Populations Of Rohingya People
Myanmar1.0 – 1.3 million
Bangladesh - 670,000
Pakistan - 200,000
Thailand - 100,000
Malaysia - 40,070
India - 40,000
USA - 12,000
Indonesia - 11,941
Nepal - 200
UAE - 10,000
Saudi Arabia - 200,000
They have often been called the most persecuted minority in the world. The 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims squeezed precariously into the north-west state of Rakhine, in mainly Buddhist Burma, bordering majority Muslim Bangladesh, are stateless and unwanted.
They are an ethnic Muslim group who have lived for centuries in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. Currently, there are about 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims who live in the Southeast Asian country.
The Rohingya speak Rohingya or Ruaingga, a dialect that is distinct to others spoken in Rakhine State and throughout Myanmar. They are not considered one of the country's 135 official ethnic groups and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, which has effectively rendered them stateless.
Neither country will give them citizenship even though their families’ roots in modern-day Rakhine, once called Arakan, can be traced back to the Eighth Century.
Since World War Two they have been treated increasingly by Burmese authorities as illegal, interloping Bengalis, facing apartheid like conditions that deny them free movement or state education while government forces intermittently drive out and slaughter them.
Over the past year, military operations against Rohingya villages have been so intense and cruel that the minority’s defenders have warned of an unfolding genocide.
The United Nations has reported that the army may have committed ethnic cleansing.
The inhumane treatment of the Rohingyas has tarnished the image of Myanmar’s civilian leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, once a famously unflinching defender of human rights and darling of the West.
She now faces international fury, particularly from Muslim nations, for failing to stand up to armed forces chief General Min Aung Hlaing, whose soldiers are accused of rape, murder, arson, and of ripping Rohingya babies from their mothers’ arms and throwing them into rivers and fire.
Nearly all of the Rohingya in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine and are not allowed to leave without government permission. It is one the poorest states in the country with ghetto-like camps and a lack of basic services and opportunities.
Due to ongoing violence and persecution, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring countries either by land or boat over the course of many decades.
Muslims have lived in the area now known as Myanmar since as early as the 12th century, according to many historians and Rohingya groups.
The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation has said, "Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial," referring to the area now known as Rakhine.
During the more than 100 years of British rule (1824-1948), there was a significant amount of migration of labourers to what is now known as Myanmar from today's India and Bangladesh. Because the British administered Myanmar as a province of India, such migration was considered internal, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The migration of labourers was viewed negatively by the majority of the native population.
After independence, the government viewed the migration that took place during British rule as illegal, and it is on this basis that they refuse citizenship to the majority of Rohingya, HRW said in a 2000 report.
This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya as Bengali, rejecting the term Rohingya as a recent invention, created for political reasons.
Shortly after Myanmar's independence from the British in 1948, the Union Citizenship Act was passed, defining which ethnicities could gain citizenship. According to a 2015 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, the Rohingya were not included. The act, however, did allow those whose families had lived in Myanmar for at least two generations to apply for identity cards.
Rohingya were initially given such identification or even citizenship under the generational provision. During this time, several Rohingya also served in parliament.
After the 1962 military coup in Myanmar, things changed dramatically for the Rohingya. All citizens were required to obtain national registration cards. The Rohingya, however, were only given foreign identity cards, which limited the jobs and educational opportunities they could pursue and obtain.
In 1982, a new citizenship law was passed, which effectively rendered the Rohingya stateless. Under the law, Rohingya were again not recognised as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups. The law established three levels of citizenship.
In order to obtain the most basic level - naturalised citizenship, there must be proof that the person's family lived in Myanmar prior to 1948, as well as fluency in one of the national languages. Many Rohingya lack such paperwork because it was either unavailable or denied to them.
As a result of the law, their rights to study, work, travel, marry, practice their religion and access health services have been and continue to be restricted.
The Rohingya cannot vote and even if they jump through the citizenship test hurdles, they have to identify as naturalised as opposed to Rohingya, and limits are placed on them entering certain professions like medicine, law or running for office.
Since the 1970s, a number of crackdowns on the Rohingya in Rakhine State have forced hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, as well as Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries.
During such crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.
After the killings of nine border police in October 2016, troops started pouring into villages in Rakhine State.
The government blamed what it called fighters from an armed Rohingya group. The killings led to a security crackdown on villages where Rohingya lived.
During the crackdown, government troops were accused of an array of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killing, rape and arson allegations the government denied.
In November 2016, a UN official accused the government of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. It was not the first time such an accusation has been made.
In April 2013, for example, HRW said Myanmar was conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. The government has consistently denied such accusations.
Most recently, Myanmar's military has imposed a crackdown on the country's Rohingya population after police posts and an army base were attacked in late August.
Residents and activists have described scenes of troops firing indiscriminately at unarmed Rohingya men, women and children.
The government, however, has said nearly 100 people were killed after armed men from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched a raid on police outposts in the region.
Since the violence erupted, rights groups have documented fires burning in at least 10 areas of Myanmar's Rakhine State. More than 270,000 people have fled the violence, with thousands trapped in a no-man's land between the two countries, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
The UN has also said that hundreds of civilians who have tried to enter Bangladesh have been pushed back by patrols. Many have also been detained and forcibly returned to Myanmar.
Since the late 1970s, nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar due to widespread persecution.
According to the most recently available data from the United Nations in May, more than 168,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since 2012.
Following violence that broke out last year, more than 87,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from October 2016 to July 2017, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Many Rohingya also risked their lives trying to get to Malaysia by boat across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Between 2012 and 2015, more than 112,000 made the dangerous journey.
Prior to the violence that began in August, the UN estimated that there are as many as 420,000 Rohingya refugees in Southeast Asia. Additionally, it said there were around 120,000 internally displaced Rohingya.
Since the violence in Myanmar's northwest began, more than 270,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, UNHCR said. It added that more than 1,000 people, mostly Rohingya, may have been killed in Myanmar.
State Chancellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader of Myanmar, has refused to really discuss the plight of the Rohingya.
Aung San Suu Kyi and her government do not recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic group and have blamed violence in Rakhine, and subsequent military crackdowns, on those they call terrorists.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate does not have control over the military but has been criticised for her failure to condemn indiscriminate force used by troops, as well as to stand up for the rights of the more than one million Rohingya in Myanmar.
The government has also repeatedly rejected accusations of abuses.
In February 2017, the UN published a report that found that government troops very likely committed crimes against humanity since renewed military crackdowns began in October 2016.
At the time, the government did not directly address the findings of the report and said it had the the right to defend the country by lawful means against increasing terrorist activities, adding that a domestic investigation was enough.
In April, however, Aung San Suu Kyi said in a rare interview with the BBC that the phrase ethnic cleansing was too strong a term to describe the situation in Rakhine.
I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on, she said. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening.
In September 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi entrusted former UN chief Kofi Annan with finding ways to heal the long-standing divisions in the region.
While many welcomed the commission and its findings, which were released this August, Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy, argued it was just a way for Aung San Suu Kyi to pacify the global public opinion and try to demonstrate to the international community that she is doing what she can to resolve the issue.
Annan was not given the mandate to investigate specific cases of human rights abuses, but rather one for long-term economic development, education and healthcare.
When setting up the commission, Aung San Suu Kyi's government said it would abide by its findings. The commission urged the government to end the highly militarised crackdown on neighbourhoods where Rohingya live, as well as scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship.
Following the release of the August report, the government welcomed the commission's recommendations and said it would give the report full consideration with the view to carrying out the recommendations to the fullest extent in line with the situation on the ground.
On the latest round of violence, Aung San Suu Kyi condemned a huge iceberg of misinformatio" on the crisis, without mentioning the Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh.
The government has often restricted access to northern Rakhine States for journalists and aid workers. Aung San Suu Kyi's office has also accused aid groups of helping those it considers to be terrorists.
In January, Yanghee Lee, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said she was denied access to certain parts of Rakhine and was only allowed to speak to Rohingya who had been pre-approved by the government.
The country has also denied visas to members of a UN probe investigating the violence and alleged abuses in Rakhine.
There are nearly half a million Rohingya refugees living in mostly makeshift camps in Bangladesh. The majority remain unregistered.
Bangladesh considers most of those who have crossed its borders and are living outside of camps as having illegally infiltrated the country.
Bangladesh has often tried to prevent Rohingya refugees from crossing its border.
n late January, the country resurrected a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to a remote island that is prone to flooding and has also been called uninhabitable by rights groups.
Under the plan, which was originally introduced in 2015, authorities would move undocumented Myanmar nationals to Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal.
Rights groups have decried the proposal, saying the island completely floods during monsoon season. The UN also called the forced relocation very complex and controversial.
Most recently, the government in Bangladesh has reportedly proposed a joint military operation in Rakhine to aid Myanmar's battle against armed fighters in the area.
The foreign ministry has also expressed fear that the renewed violence will cause a new influx of refugees to cross its border.
The UN, as well as several rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have consistently decried the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar and neighbouring countries.
The UN has said that it is very likely that the military committed grave human rights abuses in Rakhine that may amount to war crimes, allegations the government denies.
In March, the UN adopted a resolution to set up an independent, international mission to investigate the alleged abuses. It stopped short of calling for a Commission of Inquiry, the UN's highest level of investigation.
The UN investigators must provide a verbal update in September and a full report next year on their findings.
Rights groups have criticised the government's reluctance to accept the UN investigators.
Human Rights Watch warned that Myanmar's government risked getting bracketed with pariah states like North Korea and Syria if it did not allow the UN to investigate alleged crimes.
Most recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, calling on Aung San Suu Kyi and the country's security forces to end the violence.
In early September, Guterres also warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe if the violence does not end.
UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein called the events in Rakhine deplorable.
It was predicted and could have been prevented, said Hussain, adding that decades of persistent and systematic human rights violations, including the very violent security responses to the attacks since October 2016, have almost certainly contributed to the nurturing of violent extremism, with everyone ultimately losing.
Both UN officials said they completely supported the findings of the advisory commission, led by Kofi Annan, and urged the government to fulfil its recommendations.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formerly known as the al-Yaqeen Faith Movement, released a statement under its new name in March 2017, saying it was obligated to defend, salvage and protect Rohingya community.
The group said it would do so with our best capacities as we have the legitimate right under international law to defend ourselves in line with the principle of self defence.
The group is considered a terrorist organisation by the Myanmar government.
In its March statement, the ARSA added that it does not associate with any terrorist group across the world and does not commit any form of terrorism against any civilians regardless of their religious and ethnic origin.
The statement also said: We declare loud and clear that our defensive attacks have only been aimed at the oppressive Burmese regime in accordance with international norms and principles until our demands are fulfilled.
The group has claimed responsibility for an attack on police posts and an army base in Rakhine State.
According to the government nearly 400 people were killed, the majority of whom were members of the ARSA. Rights groups, however, say hundreds of civilians have been killed by security forces.
Rights group Fortify Rights said it has documented that fighters with the ARSA are also accused of killing civilians suspected government informants in recent days and months, as well as preventing men and boys from flee Maungdaw Township.
According to the International Crisis group, the ARSA has ties to Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia.
The Myanmar government formally categorised the group as a terrorist organisation on August 25.
Even by the standards of a region that has seen more than its fair share of xenophobic violence, forced migrations and displacements, the grim plight of the Rohingya of Myanmar stands out as an abomination of the worst sort.
Here are a people who have lived for generations on what are now the borderlands of Myanmar and Bangladesh, both of which, in their present national forms, are relatively recent historical creations.
The Rohingya have been hounded out of the former, rendered non-citizens through legal machinations and treated poorly by the latter, which either tries to "push them back" or corrals them into ramshackle camps with poor accommodation, hygiene and little access to healthcare or education for children.
There are now resurrected plans, denounced by Human Rights Watch as "cruel and unworkable", to relocate them to Thengar Char, an undeveloped coastal island that floods regularly.
The Rohingya, whose very existence has been denied by the Myanmar state, have also sought - and been refused - shelter in Southeast Asian countries, after risking dangerous journeys on the high seas, which many did not survive.
Some of the leaders of these nations rightly identify Islamophobia as a contributing factor to the Rohingya's misery, but are less eager to offer refuge. Only a small number have been accommodated in India.
A United Nations report, which came out earlier this month, offers a scathing indictment of all concerned, noting, perhaps with a touch of understatement, the "devastating cruelty" to which the Rohingya people, children in particular, have been subjected.
Whole areas of Rohingya habitation have been burned to the ground, while women have been gang-raped by Myanmar's security forces as well as Rakhine civilian vigilantes.
The Rohingya have been subjected to regular massacres, including of their babies. Their mobility has been severely restricted and severe malnourishment is rife.
They have also been subjected to draconian marriage and childbearing regulations intended to curb their numbers. The word "persecution" is wholly inadequate to describing a population which is clearly being targeted for systematic elimination from the body politic of Myanmar.
While Desmond Tutu has already called the situation a "slow genocide", and the Simon-Skjodt Centre for Prevention of Genocide has raised the alarm, noting carefully that "many preconditions for genocide are already in place", big global actors have steadfastly refused to use the term, which would then trigger the international Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.
It is fair to say that a world, which was riveted by the spectacle of a beautiful woman under long years of house arrest in that country, has chosen to discreetly avert its eyes from the ongoing systematic persecution, and, barring a few retaliatory actions, one-sided bloodshed.
Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi herself, who is now Myanmar's elected civilian leader, has either remained silent on the worsening situation or - scandalously and unforgivably - participated in official denials issued from the military, charging critics with focusing on the "negative side".
We rightly denounce those who deny past genocides, yet surely those in a position to observe and act but still deny the fact of ongoing ethnic cleansing accompanied by stigmatisation and dehumanising laws are even more culpable?
No religion, of course, would admit to violence being sanctioned in its scriptures but there is something especially depraved about Buddhist monks inciting violence, manifestly violating the Buddha's unambiguous repudiation of hatred as a form of relating to others.
Ashin Wirathu, the rabid hate preacher who has repeatedly incited attacks on the Rohingya, can plausibly be listed as one of the world's great terrorists.
What of the land of the Buddha's birth? India, the major South Asian player, critical of Myanmar's military junta in the past, now chooses to undertake a "pragmatic engagement" with it, which includes selling military hardware.
India certainly has one eye on Myanmar's considerable oil and natural gas reserves as well as its expanding market, but its softly-softly approach in the face of impending genocide is heavily tied up with the fear of the increasing influence in the region of China, not a nation known for an interest in human rights.
The two countries are involved in a race for resources and markets while the Indian state seeks bulwarks against China's militarisation of the Indian Ocean. There is reason to fear what may turn out to be a competitive regional and global silence on the fate of the Rohingya.
India has suggested that the matter is an "internal affair" for Myanmar, the stock phrase that has enabled it to refuse international scrutiny of some of its own more questionable policies.
Setting aside the question of whether anything can be strictly an internal affair in these global times, there is one important historical strand that India should not ignore: the stigmatisation and rejection of the Rohingya and the attempts to push them westwards into the Indian subcontinent draws on anti-Indian racism,a long-standing hatred and sanctioned racism against those perceived to be of Indian descent, disliked for being favoured by the British colonial rulers.
Vilified in explicitly racist terms as dark-skinned Bengalis, the Rohingya are falsely described as post-Independence migrants from East Bengal who should be returned there.
Of course, the stark fact is that the Rohingya - a term that Myanmar refuses to use as part of denying them legitimacy - are explicitly persecuted as a Muslim minority. For the current Indian regime, with its heavily Hindu support base, there is little to gain by coming to the vocal defence of adherents of Islam.
This is in obvious contrast to its vocal calls for protection for Hindu minorities targeted by Islamists and majoritarians in Bangladesh, and the manifestly politicised moves to offer Indian citizenship to Pakistani minorities.
However, now that the danger of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group preying on the situation to establish a base in South Asia has been raised, there are stirrings in the Indian media, with editorials calling for more attention to be paid to the Rohingya situation as a security problem.
Last October, insurgents alleged to be Rohingya managed to kill nine Myanmar border guards, an act that has brought an even more vigorous and brutal counterinsurgency or "clearance" operation to the area.
The danger of Islamist radicalisation on its doorstep has certainly garnered more interest in India than the ongoing scandal of systematic ethnic cleansing.
If it continues to espouse any formal commitment to democracy and pluralism, India cannot remain silent on what is happening in West Myanmar or simply treat it as a strategic concern. A persecuted, effectively stateless and hounded people like the Rohingya make moral claims on all of us.
Rather than just pandering to the manifestly brutal and authoritarian military, India - and other South Asian nations - should be unambiguous in their condemnation of the bloodletting and ravaging being visited upon an entire population.
Above all it is time for India, along with other international players, to engage more robustly with Suu Kyi and put enormous pressure on her to undertake her primary duty: bringing the people of Myanmar back on to the true democratic path - and the only genuinely Buddhist one - of humane co-existence.
For in the misery of the Rohingya is writ large the great battle of our times: that between the lethal forces of populist bigotry and the lifegiving ones of actual democracy.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya are fleeing for their lives as the Burmese military engages in a scorched earth policy against Rohingya civilians. My organisation, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, has confirmed more than 1,000 deaths so far, but the figure is probably much higher. More than 10,000 homes have been burned or destroyed, as have shops and businesses.
The military is systematically going from village to village, looting and destroying everything. They leave nothing behind. There is nothing for Rohingya to return to.
The question one will ask over and over again by my Rohingya brothers and sisters in Burma is, how can this be allowed to happen again?
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, has described what is happening now in Rakhine State, Burma as predicted and preventable. History is repeating itself, but on a more horrific scale.
Last October, attacks on police stations by a new armed Rohingya organisation, now calling itself the Arakan (Arakan is another name used for Rakhine State) Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), triggered a major military operation in which hundreds were killed, villages were destroyed, and mass rape of Rohingya women took place.
The United Nations described what took place as possible crimes against humanity, and the Human Rights Council established a Fact Finding Mission to investigate. The government of Burma is refusing to allow them into the country.
It was always feared that more attacks by ARSA would lead to a new offensive by the military, and that is what happened on August 25. As in 2016, the military offensive is not targeting ARSA, it is targeting civilians, with mass killings of civilians and destruction of civilian property.
We had hope that when a new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2016, things would change. Instead, she kept all the laws and policies which oppress us in place. She even kept in place restrictions on aid to Rohingya living in camps since their homes were destroyed by attacks in 2012. Those restrictions kill children and leave others stunted and malnourished.
One positive step by the government was the establishment of a commission chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. However, it excluded any Rohingya from being members and had a limited mandate, not being allowed to look at human rights violations last week.
At times, it seemed like a delaying tactic and was used as an excuse by the government for delays in changing policy and refusing to allow in the UN investigators. Last week, it did put forward some positive proposals, which the government accepted.
However, at the same time as Aung San Suu Kyi was talking about implementing the recommendations, her office and government were doing the opposite of what the report recommended, using social media and state media to whip up fears and tensions against Rohingya.
Her government has even gone so far as to imply the UN and other international aid agencies are helping what the government called extremist Bengali terrorists. Stirring up pre-existing allegations some Rakhine nationalists have made in this way puts aid workers at risk of attacks and risks stopping delivery of life-saving aid to vulnerable people, including tens of thousands of children.
When the military launched its operation against us in October 2016 instead of trying to protect us, Aung San Suu Kyi's government launched a propaganda offensive defending the military and denying human rights violations were happening. Flashing "Fake Rape" signs were on her Facebook page and website. The UN later confirmed the most horrific details of mass rape of Rohingya women.
Aung San Suu Kyi used to be our only hope for changing policies and attitudes towards the Rohingya. With that hope gone, we looked towards the international community for help, but they also failed us.
Despite the establishment in March of the investigation by the UN into possible crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese military against Rohingya, and possible crimes against humanity and war crimes against other ethnic groups, no pressure has been put on the military. In fact, the opposite has happened.
In Europe and Asia, Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military, is given red carpet treatment as an honoured guest. The EU has an arms embargo against Burma, but European companies are still supplying the military with other equipment.
As the international community is trying to sell him equipment instead of trying to prosecute him for violating international law, it is no surprise that he has now confidently ordered a new offensive against my people. Within Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi protects him. He knows he can act with impunity and my people pay the price.
As this new military offensive continues we will start to get many more horrific eye-witness testimonies of atrocities committed by the military - of rape, torture, babies and children being killed. All, as the UN human rights head has said, were preventable.
A major change in approach is needed by the international community if we are ever going to stop this cycle of violence against the Rohingya. The government of Burma needs to be told that international support and finance is conditional on a major change in policy towards the Rohingya.
Propaganda and incitement of hatred and violence against Rohingya must stop, discriminatory laws and policies must go, the recommendations of Kofi Annan's commission must be implemented immediately and in full.
Policy must change towards the military must change as well. A visa ban should be in place for military personnel, instead of red carpet visits. There must be engagement, but it must be critical engagement on human rights and democracy, no more training and cooperation between militaries. Sanctions should be considered against military owned companies.
When the UN fact-finding mission makes its report in March next year, its recommendations to hold those responsible for violence accountable, and ending impunity, must be acted upon.
The situation of the Rohingya in Burma can be resolved if the political will is there. It won't be easy but it can be done. The only alternative to action is letting us be killed. Letting Rohingya be killed has been the approach of the international community so far. There is no sign of that changing.
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