“When Disunity Cost Us a Future: A Lesson from the 2006 Rohingya Registration in Malaysia”

“The Missed Ship: How Division Sank the Rohingya Registration Effort in 2006”

We cannot change the past — but we can change ourselves. Let us turn lessons from 2006 into the foundation of a united future for all Muslims from Myanmar.

A heartfelt appeal to all Myanmar Muslims and Rohingyas to embrace unity in diversity — learning from a missed opportunity that could have changed countless lives.

Past mistakes cannot be undone, but they can light our way — if we stand together as one Ummah.

A Letter to All Our Divided Brothers and Sisters from Myanmar — Especially Among the Myanmar Muslims (Pathis) and Rohingyas

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Assalamu Alaikum.

It deeply saddens me to see that not only are Myanmar Muslims divided today, but even our Rohingya brothers and sisters have become fragmented. Recently, after the UNGA Rohingya Conference, we witnessed the emergence of two major groups — a sign of how much disunity has taken root among us.

My humble message is simple: let us embrace unity in diversity.
We must accept that our people — from different regions, backgrounds, sects, and political views — can and must still work together for one shared purpose: the well-being of all Muslims from Myanmar.

Our guiding principle should be:
All for One, and One for All.

We need unity.
We need cooperation.
We need forgiveness and understanding.

Even if we disagree, there is no need to publicly denounce others. If we cannot participate in certain projects, we can simply step aside — but we should still find ways to support or collaborate indirectly for the common good. Remember, it is often impossible to change others — but we can change our own mindset and approach toward them.

And yes, I remind myself before reminding others: change must begin within.
We must learn to accept diversity — in appearance, thinking, sect, ethnicity, and culture. Let us even find ways to engage or work with those who were once our rivals, if doing so helps advance our shared objectives and community welfare.

Please also take note of a painful lesson from the past. In 2006, the Malaysian government initiated a registration program to allow Rohingyas to stay and work legally in Malaysia. Unfortunately, after some Rohingya groups objected and accused the immigration authorities of corruption, the initiative was halted — and has never resumed. That opportunity could have changed thousands of lives, as similar IMM13 permits have been used for decades by other communities from the Philippines and Indonesia in East Malaysia.

Because of internal disunity and mistrust, our Rohingya brothers and sisters missed that precious opportunity — they missed the ship, the helicopter, the last chance to safety.

Let us not repeat that mistake.

The Myanmar Muslim Network News (MMNN) now wishes to bring together representatives of all Rohingya and Myanmar Muslim groups for an open and respectful Zoom meeting.
If you are willing to join hands for unity and practical collaboration, please contact my good friend Ko Aung San Oo for details.

May Allah guide us towards unity, wisdom, and mutual respect.
May He help us rise above our divisions for the sake of our people and our faith.

With prayers and hope,

Dr Ko Ko Gyi @ Abdul Rahman Zafrudin

Note to Readers

The following is a historical document — a letter signed by 26 Rohingya representatives and sent to the Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) in 2006.

At that time, the Malaysian Government had initiated a registration program to allow Rohingyas to stay and work legally in Malaysia. However, soon after this letter of objection and the accompanying press conference were made public, the entire registration initiative was suspended — and it has never been revived since.

I share this letter not to condemn or shame anyone, but as a lesson for all of us.
It is a reminder that disunity, mistrust, and internal conflict can destroy even the best opportunities given by friendly governments or well-meaning supporters.

Let us learn from the past, forgive one another, and work hand in hand — with wisdom, patience, and unity — for the collective good of all Muslims from Myanmar, including our Rohingya brothers and sisters.

May Allah guide us toward cooperation and protect us from division.

DARZKKG]
For Myanmar Muslim Network News (MMNN)

I deleted the names and signature of 34 Rohingya leaders.

Please read this…

ကွီး ဆိတ်

မန္တလေး၊ရန်ကုန်ရှိ အစလဘာသာဝင်များသတိ ထားနေထိုင်သင့်။

စကမ မွေးထားသော မဘက မျိုးညစ်များ ပျူ များ

က အစလဘာသာ ဝင် ဘလီ တွေ Phyat။ Mee ရှို့ ။ စတဲ့ ကုလား နဲ့ မဘသ ။ပျူ အထိကရုဏ်းဖန်တီးကြပါလိမ့်မယ်။ မဘသ ထဲက ဖရဲသီးကလဲ ဒါကိုသတိပေးဖို့ပြောလာနေတာပါ ။

ပျူတွေကို လက်နှက်ပေးထားပြီး။အချို့သော မဘသ ဘုန်းတော်ကြီးကျောင်းတွေ မှာလက် နှက် ‌တွေ ဝယ် ပြီး ဝှက်သိမ်းထားတာအများကြီးရှိပါတယ်။

ဦးဝီရသူလို အစွန်းရောက် တွေ ကဒါကိုသေခြာစီစဉ်နေတာပါ။

ပါဝင်သောသူများ

၁။ စစ်မှုထမ်းဟောင်းများ။

၂။လူမိုက်များ။

၃။မဘသများ

ဒီလူတွေက အဓိက ဦးစီးလုပ်နေတာရှိပါတယ်။ ဒါကလည်း စကမက အင်အားမရှိ၍ ပျူ /မဘသ တွေ အားကိုးနေကြရချိန် ဒါကိုအခွင့်အရေးယူ အစလ နှိပ်ကွတ်ရေး လုပ်ကြဖို့ မဘသ အုပ်စုက Zoom,တွေ လုပ်ကြတဲ့သတင်းတွေလဲ ရှိပါတယ်။

ခေါင်းစဉ်ပြလုပ်တာကတော့ နေပြည်တော်မြို့မှာဗလီကျောင်းဆောက်တဲ့ပြဿနာကို အခြေပြုတာပါဘဲ။

သတိထားနေကြဖိုပါ။ သတင်းပေးသူမှ အထောက်အထားခိုင်လုံစွာဖြင့်ပေးပို့လာပါတယ်။

အစလ အများစုက တော်လှန်ရေးပါဝင်သူနည်းပါတယ် ရှိတော့ရှိတယ်။ရှားပါတယ်။အနေ ချောင်သလိုနေကြရင်း အာဏာရှင် ကသူ့ လက်ကိုင်တုတ်များအားထိမ်းမနိုင်သိမ်းမရဖြစ်ပြီးအစလ တွေ ခံကြရမှာပါ။