Rohingya activist with the Canadian delegation Ko Tinmaung is among the 100 activists who were abducted by Israeli terrorist group known as the Israeli Defence Force mid morning on Monday.

Before his abduction he recorded a brief message on the two parallel and ongoing genocides by Myanmar and Israel in order to educate his own fellow Rohingya refugees in refugee camps in Bangladesh and those caged and abused by Arakan Army inside Myanmar.

He sent FORSEA the recording a few hours before the Israeli terrorists in uniform boarded his boat Umut about 70 nautical miles past Cyprus.

Forsea co-founder Dr Maung Zarni said, ” by joining the Sumud Flottila Ko Tinmaung has demonstrated what a refugee and a member of a genocidally persecuted ethnic community can do as an act of solidarity and principled activism with other wretched of earth.” He added, “so many Rohingyas and Myanmar people take pride in his risky attempt to be a part of a collective action to break Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza.” Ko Tinmaung was reading Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial classic Black Skin, White Mask aboard Umut, before his abduction.

Day One: 16 May 2026 from “Ko Tinmaung from Akyab, currently living in Tkaronto”.

See below – link to @aljazeeraenglish on Instagram: Israeli forces have intercepted multiple vessels from the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, under the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ⁠At least 100 activists have reportedly been arrested, in what has been condemned as ‘piracy’. https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYfNR1aiqrH/

Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of Türkiye, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan and Spain

Visit the Sumud Global Flotilla website for live updates

Posted by Maung Zarni

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide. He is the co-author (with Natalie Brinham) of the pioneering study, "The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas" (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, Spring 2014) and "Reworking the Colonial-Era Indian Peril: Myanmar’s State-Directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims" (The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall/Winter 2017/18).

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