Newcastle Upon Tyne: The first city to erect a genocide memorial monument for Myanmar’s Rohingya survivors

Banner: Rohingya community members, with Lord Mayor of Newcastle, and other supporters including the Council Man Habib Rahman at the Rohingya Genocide Monument (photo by BROUK).

This past Sunday, 12 April 2026, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England became the world’s first city to erect a monument in recognition of a grave crime under both Myanmar and international law, which Rohingya people have suffered at the hands of their own countrymen and women, led by the military country-state over the last almost half-century.

It is fitting for the 2,000-years’ old city of with its rich history, to recognize that what Myanmar’s historically conscious Rohingya have suffered at the hands of the country’s ruling military, political parties and predominantly Buddhist civil society is nothing short of a textbook genocide.

The black granite memorial stone with its inlaid diamond-shaped map of Myanmar, with the red-coloured ancestral land of Rohingya – known as Arakan – took its historic place immediately adjacent to the Rwandan genocide monument in the city’s Peace Park.

Several steps away from Rohingya and Rwanda genocide monuments stands another genocide monument, recognizing the Nazi genocide of Roma and Sinti people.

Post-Holocaust German politicians – and political class – have claimed Israel to be Germany’s Straatraison/Raison d’Etat, but had, for several decades, shamefully ignored non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, specifically Roma and Sinti, after Auschwitz was closed by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.

So, I was pleased to see a dignified manner with which this old English city honoured the memories of Roma and Sinti people at the Civic Centre.

The monument in recognition of the crime of genocide which Rohingya have been subjected to reads:

“In memory of the Rohingya lives lost to Genocide, and the homeland taken from them. These memorial honours those we lost, and those forced to flee. We honour your strength. We fight for your justice.”

The city’s move to formally recognize Myanmar’s crime against Rohingya as an identity-based people with deep root in Western Myanmar, before Myanmar ever became a post-colonial nation-state, was morally courageous and intellectually sound.

Following the genocidal expulsion and destruction of Rohingya people from Western Myanmar under the democratically elected leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2016 and 2017, the city had demonstrated its moral clarity by stripping Myanmar Nobel Peace Prize winner of its civic honour.

(See Burmese leader set to lose freedom of Newcastle, Belfast Telegraph, 29 January 2018)

Given the deeply discouraging international context regarding justice for Rohingya, the city’s genocide recognition and the accompanying moral pledge to support the Rohingyas’ quest for justice makes it ever-more more meaningful for the Rohingya survivors both in UK and in the diaspora, including the 1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh’s camps.

The world’s highest court of UN member states – the International Court of Justice – moves at a snail pace: the ICJ has only a few months ago completed its Merit Phase (that is, evidence and counter-evidence hearings), in Gambia vs. Myanmar genocide case. In December 2019, that is, six years ago, the State of Gambia brought the case against a fellow signatory state of “state party”, Myanmar, for allegedly breaching the treaty obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (or ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member state have chosen not to even consider the genocidal nature of the crimes against Rohingya people and have sought to frame it as “a humanitarian issue” with a cross-border consequences for Southeast Asian region.

The act of unveiling this historic monument in recognition of Rohingya genocide accompanied by a pledge to “fight for your justice” was made possible by the City Council. The effort was led by the Bangladeshi-born council member and rights activist Mr Habib Rahman, in collaboration with his activist group Rohingya Action North East (RANE), Bradford Rohingya Community (BRC) and the London-based Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK).

My scholar colleague and wife Natalie Brinham and I felt very privileged and honoured to have been a part of this historic event.

To be sure, genocide recognition is no substitute for the actual return to Rohingya’s ancestral homeland of Arakan (called Rakhine state today) of Western Myanmar.

Natlie’s address is below –

 

But as I pointed out in my brief address at the ceremony on Sunday, when multilateral institutions and national governments who have failed to uphold international law and protect the weak, the vulnerable and the persecuted We the People at different levels must band together as moral communities and do everything in their/our power to speak out, stand with and otherwise support justice and right-seekers.

ZARNI’S address is below –

 

It was moving to hear Sirazul Islam, a young Rohingya lawyer-in-training from the city of Bradford, talk about how he could hold his head high as a Rohingya, as a result of Newcastle’s recognition of both Rohingya identity and waves of genocidal crime he and his ethnic community had suffered since the late 1970’s.

From the podium, he repeated, with detectable passions, “I exist! I exist as a Rohingya. No one can take my identity away from me.”

His father, in his 70’s, fled the first wave of genocidal expulsion under Myanmar’s official pretext of sting operations against “illegal immigration” in 1978. He was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh and immigrated to the United Kingdom during his childhood.

Video below, Tun Khin (Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK) and a plaintiff in Argentina’s Universal Jurisdiction crimes against humanity case against Myanmar genocidal leaders including ex-Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, now “elected President” and Aung San Suu Kyi.”

 

Amongst the speakers who came to offer their solidarity was a survivor of Rwandan genocide in 1994 during which nearly 1 million Tutsi (and many were ethnically mixed) were slaughtered within 100-days.

She said, “when we Rwandan refugees in Newcastle go to sleep, the Rwanda Memorial stone in Peace Park keep on telling our stories”. She meant stories of sufferings, pains, resilience and revival.

The closing speaker, a Palestinian refugee who leads the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Northeast England, recounted his own personal loss and informed all of us that the city is preparing to extend its solidarity to Palestinians as they seek genocide recognition and justice.

Maung Zarni

Further Readings:

World ‘s first permanent Rohingya memorial unveiled in Newcastle, Tyneside World News, 12 April 2026
ရိုဟင်ဂျာ အထိမ်းအမှတ်ကျောက်တိုင် နယူးကာဆယ်မှာ စိုက်ထူ
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2026/04/13/newcastle-unveils-worlds-first-permanent-rohingya-memorial/
https://www.asianstandard.co.uk/newcastle-unveils-worlds-first-permanent-rohingya-memorial/