A boat carrying more than 100 Rohingya refugees, including dozens of children, landed on the coast of Indonesia's westernmost province Aceh early Sunday, police said.The vessel, which sailed from a Rohingya camp in Bangladesh, arrived shortly after 3:00 am on a beach in Bireun district.It was carrying 114 people, including 58 men, 21 women and 35 children aged under 15 years old, police said."We will conduct a general health check-up and COVID-19 rapid antigen tests for these foreig

Myanmar hit out Monday at a genocide case brought against it by The Gambia for alleged persecution of Rohingya Muslims, urging the United Nations’ (UN) highest court to drop the claim on legal grounds.Banjul dragged Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019, accusing the predominantly Buddhist country of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority after a bloody 2017 military crackdown.When the case opened in December 2019 Aung San Suu Kyi personally represented Myanma

Rohingya refugees sued Facebook on Monday for US$150 billion over claims the social network is failing to stem hate speech on its platform, exacerbating violence against the vulnerable minority.The complaint, lodged in a California court, says the algorithms that power the United States-based company promote disinformation and extremist thought that translates to real-world violence."Facebook is like a robot programmed with a singular mission: to grow," the court document states.&qu

The United Nations (UN) on Tuesday appealed for US$943 million to cope with the Rohingya humanitarian crisis, fearing that a COVID outbreak in South Asia could reach refugee camps before vaccines do. The agency said the funds were needed urgently this year for nearly one million refugees from the Muslim minority who fled to Bangladesh from neighbouring Myanmar after a deadly crackdown in 2017.Most are crowded into squalid refugee camps, and the pandemic has rendered them even more vu

Five people are feared dead and at least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.Nearly one million of the Muslim minority from Myanmar - many of whom fled a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017 - live in cramped and squalid conditions at the camps in the Cox's Bazar district.Officials said the fire apparently started in one of the 34 cam

Malaysia on Tuesday deported more than 1,000 Myanmar detainees back to their strife-torn homeland just weeks after a coup, despite a court order halting the repatriation and a storm of criticism.The migrants, whom activists say include vulnerable asylum seekers, departed on three Myanmar navy ships from a Malaysian military base after arriving on packed trucks and buses under police escort.The United States (US), the United Nations (UN) and rights groups had criticised the plan, while hours b

Since the British declared independence of Burma in 1948, the Tatmadaw – Burmese Army – has been running modern-day Burma via coups and proxies.

Myanmar's military coup marks an early test case of President Joe Biden's determination to advocate democracy but, unlike a decade ago when the United States (US) nurtured a transition there, he has limited options.The rise of democracy in Myanmar had initially been hailed as a key achievement of former president Barack Obama, under whom Biden served as number two, representing an opening of a long-closed nation that had been in rival China's orbit.But Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar

19 Rohingya and a Thai woman accused of housing them have been arrested for illegal entry to Thailand, police said Saturday, as concerns grow about trafficking routes for the Muslim minority fleeing Myanmar.The embattled Rohingya have long faced persecution in Myanmar, where they are denied freedom of movement and citizenship, and lack access to work, healthcare and schools. A 2017 military crackdown in western Rakhine state sent almost 750,000 fleeing across the border to Bangladesh

From Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Rohingya are an ethnic community of largely Muslim people. Perhaps a million of them have fled from violence in the ASEAN member state in successive waves of displacement since the early 1990s. In 2017, hundreds of thousands more fled Myanmar to escape persecution, war crimes and alleged genocide. Today, over 900,000 Rohingya live in camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee settlement.