British rescue missions for drowning Afro-refugees.
Really, it’s in their Karma, in their DNAs to suffer.
Give them Burmese “Buddhism” or cheap opium from Afghanistan.
Have they no wit to know Foreign Policies ain’t about human welfare?
Governments ain’t no churches. We ain’t your Messiah.
Stop Playing the Anti-Semitism Card & Get Real about the Rise of Fascism in Israel
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Sep 2014
Each time the subject of Israel’s on-going genocidal treatment of Palestinians, many Jewish individuals throw around the anti-Semitism card, and non-Jews take a default position: self-censorship, rather than frank and brutally honest look at the empirically genocidal situation.
→ read full articleFive Things Each of Us Human, Jews and Non-Jews, Can Do for Gazans/Palestinians
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
I will personally not have anything to do with any Zionist, who whitewashes, justifies, or actively supports Israel and its Nazi conduct towards Gaza. I urge you to show your solidarity by engaging daily in people-to-people boycott of Israel. Here are five things you can do – and this list is only suggestive.
→ read full articleWe Need a New Understanding of the Security Council
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
The permanent members of the UN Security Council are certifiably sick entities suffering from bouts of psychoses. They are all suffering from imperial syndrome of various versions.
→ read full articleI Am Not a Jew
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
A poem in honor of the indomitable spirit of fellow humans who are being killed by Israel while being locked up in the Zionist concentration camp – called Gaza.
→ read full articleHow to Distinguish a Genuinely Practising Buddhist Monk from a Nazi with a Shaven Head in Saffron Robe
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
Nazi “Monk” Wirathu versus the Good Buddhist Monks of Mandalay – Mandalay Peace Committee meeting, Moe Gaung Monastery, Mandalay, 6 Jul 2014
→ read full article
The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya
Dr Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jul 2014
London Conference on Decades of Persecution and Destruction of Myanmar’s Rohingya
→ read full articleUnited Behind So-Called ‘Rohingya” Genocide
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jun 2014
A poem in memory of the two Rohingya infants who became the well-publicized victims of Myanmar’s “Buddhist” genocide.
→ read full articleBritish Aid for Myanmar Ethnic Cleansing
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
7 Apr 2014
Britain, the largest donor country and former colonizer of Myanmar, is effectively aiding and abetting the unfolding “ethnic cleansing” of Muslim Rohingya by helping to finance the country’s controversial 2014 national census.
→ read full articleYOU Can Stop the Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya and Muslims!
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Apr 2014
One of the legacies of the 50 years of military rule and societal isolation (from the world) is multifold: ultra-conservative versions of various faiths, particularly Buddhism, thrive there; the high level of public ignorance is matched only by the extremely low level of critical popular thoughts.
→ read full articleIn Contrast to Huffington Post, the New York Times Misleads the Readers on Myanmar Government’s Central Role in the Rohingya Pogroms
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Mar 2014
It is in fact Burma or Myanmar military leadership that has self-consciously pursued what amounts to genocidal policies towards the Rohingya, in fact, a borderland people of Burma like Karen, Chin, Kachin, Rakhine, etc, whose roots spread across new boundaries of the post-WWII nation-states.
→ read full articleASEAN and the New Orwellianism
Dr. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Mar 2014
Human rights harm Asean harmony.
Profits unite, human rights divide.
Thank you, Mr. Orwell.
“War is Peace”, no more.
The Systematic Repression of the Rohingya Minority Continues
Maung Zarni – The Dissident Blog,
17 Mar 2014
In my view, despite growing evidence, the international community has avoided calling this “genocide” because none of the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council have the appetite to forego their commercial and strategic interests in Myanmar to address the slow-burning Rohingya genocide.
→ read full articleMyanmar Leaders and Their 34 Concrete Ways of Control, Deception, and Manipulation
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
Here is MY list of concrete, empirically verifiable acts the Burmese generals and ex-generals have been engaged in over the past 50 years since General Ne Win introduced the military rule on 2 March 1962. These acts are a given, irrespective of which general is in charge. They are getting worse.
→ read full articleWhy Single Out the Case of the Rohingya Vis-A-Vis Other Unfolding Atrocities Around the World?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
I am singling out the case of the Rohingya, subject to a 35-year state-policy which rests on the INTENT to erase the Rohingya as a group, a memory, an identity and the literal existence.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Neo-Nazi Buddhists Get Free Rein
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
18 Nov 2013
Burma/Myanmar’s radical “969 movement” has been central in the recent brutal pogroms against minority Muslims that have left at least 40 dead and 12,000 displaced. The Buddhist monk-led group, however, cannot be understood outside of the interface between President Thein Sein’s government and the country’s racist society at large.
→ read full article[Nobel Peace Laureate} Aung San Suu Kyi and the World of Buddhist Islamophobia
Maung Zarni – Al Jazeera,
4 Nov 2013
The details of this systematic ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya which has been set in motion as a matter of state policy since 1978, and the more recent anti-Muslim mass violence, again with state impunity, generally play second fiddle in the media, to Suu Kyi’s failure to condemn it.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Drive for Peace
Maung Zarni – The New York Times,
4 Nov 2013
Based on my experience working with the generals as an unofficial advocate for Western re-engagement with the country, I know that the military leaders who may be inclined to compromise hold an instrumentalist view of reconciliation. For them, peace is not a worthwhile goal in and of itself but a means to another end: financial reward.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Black Hole: Evolution of a Mafia State (Part 1)
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2013
The military’s regressive evolution in terms of its institutional ethos, culture, and practices have created its current mafia-like nature. A mafia mindset has infected the beliefs and attitudes of those who lead, manage and man this omnipresent organization, the self-proclaimed guardian of the national interest in Myanmar’s supposed new democracy.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Black Hole: Fascist Roots, Rewritten Histories (Part 2)
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
21 Oct 2013
One of the best known historical facts about Myanmar’s armed forces is that it was originally the product of fascist Japan’s military strategy to recruit, train and arm local nationalist elements in Asia against British and Allied forces during World War II.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Black Hole: A Class above, the Heaven-Born (Part 3)
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
21 Oct 2013
Only time will tell whether the forces of the free market will overpower Myanmar’s ruling soldiering class. Unlike the military in Indonesia, the Philippines and Turkey, Myanmar’s military is marching backward along feudal lines.
→ read full articleHotel Myanmar or the Unfolding Genocide in President Thein Sein’s Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2013
A scene of “Buddhist” mob marching to targeted Muslim villages and being stopped by the local troops who are NOT really empowered by Naypyidaw Thein Sein’s government to use force, if necessary, to prevent any organized mass atrocities against the Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds. This is definitely Hotel Rwanda.
→ read full articleMyanmar Is Bleeding P-E-A-C-E
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2013
Yes, the country is now pierced with PEACE.
Peace is bleeding everywhere.
The Nobel Peace Celebrity wants peace.
Myanmar President Nobel-short-listee calls out for peace.
Myanmar Peace and Ceasefire-101
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2013
The single most important factor in understanding peace-building and ceasefire negotiations in Myanmar is how the most powerful stakeholder, namely the Burmese generals view peace with the country’s 2 dozen ethnic resistance movements.
→ read full articleMilitary Roots of Racism in Myanmar
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
10 Sep 2013
At the very heart of Myanmar’s Islamophobic campaign lies the state and its successive senior leaderships, which continue to operate within a concrete set of political economic relations wherein they pursue their typically sinister Machiavellian politics in defense of corporate, clique and personal agendas.
→ read full articleA “Three Insecurities Perspective” for the Changing Myanmar
Maung Zarni – Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia,
2 Sep 2013
Maung Zarni, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, argues that the best way to look at the current changes in Myanmar is through his “Three Insecurity Paradigms”, namely, national security, global security and human security. Zarni denounces the Thein Sein reforms as crude responses to the regime’s own needs and to the expectation of the world, with little account for the security of ordinary Myanmar people.
→ read full article1982 Citizenship Law of Myanmar and Myanmar’s Popular Racism
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
Burma’s military-controlled State rests on the country’s official racism towards Burmese of ‘impure blood’. Scholars and policy analysts of Myanmar need to stop characterizing violence and racism against Muslims, ‘Kalars’ and Tayoke (Chinese) as simply ‘sectarian’ or placing undue emphasis on the society’s role in the unfolding racist mass violence against the Rohingya and all Myanmar Muslims.
→ read full articleWhy Are Myanmar’s Rohingya Officially and Popularly Referred to as “Bengali’, a Racist Slur in the Burmese Context?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2013
At the heart of Myanmar’s official and, sadly, popular use of the term ‘Bengali’ is a discursive strategy meant to to illegalize, alien-ize and de-tetorrialize the Rohingya one and the same time. This act is tantamount to the butcher of a verifiable and consequential truth.
→ read full articleCapital Insecurity in Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
The emerging symbiosis between global capitalist forces and the security interests of Myanmar’s ruling military-crony class has not been sufficiently weighed by most Western scholars and other Myanmar watchers. Most have ignored the hard fact that ethnic and religious minorities, 40% of the country’s total population, are being further marginalized and disenfranchised, pushed from their traditional lands or otherwise decimated.
→ read full articleRevive Aung San’s Original Secularist Multicultural Vision for the New Myanmar
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
Aung San was murdered on 19 July 1947, 66 years go. He was killed by 27 bullet wounds from the British Army-issued machine guns in the British-assisted assassination. When he and his multi-cultural and multi-faith comrades were killed it was not just the men’s lives that were taken away. Aung San’s secularist, egalitarian and multiculturalist vision too was killed and buried along with their remains.
→ read full articleBritish Aid for Myanmar/Burma Ethnic Cleansing
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
Britain, the largest donor country and former colonizer of Myanmar, is effectively aiding and abetting the unfolding “ethnic cleansing” of Muslim Rohingya by helping to finance the country’s controversial 2014 national census.
→ read full articleAn Unfolding Tale of Two Genocidal “Buddhist” Hells: Myanmar and Sri Lanka
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2013
The Burmese Bama Buddhists are not alone in Nazi “Buddhist” Hell. They are in good company of the equally genocidal “Buddhists” of Sri Lanka.
→ read full articleMetta for “Mus”?!! You must be kidding!: A New Myanmar and its “Buddhist” Tales
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2013
In our Myanmar A-wee-zi (an abode of Buddhist Hell) – He is our national hero in place of your ‘fallen (liberal) idol’. Mighty is he, commanding 3,000-strong Buddhist monastery amongst the Order of 500,000. “Honestly, I felt I wanted to fight weapons with weapons. I am a Burmese bin Laden”.
→ read full article(Français) Nous Refusons le Silence Face a l’Apartheid et au Nettoyage Ethnique en Birmanie
Maung Zarni, Noam Chomsky et Lilian Thuram – Le Monde,
1 Jul 2013
Les minorités sont exclues du renouveau démocratique et, pour beaucoup, le calvaire a empiré avec des offensives militaires au nord et à l’Est tandis qu’à l’Ouest des populations sont séquestrées sous un régime d’Apartheid.
→ read full articleNeo-Nazi Denial in Myanmar
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
27 May 2013
Myanmar has a newly registered Nazi party, the Rakhine National Development Party (RNDP), created ceremoniously in the wake of last year’s anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing in western Rakhine State.
→ read full articleAre Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar Elites Complicit in the Rohingya Ethnocide?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
Is Burma’s Aung Suu Kyi herself complicit in this Rohingya ethnnocide? is a valid, empirical question that needs to be raised.
→ read full articleMyanmar Whitewashes Ethnic Cleansing
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
13 May 2013
1 May 2013 – An official report into last year’s violence in Rakhine State, launched on April 29 at the government’s foreign donor financed Myanmar Peace Center, is intellectually, ideologically, empirically and analytically flawed, underscoring President Thein Sein’s bid to whitewash the recent ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya in the western state, which borders Bangladesh.
→ read full articleOpen Letter to International Crisis Group
Maung Zarni – Democratic Voice of Burma,
6 May 2013
If the ICG’s award is about honouring President Thein Sein’s “visionary leadership to effect profound social, economic and political changes” that will “bring us closer to a world free of conflict” then the organisation’s empirical understanding of both Thein Sein’s vision and the ugly realities experienced by the Burmese people, including the Rohingya, can only be characterised as delusional.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Neo-Nazi Buddhists Get Free Rein
Maung Zarni – Asia Times,
15 Apr 2013
Hatred of Muslims is deeply rooted in Burmese society. One of the regime’s favorite tactics was to spread rumors that Muslims had raped Burmese Buddhist women, and plotted to convert the entire Buddhist population to Islam. The “divide and rule” tactic used by the authorities in the recent past possibly grew out of the British colonial regime’s policy of fostering a “plural society” with minimal national unity.
→ read full articleWhy Journalists Generally Get Their Burma Stories Wrong, Horribly Wrong
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2013
When it comes to reporting Burma the coverage has been beyond being biased. It is generally horribly inadequate, or downright incorrect. From a Burmese perspective, especially from the perspective of those who have borne the brunt of the half-century of military rule under various and evolving disguises, the way Burma is being reported is like adding insult to injury.
→ read full articleBurma/Myanmar: Its Conflicts, Western Advocacy, and Country Impact
Maung Zarni – World Peace Foundation,
8 Apr 2013
Burma’s conflicts are neither new nor are they singular. Conflicts along multiple-lines – class and ideology, civil society and the military, and ethnic groups– have been going on for nearly 65 years, that is, since Burma’s independence from Britain in 1947/1948.
→ read full articleBuddhist Nationalism in Burma
Maung Zarni, tricycle – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2013
The broadcast images of monks of the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007 are still fresh; these monks were seen calling for an improvement in public well-being in the face of the growing economic hardships afflicting Burma’s Buddhists. But in the past year, the world has been confronted with images of the same robed monks publicly demonstrating against Islamic nations’ distribution of aid to starving Muslim Rohingya, displaced into refugee camps in their own country following Rakhine Buddhist attacks.
→ read full articleBuddhist Nationalism in Burma
Maung Zarni, Tricycle – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
The rise of genocidal Buddhist racism against the Rohingya, a minority community of nearly one million people in the western Burmese province of Rakhine (also known as Arakan), is an international humanitarian crisis. The military-ruled state has been relentless in its attempts to erase Rohingya ethnic identity, which was officially recognized as a distinct ethnic group in 1954 by the democratic government of Prime Minister U Nu.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Religious Violence against the Muslims Is Military-Backed and Buddhist Order-Organzied
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
The violence against Muslims in Burma is not SIMPLY sectarian or communal as is typically and incorrectly framed by the mainstream media. It is mobilized by the skin-head elements within the Buddhist Sangha and tacitly backed by the military state, both working in close collaboration and in a symbiosis.
→ read full articleResignation Letter
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2013
1 January 2013. I believe I was mislead regarding the professional environment at Universiti Brunei Darussalam during the recruitment process, and due to the on-going attempts to gag me on the persecution and slaughter of minorities, including Muslim minorities, in the country of my birth [Burma], I no longer wish to be subject to this level of extreme and unprofessional academic censorship. I need to work at a professional institution where the word ‘politics’ is mentionable, social conscience livable, and compassion honourable.
→ read full articleViolence in the Institutional and Cultural DNA of the United States of America
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
The two of the three pillars of the United States were the ethno- and genocide of the native people and the enslavement of African people — yes, the other is honorably the Enlightenment ideals of equality (of property-owning while males). Both as an economic system and as an ideological edifice, USA is one of the most violent places on earth.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Step-By-Step Approach toward Rohingya Genocide and Ethni-cide
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2012
I would call the military’s policy towards the Rohingya “structural genocide”, a systematic and sustained act of policy maintained and pursued, irrespective of which general or ex-general is in charge. Welcome to our ugly majoritarian neo-Fascist democracy run by militarists!
→ read full articleBurma’s Buddhism: A Tale of “Form without Substance”
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Nov 2012
Do not mistake Myanma’s thousands of Golden Temples and Pagodas and thousands of Saffron Robed men, that is, form, for the real practice of Buddhism, that is, the practice of Metta or universal loving kindness for all sentient beings. That, of course, is except Rohingya and Muslims.
→ read full articleWhat Does the World Bank Have to Do with Burma’s Wars, Conflicts and Atrocities?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Nov 2012
The war in Kachin State has everything to do with the World Bank which funded and promoted the idea of “cross-border energy free market”.
→ read full articleWho and What Gains from Myanmar’s Genocide of the Rohingya and Other Muslims?
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Nov 2012
The site of massive violence and arson of Rohingya and other Muslim neighborhood in Kyauk Hpyu happened to be the site where China is planning a Special Econ and Technological Zone. Why bother with mass eviction and typical Myanmar land grab when you have locally produced Genocide against the Rohingya and other Muslim inhabitants as a tool of ‘developmental policy’?
→ read full articleMyanmar Travel Reassurances to Westerners
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Oct 2012
President Thein Sein himself – incidentally, a very sincere, soft-spoken and harmless personality – has assured our Ministries that you will not hear gunshot fires, nor will you see boat loads of fleeing “Kulars or niggers” – much less their social media-circulated doctored images of mutilated corpses, charred belongings, and burnt houses. (Off the record: These damn human rights activists tend to sensationalize stories and exaggerate atrocities – it’s just another case of ethnic cleansing. We have other really important business in Myanmar: BUSINESS).
→ read full articleBurma/Myanmar: Did the Government Incite the Racial Violence Targeting the Rohingya?
Dr. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Oct 2012
Truthful reports by various inquiry commissions and missions can and will go a long way towards restoring a glimmer of hope in the world’s most persecuted minority community, if the investigators are able to get to the bottom of the recent large-scale racial violence, which left nearly 100,000 both homeless and hopeless.
→ read full article