About 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought shelter in Bangladesh since violence erupted in Myanmar two weeks ago, the UN says. A spokeswoman said the jump – up from 164,000 on Thursday – was because new pockets of people had been found. She called the figure “so alarming” and said urgent action was needed to address the situation in Myanmar. Those fleeing say Myanmar’s military are burning their villages and attacking […]

Myanmar’s Union Election Commission (UEC) on Wednesday announced that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has won Sunday’s general election and has been re-elected to the House of Representatives (Lower House). Representing her National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the party chairperson, contested in Yangon’s Kawhmu constituency mainly against rival U Kyaw Zin Hein, candidate of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), reported […]

  There has been a huge amount of chest thumping about the recent strikes by the Indian army on two rebel hideouts on Indo-Myanmar border. In what was popularly considered as a retaliatory attack by the Indian army against last week’s gruesome strike on army personnel in Manipur, the surgical elimination of rebel groups operating out of Myanmar surely deserves the accolades. However what I am not sure is whether […]

  YANGON, Myanmar — A bar manager from New Zealand and two Burmese men were sentenced to two years in prison in Myanmar on Tuesday for posting an image online of the Buddha wearing headphones, an effort to promote an event. The court in Yangon said the image denigrated Buddhism and was a violation of Myanmar’s religion act, which prohibits insulting, damaging or destroying religion. “It is clear the act […]

Authorities have imposed a curfew in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, following nights of deadly communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims. Two people have been killed and 14 injured since rioting erupted Tuesday, Col. Aung Kyaw Moe, Mandalay’s Region border affairs and Security Minister tells CNN. The rioting began when a mob began attacking a tea shop owned by a Muslim man accused of raping a Buddhist woman, and continued the […]

With tears running down his cheeks, a Buddhist fisherman from Myanmar told how he was living in fear after his friends were beaten to death by Muslim Rohingya in a brutal attack at an Indonesian detention centre. “There were too few guards and they just  couldn’t get into the block” when violence erupted last week, a clearly traumatised Soe Paing said at the overcrowded, two-storey building on Sumatra island.   “It took ages […]