Dfyjkt

Rohingya people

Ruáingga رُاَࣺينڠَ
Total population
1,547,778[1]–2,000,000+[2]
Regions with significant populations
Bangladesh, Myanmar (Rakhine State), Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, India, United States, Indonesia, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
Bangladesh	1,300,000+ (March 2018)[3]
Saudi Arabia	500,000 (October 2017)[4]
Myanmar	~400,000 (November 2017)[5]
Pakistan	350,000 (October 2017)[6]
Malaysia	150,000 (October 2017)[6]
UAE	50,000 (December 2017)[6]
India	40,000 (September 2017)[7][8]
United States	12,000+ (September 2017)[9]
Thailand	5,000 (October 2017)[10]
Indonesia	1,000 (October 2017)[10]
Japan	300 (May 2018)[11]
Nepal	200 (September 2017)[12]
Canada	200 (September 2017)[13]
Ireland	104 (December 2017)[14]
Sri Lanka	36 (June 2017)[15]
Languages
Rohingya
Religion
Islam (majority) Hinduism (minority)

This article is part of a series on the
Rohingya people
History
Arakan Bengal Sultanate Kingdom of Mrauk U Arakan Division Mayu Frontier District Indo-Aryan peoples Islam in Myanmar
Society
Culture Diaspora Homeland (Rohang) The people Rohingya language
Personalities
Abu Dhar Azzam Abul Khair Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi Chit Lwin Ebrahim Fazal Ahmed Gani Markan M. A. Gaffar Nur Ahmed Nurul Islam Shamsul Anwarul Huq Sultan Ahmed Sultan Mahmud Zura Begum
Conflict and Persecution
Background Myanmar nationality law Human rights in Myanmar Persecution of Muslims in Myanmar 2008 Constitution Events Arakan massacres in 1942 2012 Rakhine State riots 2013 anti-Muslim riots persecution 2016 2017 massacres Chut Pyin Gu Dar Pyin Inn Din Maung Nu Tula Toli Rohingya conflict Northern Rakhine State clashes Organisations Arakan Rohingya National Organisation Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army Democracy and Human Rights Party Rohingya Football Club Rohingya National Council Rohingya Solidarity Organisation Response U.S. resolution International reactions to the 2016–18 Rohingya persecution Category Commons
v t e

The Rohingya people (/roʊˈɪndʒə, -hɪn-, -ɪŋjə/) are a stateless^[16]Indo-Aryan ethnic group who reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). There were an estimated 1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis.^[1][17] By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.^[18] The majority are Muslim while a minority are Hindu.^{[19][20][21][22][23]} Described by the United Nations in 2013 as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world,^[24][25][26] the Rohingya population is denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law.^[27][28][29] According to Human Rights Watch, the 1982 laws "effectively deny to the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring a nationality". Despite being able to trace Rohingya history to the 8th century, Myanmar law does not recognize the ethnic minority as one of the eight "national indigenous races".^[29] They are also restricted from freedom of movement, state education and civil service jobs.^[29][30] The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been widely compared to apartheid^{[31][32][33][34]} by many international academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist.^[35]

The Rohingya have faced military crackdowns in 1978, 1991–1992,^[36]2012, 2015, 2016–2017 and particularly in 2017-2018, when most of the Rohingya population of Myanmar was driven out of the country, into neighboring Bangladesh.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42]}

UN officials and HRW have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing.^[43][44] The UN human rights envoy to Myanmar reported "the long history of discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya community... could amount to crimes against humanity",^[45] and there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide.^[46]Yanghee Lee, the UN special investigator on Myanmar, believes the country wants to expel its entire Rohingya population.^[47]

The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals and Portuguese. The community claims it is descended from people in precolonial Arakan and colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Rohingya legislators were elected to the Parliaments of Myanmar until persecution increased in the late-20th century. Despite accepting the term Rohingya in the past,^[48][49] the current official position of the Myanmar government is that Rohingyas are not a national "indigenous race", but are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar's government has stopped recognizing the term "Rohingya" and prefers to refer to the community as "Bengalis".^[50] Rohingya campaign groups, notably the Arakan Rohingya National Organization, demand the right to "self-determination within Myanmar".^[51]

Probes by the UN have found evidence of increasing incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by "ultra-nationalist Buddhists" against Rohingyas while the Myanmar security forces have been conducting "summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and forced labour" against the community.^[52][53] According to the UN, the human rights violations against the Rohingyas are "crimes against humanity".^[53][54]

Before the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis and the military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.0 to 1.3 million,^{[17][55][56][1][57]} chiefly in the northern Rakhine townships, which were 80–98% Rohingya.^[58] Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to southeastern Bangladesh alone,^[59] and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations.^{[60][61][62][63][64]} More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.^[65][66] Shortly before a Rohingya rebel attack that killed 12 security forces, 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military had launched "clearance operations" against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state^[67][68] that left over 3,000 dead, many more injured, tortured or raped, villages burned.

Nomenclature

The modern term Rohingya emerged from colonial and pre-colonial terms Rooinga and Rwangya.^[69] The Rohingya refer to themselves as Ruáingga /ɾuájŋɡa/. In Burmese they are known as rui hang gya (following the MLC Transcription System) (Burmese: ရိုဟင်ဂျာ /ɹòhɪ̀ɴd͡ʑà/) while in Bengali they are called Rohingga (Bengali: রোহিঙ্গা /ɹohiŋɡa/). The term "Rohingya" may come from Rakhanga or Roshanga, the words for the state of Arakan. The word Rohingya would then mean "inhabitant of Rohang", which was the early Muslim name for Arakan.^[70][71][72]Andrew Tan argues it comes from the Arabic word Raham (God's blessing) and speculates that early Muslims in Arakan referred to themselves as "God's blessed people".^[73]

The usage of the term Rohingya has been historically documented prior to the British Raj. In 1799, Francis Buchanan wrote an article called "A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire", which was found and republished by Michael Charney in the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research in 2003.^[74][75][76] Among the native groups of Arakan, he wrote are the: "Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan."^[74] The Classical Journal of 1811 identified "Rooinga" as one of the languages spoken in the "Burmah Empire". In 1815, Johann Severin Vater listed "Ruinga" as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in German.^[77]

In 1936, when Burma was still under British rule, the "Rohingya Jam’iyyat al Ulama" was founded in Arakan.^{[78][79][note 1]}

According to Jacques Leider, the Rohingya were referred to as "Chittagonians" during the British colonial period, and it was not controversial to refer to them as "Bengalis" until 1990s.^[82] Leider also states that "there is no international consensus" on the use of the term Rohingya, as they are often called "Rohingya Muslims", "Muslim Arakanese" and "Burmese Muslims".^{[83][note 2]} Others, such as anthropologist Christina Fink, use Rohingya not as an ethnic identifier but as a political one.^[84] Leider believes the Rohingya is a political movement that started in the 1950s to create "an autonomous Muslim zone" in Rakhine.^[85]

The government of Prime Minister U Nu, when Burma was a democracy from 1948–1962, used the term "Rohingya".^[86] When the Mayu Frontier District was created covering Rohingya-majority areas, the term "Rohingya" was recognized by the Burmese government. The term was broadcast on Burmese radio and was used in the speeches of Burmese rulers.^[49] A UNHCR report on refugees caused by Operation King Dragon referred to the victims as "Bengali Muslims (called Rohingyas)".^[87] Nevertheless, the term Rohingya wasn't widely used until the 1990s.^[86][87][88]

Today the use of the name "Rohingya" is polarized. The government of Myanmar refuses to use the name.^[86] In the 2014 census, the Myanmar government forced the Rohingya to identify themselves as "Bengali".^[89] Many Rohingya see the denial of their name similar to denying their basic rights,^[90] and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar has agreed.^[45] Jacques Leider writes that many Muslims in Rakhine simply prefer to call themselves "Muslim Arakanese" or "Muslims coming from Rakhine" instead of "Rohingya".^[83][76][91] The United States embassy in Yangon continues to use the name "Rohingya".^[89]

History

Islam by country
Africa Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Congo Republic Côte d'Ivoire DR Congo Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Eswatini Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda São Tomé and Príncipe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa South Sudan Sudan Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Western Sahara Zambia Zimbabwe
Asia Afghanistan Armenia Bahrain Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Cambodia China East Timor Georgia Hong Kong India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Korea Kyrgyzstan Kuwait Laos Lebanon Macau Maldives Malaysia Mongolia Myanmar Nepal Oman Pakistan Palestine Philippines Qatar Saudi Arabia Singapore Sri Lanka Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tibet Thailand Turkmenistan United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen
Americas Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Bahamas Barbados Belize Bolivia Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador French Guiana Grenada Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent Suriname Trinidad and Tobago United States Uruguay Venezuela
Europe Albania Andorra Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kosovo Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Soviet Union
Oceania Australia Cocos Islands Fiji Guam Kiribati Marshall Islands Micronesia Nauru New Caledonia New Zealand Northern Mariana Palau Papua New Guinea Samoa Solomon Islands Tonga Tuvalu Vanuatu
Islam portal
v t e

Early history

The Rohingya population is concentrated in the historical region of Arakan, an old coastal country of Southeast Asia.
It is not clear who the original settlers of Arakan were. Burmese nationalist claims that the Rakhine inhabited Arakan since 3000 BCE are not supported by any archaeological evidence. By the 4th century, Arakan became one of the earliest Indianized kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The first Arakanese state flourished in Dhanyawadi. Power then shifted to the city of Waithali. Sanskrit inscriptions in the region indicate that the founders of the first Arakanese states were Indian. Arakan was ruled by the Chandra dynasty.^[92] The British historian Daniel George Edward Hall stated that "The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly as late as the tenth century CE. Hence earlier dynasties are thought to have been Indian, ruling over a population similar to that of Bengal. All the capitals known to history have been in the north near modern Akyab".^[93]

Arrival of Islam (7th–9th centuries)

Due to its coastline on the Bay of Bengal, Arakan was a key center of maritime trade and cultural exchange between Burma and the outside world, since the time of the Indian Mauryan Empire.^[94] According to Syed Islam – a political science scholar, the Arab merchants had been in contact with Arakan since the third century, using the Bay of Bengal to reach Arakan.^[73] A southern branch of the Silk Road connected India, Burma, and China since the neolithic period.^[95][96] Arab traders are recorded in the coastal areas of southeast Bengal, bordering Arakan, since the 9th century.^[97] The Rohingya population trace their history to this period.^[98]

According to Syed Islam, the earliest Muslim settlements in the Arakan region began in the 7th-century. The Arab traders were also missionaries and they began converting the local Buddhist population to Islam by about 788 CE, states Syed Islam. Besides these locals converting to Islam, Arab merchants married local women and later settled in Arakan. As a result of intermarriage and conversion, the Muslim population in Arakan grew.^[73]

The alternate view contests that Islam arrived in the Arakan region in the 1st-millennium. According to this view, this Rohingya history is not based on any evidence, rather is based on "fictitious stories, myths and legends".^[99] According to Southeast Asian Buddhism history scholar and an ordained Buddhist monk Ashon Nyanuttara, there is scant historical data and archeological evidence about the early political and religious history of the Arakan people and the Rakhaing region. The limited evidence available suggests that Buddhism, possibly the Mahayana tradition, was well established by the 4th-century in the region under the Candra Buddhist dynasty.^[100] Muslim community's expansion and the growth of Islam into the region came much later with Bengali Muslims from the region that is now a part of Bangladesh. Further, the term "Rohingya" does not appear in any regional text of this period and much later. That term was adopted by "a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals who were direct descendants of immigrants from Chittagong district [Bengal]" in the 20th-century, states historian Aye Chan.^[99][100]

Settlers from Burma proper (9th–15th century)

The Rakhines were one of the tribes of the Burmese Pyu city-states. The Rakhines began migrating to Arakan through the Arakan Mountains in the 9th century. The Rakhines established numerous cities in the valley of the Lemro River. These included Sambawak I, Pyinsa, Parein, Hkrit, Sambawak II, Myohaung, Toungoo and Launggret. Burmese forces invaded the Rakhine cities in 1406.^[92] The Burmese invasion forced Rakhine rulers to seek help and refuge from neighboring Bengal in the north.^[92]

Kingdom of Mrauk U

A coin from Arakan used in the Bengal Sultanate, minted 1554/5

Set against the backdrop of the Arakan Mountains, Mrauk U was home to a multiethnic population, including the poet Alaol

Prince Shah Shuja received asylum in Arakan in 1660

Early evidence of Bengali Muslim settlements in Arakan date back to the time of Min Saw Mon (1430–34) of the Kingdom of Mrauk U. After 24 years of exile in Bengal, he regained control of the Arakanese throne in 1430 with military assistance from the Bengal Sultanate. The Bengalis who came with him formed their own settlements in the region.^[101][102] The Santikan Mosque built in the 1430s,^[101][103] features a court which "measures 65 ft from north to south and 82 ft from east to west; the shrine is a rectangular structure measuring 33 ft by 47 ft."^[104]

King Min Saw Mon ceded some territory to the Sultan of Bengal and recognised his sovereignty over the areas. In recognition of his kingdom's vassal status, the Buddhist kings of Arakan received Islamic titles and used the Bengali gold dinar within the kingdom. Min Saw Mon minted his own coins with the Burmese alphabet on one side and the Persian alphabet on the other.^[102]

Arakan's vassalage to Bengal was brief. After Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah's death in 1433, Narameikhla's successors invaded Bengal and occupied Ramu in 1437 and Chittagong in 1459. Arakan would hold Chittagong until 1666.^[105][106]

Even after independence from the Sultans of Bengal, the Arakanese kings continued the custom of maintaining Muslim titles.^[107] The Buddhist kings compared themselves to Sultans and fashioned themselves after Mughal rulers. They also continued to employ Muslims in prestigious positions within the royal administration.^[108] Some of them worked as Bengali, Persian and Arabic scribes in the Arakanese courts, which, despite remaining Buddhist, adopted Islamic fashions from the neighbouring Bengal Sultanate.^[108][101]

The population increased in the 17th century, as slaves were brought in by Arakanese raiders and Portuguese settlers following raids into Bengal.^{[108][70][101]} Slaves included members of the Mughal nobility. A notable royal slave was Alaol, a renowned poet in the Arakanese court. The slave population were employed in a variety of workforces, including in the king's army, commerce and agriculture.^{[70][109][110]}

In 1660, Prince Shah Shuja, the governor of Mughal Bengal and a claimant of the Peacock Throne, fled to Arakan with his family after being defeated by his brother Emperor Aurangzeb during the Battle of Khajwa. Shuja and his entourage arrived in Arakan on 26 August 1660.^[111] He was granted asylum by King Sanda Thudhamma. In December 1660, the Arakanese king confiscated Shuja's gold and jewelry, leading to an insurrection by the royal Mughal refugees. According to varying accounts, Shuja's family was killed by the Arakanese, while Shuja himself may have fled to a kingdom in Manipur. However, members of Shuja's entourage remained in Arakan and were recruited by the royal army, including as archers and court guards. They were king makers in Arakan until the Burmese conquest.^[112] The Arakanese continued their raids of Mughal Bengal. Dhaka was raided in 1625.^[113]

Emperor Aurangzeb gave orders to his governor in Mughal Bengal, Shaista Khan, to end what the Mughals saw as Arakanese-Portuguese piracy.^[114][115] In 1666, Shaista Khan led a 6000 man army and 288 warships to seize Chittagong from the Kingdom of Mrauk U.^[116] The Mughal expedition continued up till the Kaladan River. The Mughals placed the northern part of Arakan under its administration and vassalage.^[117] The Muslim population became concentrated in northern Arakan. In 1960, Burmese cabinet minister Sultan Mahmud cited the Kaladan River as the boundary between Rohingya and Rakhine areas.^[118]

Burmese conquest

Following the Konbaung Dynasty's conquest of Arakan in 1785, as many as 35,000 people of the Rakhine State fled to the neighbouring Chittagong region of British Bengal in 1799 to escape persecution by the Bamar and to seek protection under the British Raj.^[119] The Bamar executed thousands of men and deported a considerable portion of people from Rakhine population to central Burma, leaving Arakan a scarcely populated area by the time the British occupied it.^[120]

According to an article on the "Burma Empire" published by the British Francis Buchanan-Hamilton in 1799, "the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan", "call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan".^[74] However, according to Derek Tokin, Hamilton no longer used the term to refer to the Muslims in Arakan in his later publications.^[91]Sir Henry Yule saw many Muslims serving as eunuchs in Konbaung while on a diplomatic mission to the Burmese capital, Ava.^[121][122]

British colonial rule

An old mosque in Akyab during British rule

A mosque in Akyab

British policy encouraged Bengali inhabitants from adjacent regions to migrate into the then lightly populated and fertile valleys of Arakan as farm labourers. The East India Company extended the Bengal Presidency to Arakan. There was no international boundary between Bengal and Arakan and no restrictions on migration between the regions. In the early 19th century, thousands of Bengalis from the Chittagong region settled in Arakan seeking work.^[123] It is hard to know whether these new Bengal migrants were the same population that was deported by force to Bengal's Chittagong during the Burmese conquest in the 18th century and later returned to Arakan as a result of British policy or they were a new migrant population with no ancestral roots to Arakan.^[124]

The British census of 1872 reported 58,255 Muslims in Akyab District. By 1911, the Muslim population had increased to 178,647.^[125] The waves of migration were primarily due to the requirement of cheap labour from British India to work in the paddy fields. Immigrants from Bengal, mainly from the Chittagong region, "moved en masse into western townships of Arakan". Albeit Indian immigration to Burma was a nationwide phenomenon, not just restricted to Arakan.^[126] For these reasons historians believed that most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries with some tracing their ancestry much further.^[82]

According to Thant Myint-U, historian and adviser to President Thein Sein, "At the beginning of the 20th century, Indians were arriving in Burma at the rate of no less than a quarter million per year. The numbers rose steadily until the peak year of 1927, immigration reached 480,000 people, with Rangoon exceeding New York City as the greatest immigration port in the world. This was out of a total population of only 13 million; it was equivalent to the United Kingdom today taking 2 million people a year." By then, in most of the largest cities in Burma, Rangoon, Akyab, Bassein and Moulmein, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. All of Burma was officially a Province within the British Indian Empire ('the Raj') from November 1885 until 1937, when Burma became a separate Crown colony within the British Empire. The Burmese under British rule felt helpless, and reacted with a "racism that combined feelings of superiority and fear".^[126] Professor Andrew Selth of Griffith University writes that although a few Rohingya trace their ancestry to Muslims who lived in Arakan in the 15th and 16h centuries, most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries.^[127][128]

The impact of this immigration was particularly acute in Arakan. Although it boosted the colonial economy, local Arakanese bitterly resented it.^[129] According to historian Clive J. Christie, "The issue became a focus for grass-roots Burmese nationalism, and in the years 1930–31 there were serious anti-Indian disturbances in Lower Burma, while 1938 saw riots specifically directed against the Indian Muslim community. As Burmese nationalism increasingly asserted itself before the Second World War, the 'alien' Indian presence inevitably came under attack, along with the religion that the Indian Muslims imported. The Muslims of northern Arakan were to be caught in the crossfire of this conflict."^[130]

In the 1931 census, the Muslim population of Burma was 584,839, 4% of the total population of 14,647,470 at the time. 396,504 were Indian Muslims and 1,474 Chinese Muslims, while 186,861 were Burmese Muslims. The census found a growth in the number of Indian Muslims born in Burma, primarily due to their permanent settlement in Akyab. 41% of Muslims of Burma lived in Arakan at that time.^[131]

Shipping

A Royal Indian Navy ship in Akyab Harbour

Due to the terrain of the Arakan Mountains, the Arakan region was mostly accessible by sea.^[132] In British Arakan Division, the port of Akyab had ferry services and a thriving trade with the ports of Chittagong, Narayanganj, Dacca and Calcutta in British India;^[133][134] as well as with Rangoon. Akyab was one of the leading rice ports in the world, hosting ship fleets from Europe and China.^[135] Many Indians settled in Akyab and dominated its seaport and hinterland. The 1931 census found 500,000 Indians living in Akyab.^[136]

Legislators

Several Arakanese Indians were elected to Burmese native seats in the Legislative Council of Burma and Legislature of Burma. During the 1936 Burmese general election, Advocate U Pho Khaine was elected from Akyab West and Gani Markan was elected from Maungdaw-Buthidaung. In 1939, U Tanvy Markan was elected from Maungdaw-Buthidaung.
Their elections in the Burmese native category set them apart from immigrant Indian legislators.^[137]

World War II

Australian officers with Rohingya men wearing typical lungis

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded British-controlled Burma. The British forces retreated and in the power vacuum left behind, considerable inter-communal violence erupted between Arakanese and Muslim villagers. The British armed Muslims in northern Arakan in order to create a buffer zone that would protect the region from a Japanese invasion when they retreated^[138] and to counteract the largely pro-Japanese ethnic Rakhines.^[70] The period also witnessed violence between groups loyal to the British and the Burmese nationalists.^[138] The Arakan massacres in 1942 involved communal violence between British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and pro-Japanese Rakhines, polarizing the region along ethnic lines.^[139]

Tensions boiling in Arakan before the war erupted during the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia and Arakan became the frontline in the conflict. The war resulted in a complete breakdown of civil administration and consequent development of habits of lawlessness exacerbated by the availability of modern firearms. The Japanese advance triggered an inter-communal conflict between Muslims and Buddhists. The Muslims fled towards British-controlled Muslim-dominated northern Arakan from Japanese-controlled Buddhist-majority areas. This stimulated a "reverse ethnic cleansing" in British-controlled areas, particularly around Maungdaw. Failure of a British counter-offensive, attempted from December 1942 to April 1943, resulted in the abandonment of even more of the Muslim population as well as an increase in inter-communal violence.^[140]

Moshe Yegar, a research fellow at Truman Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, noted that hostility had developed between the Muslims and the Buddhists who had brought about a similar hostility in other parts of Burma. This tension was let loose with the retreat of the British. With the approach of the Japanese into Arakan, the Buddhists instigated cruel measures against the Muslims. Thousands, though the exact number is unknown, fled from Buddhist-majority regions to eastern Bengal and northern Arakan with many being killed or dying of starvation. The Muslims in response conducted retaliatory raids from British-controlled areas, causing Buddhists to flee to southern Arakan.^[141]

Aye Chan, a historian at Kanda University in Japan, has written that as a consequence of acquiring arms from the British during World War II, Rohingyas^{[note 3]} tried to destroy the Arakanese villages instead of resisting the Japanese. Chan agrees that hundreds of Muslims fled to northern Arakan, though states that the accounts of atrocities on them were exaggerated. In March 1942, Rohingyas from northern Arakan killed around 20,000 Arakanese. In return, around 5,000 Muslims in the Minbya and Mrauk-U Townships were killed by Rakhines and Red Karens.^[142][143]

As in the rest of Burma, the IJA committed acts of rape, murder and torture against Muslims in Arakan.^[144] During this period, some 22,000 Muslims in Arakan were believed to have crossed the border into Bengal, then part of British India, to escape the violence.^{[145][146][147]} The exodus was not restricted to Muslims in Arakan. Thousands of Burmese Indians, Anglo-Burmese and British who settled during the colonial period emigrated en masse to India.

To facilitate their reentry into Burma, the British formed Volunteer Forces with Rohingya. Over the three years during which the Allies and Japanese fought over the Mayu peninsula, the Rohingya recruits of the V-Force, engaged in a campaign against Arakanese communities, using weapons provided by V-Force.^[139] According to the secretary of the British governor, the V Force, instead of fighting the Japanese, destroyed Buddhist monasteries, pagodas, and houses, and committed atrocities in northern Arakan. The British Army's liaison officer, Anthony Irwin, on the other hand, praised the role of the V Force.^[148][149]

Pakistan Movement

During the Pakistan Movement in the 1940s, Rohingya Muslims in western Burma organized a separatist movement to merge the region into East Pakistan.^[122] The commitments of the British regarding the status of Muslims after the war are not clear. V Force officers like Andrew Irwin felt that Muslims along with other minorities must be rewarded for their loyalty. Muslim leaders believed that the British had promised them a "Muslim National Area" in Maungdaw region. They were also apprehensive of a future Buddhist-dominated government. In 1946, calls were made for annexation of the territory by Pakistan as well as of an independent state.^[140][141] Before the independence of Burma in January 1948, Muslim leaders from Arakan addressed themselves to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and asked his assistance in incorporating the Mayu region to Pakistan considering their religious affinity and geographical proximity with East Pakistan.^[122]The North Arakan Muslim League was founded in Akyab (modern Sittwe) two months later.^[122] The proposal never materialized since it was reportedly turned down by Jinnah, saying that he was not in a position to interfere in Burmese matters.^[122]

Post-WWII migration

The numbers and the extent of post-independence immigration from Bangladesh are subject to controversy and debate. In a 1955 study published by Stanford University, the authors Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff write, "The post-war (World War II) illegal immigration of Chittagonians into that area was on a vast scale, and in the Maungdaw and Buthidaung areas they replaced the Arakanese."^[150] The authors further argue that the term Rohingya, in the form of Rwangya, first appeared to distinguish settled population from newcomers: "The newcomers were called Mujahids (crusaders), in contrast to the Rwangya or settled Chittagonian population."^[150] According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), these immigrants were actually the Rohingyas who were displaced by World War II and began to return to Arakan after the independence of Burma but were rendered as illegal immigrants, while many were not allowed to return.^[151] ICG adds that there were "some 17,000" refugees from the Bangladesh liberation war who "subsequently returned home".^[151]

Burmese independence

M. A. Gaffar, a member of Burma's constituent assembly, called for recognizing Rohingyas in 1948

The Rohingya community was recognized as an indigenous ethnic nationality of Burma, with members of the group serving as representatives in the Burmese parliament, as well as ministers, parliamentary secretaries, and other high-ranking government positions. But since Burma's military junta took control of the country in 1962, the Rohingya have been systematically deprived of their political rights.^[152]

Rohingya political participation in Burma

In the prelude to independence, two Arakanese Indians were elected to the Constituent Assembly of Burma in 1947, M. A. Gaffar and Sultan Ahmed. After Burma became independent in 1948, M. A. Gaffar presented a memorandum of appeal to the Government of the Union of Burma calling for the recognition of the term "Rohingya", based on local Indian names of Arakan (Rohan and Rohang), as the official ethnicity of Arakanese Indians. Sultan Ahmed, who served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Minorities, was a member of the Justice Sir Ba U Commission charged with exploring whether Arakan Division should be granted statehood. During the Burmese general election, 1951, five Rohingyas were elected to the Parliament of Burma, including one of the country's first two female MPs, Zura Begum. Six MPs were elected during the Burmese general election, 1956 and subsequent by-elections. Sultan Mahmud, a former politician in British India, became Minister of Health in the cabinet of Prime Minister of Burma U Nu. In 1960, Mahmud suggested that either Rohingya-majority northern Arakan remain under the central government or be made a separate province. However, during the Burmese general election, 1960, Prime Minister U Nu's pledges included making all of Arakan into one province. The 1962 Burmese coup d'état ended the country's Westminster-style political system. The 1982 Burmese citizenship law stripped most of the Rohingyas of their stake in citizenship.

Rohingya community leaders were supportive of the 8888 uprising for democracy. During the Burmese general election, 1990, the Rohingya-led National Democratic Party for Human Rights won four seats in the Burmese parliament. The four Rohingya MPs included Shamsul Anwarul Huq, Chit Lwin Ebrahim, Fazal Ahmed and Nur Ahmed. The election was won by the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was placed under house arrest and not permitted to become prime minister. The Burmese military junta banned the National Democratic Party for Human Rights in 1992. Its leaders were arrested, jailed and tortured.

Rohingya politicians have been jailed to disbar them from contesting elections. In 2005, Shamsul Anwarul Huq was charged under Section 18 of the controversial 1982 Burmese citizenship law and sentenced to 47 years in prison. In 2015, a ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party MP Shwe Maung was disbarred from the Burmese general election, 2015, on grounds that his parents were not Burmese citizens under the 1982 citizenship law.^[153]

As of 2017, Burma does not have a single Rohingya MP and the Rohingya population have no voting rights.^[154]

Mayu Frontier District

A separate administrative zone for the Rohingya-majority northern areas of Arakan existed between 1961 and 1964. Known as the Mayu Frontier District, the zone was set up by Prime Minister U Nu after the 1960 Burmese general election, on the advice of his health minister Sultan Mahmud. The zone was administered directly from Rangoon by the national government. After the Burmese military coup in 1962, the zone was administered by the Burmese army. It was transferred to the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1964 by the Union Revolutionary Council. The socialist military government inducted the zone into Arakan State in 1974.

Expulsion of Burmese Indians

Racism towards people with links to the Indian subcontinent increased after the 1962 Burmese coup. The socialist military government nationalized all property, including many enterprises of the white collar Burmese Indian community. Between 1962 and 1964, 320,000 Burmese Indians were forced to leave the country.^[155][156]

Refugee crisis of 1978

As a result of Operation King Dragon by the Burmese junta, the first wave of Rohingya refugees entered Bangladesh in 1978. An estimated 200,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Cox's Bazaar. Diplomatic initiatives over 16 months resulted in a repatriation agreement, which allowed the return of most refugees under a process facilitated by UNHCR.^[157] The return of refugees to Burma has been the second largest repatriation process in Asia after the return of Cambodian refugees from Thailand.^[157]

1982 Citizenship Law

In 1982, the citizenship law enacted by the Burmese military junta did not list the Rohingya as one of the 135 “national races” of Burma. This made much of the Rohingya population in Burma stateless in their historical homeland of Arakan.^[158]

Refugee crisis of 1991–1992

After Burmese military junta began persecuting the political opposition following Aung San Suu Kyi's victory in the 1990 election and the earlier 1988 Uprising, military operations targeting Muslims (who strongly favored the pro-democracy movement) began in Arakan State. The Rohingya-led NDPHR political party was banned and its leaders were jailed. Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest by the junta led by General Than Shwe.

As the Burmese military increased its operations across the country, the Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships in northern Arakan became centers of persecution. The 23rd and 24th regiments of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) were responsible for promoting forced labour, rape, the confiscation of houses, land and farm animals, the destruction of mosques, a ban on religious activities and the harassment of the religious priests.^[157] An estimated 250,000 refugees crossed over into Bangladesh.^[157] In Bangladesh, the refugee influx was a challenge for the newly elected government of the country's first female prime minister Khaleda Zia (who headed the first parliamentary government since 1975). Both Bangladesh and Burma mobilized thousands of troops along the border during the crisis. The government of Bangladesh emphasized a peaceful resolution of the crisis.^[159][160]

After diplomatic negotiations, a repatriation agreement was put in place to allow the return of refugees to Burma under a UNHCR-supervised process.^[157][161]

Name change from Arakan to Rakhine State

In 1989, the junta officially changed the name of Burma to Myanmar. In the 1990s, the junta changed the name of the province of Arakan to Rakhine State,^[162] which showed a bias towards the Rakhine community, even though the Rohingya formed a substantial part of the population. The name of the region was historically known as Arakan for centuries.

Denial of the "Rohingya" term

The colloquial term Rohingya can be traced back to the pre-colonial period. The Rohingya community have also been known as Arakanese Indians and Arakanese Muslims.^[163][164] Since the 1982 citizenship law, Burmese juntas and governments have strongly objected to the usage of the term of Rohingya, preferring to label the community as "illegal immigrants". The derogatory slur Kalar is widely used in Myanmar against the Rohingya.^[165] Myanmar's government has often pressured diplomats and foreign delegates from uttering the term Rohingya.^[165]

Conflict in Arakan

The Rakhine for their part felt discriminated against by the governments in Rangoon dominated by the ethnic Burmese with one Rakhine politician saying, "we are therefore the victims of Muslimisation and Burmese chauvinism."^[129]The Economist wrote in 2015 that from the 1940s on and right to this day, the Burmens have seen and see themselves as victims of the British Empire while the Rakhine see themselves as victims of the British and the Burmens; both groups were and are so intent upon seeing themselves as victims that neither has much sympathy for the Rohingyas.^[129]

After Jinnah's refusal to accept northern Arakan into the Dominion of Pakistan, some Rohingya elders who supported a jihad movement, founded the Mujahid party in northern Arakan in 1947.^[166] The aim of the Mujahid party was to create an autonomous Islamic State in Arakan. By the 1950s, they began to use the term "Rohingya" which may be a continuation of the term Rooinga to establish a distinct identity and identify themselves as indigenous. They were much more active before the 1962 Burmese coup d'état by General Ne Win, a Burmese general who began his military career fighting for the Japanese in World War II. Ne Win carried out military operations against them over a period of two decades. The prominent one was Operation King Dragon, which took place in 1978; as a result, many Muslims in the region fled to neighboring Bangladesh as refugees.^[167] In addition to Bangladesh, a large number of Rohingyas also migrated to Karachi, Pakistan.^[168] Rohingya mujahideen are still active within the remote areas of Arakan.^[169]

From 1971 to 1978, a number of Rakhine monks and Buddhists staged hunger strikes in Sittwe to force the government to tackle immigration issues which they believed to be causing a demographic shift in the region.^[170] Ne Win's government requested UN to repatriate the war refugees and launched military operations which drove off around 200,000 people to Bangladesh. In 1978, the Bangladesh government protested against the Burmese government concerning "the expulsion by force of thousands of Burmese Muslim citizens to Bangladesh". The Burmese government responded that those expelled were Bangladesh citizens who had resided illegally in Burma. In July 1978, after intensive negotiations mediated by UN, Ne Win's government agreed to take back 200,000 refugees who settled in Arakan.^[171] In the same year as well as in 1992, a joint statement by governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh "acknowledged that the Rohingya were lawful Burmese residents".^[172] In 1982, the Burmese government enacted the citizenship law and declared the "Bengalis" are foreigners.^[173]

There are widespread beliefs among Rakhine people that significant number of immigrants arrived even after the 1980s when the border was relatively unguarded. However, there is no documentation proof for these claims as the last census was conducted in 1983.^[55] Successive Burmese governments have fortified the border and built up border guard forces.

After 1988 Burmese pro-democracy uprising

Since the 1990s, a new 'Rohingya' movement which is distinct from the 1950s armed rebellion has emerged. The new movement is characterized by lobbying internationally by overseas diaspora, establishing indigenous claims by Rohingya scholars, publicizing the term "Rohingya" and denying Bengali origins by Rohingya politicians.^[58]

Rohingya scholars^[who?] have claimed that Rakhine was previously an Islamic state for a millennium, or that Muslims were king-makers of Rakhine kings for 350 years. They often traced the origin of Rohingyas to Arab seafarers. These claims have been rejected as "newly invented myths" in academic circles.^[72] Some Rohingya politicians have labelled Burmese and international historians as "Rakhine sympathizers" for rejecting the purported historical origins.^[174]

The movement has garnered sharp criticisms from ethnic Rakhines and Kamans, the latter of whom are a recognized Muslim ethnic group in Rakhine. Kaman leaders support citizenship for Muslims in northern Rakhine but believe that the new movement is aimed at achieving a self-administered area or Rohang State as a separate Islamic State carved out of Rakhine, and condemn the movement.^[175]

Rakhines' views are more critical. Citing Bangladesh's overpopulation and density, Rakhines perceive the Rohingyas as "the vanguard of an unstoppable wave of people that will inevitably engulf Rakhine".^[176] However, for moderate Rohingyas, the aim may have been no more than to gain citizenship status. Moderate Rohingya politicians agree to compromise on the term Rohingya if citizenship is provided under an alternative identity that is neither "Bengali" nor "Rohingya". Various alternatives including "Rakhine Muslims", "Myanmar Muslims" or simply "Myanmar" have been proposed.^[91][177]

Burmese juntas (1990–2011)

The military junta that ruled Myanmar for half a century relied heavily on mixing Burmese nationalism and Theravada Buddhism to bolster its rule, and, in the view of the US government, heavily discriminated against minorities like the Rohingyas. Some pro-democracy dissidents from Myanmar's ethnic Bamar majority do not consider the Rohingyas compatriots.^{[178][179][180][181]}

Successive Burmese governments have been accused of provoking riots led by Buddhist monks against ethnic minorities like the Rohingyas^[182] In the 1990s, more than 250,000 Rohingya fled to refugee camps in Bangladesh. In the early 2000s, all but 20,000 of them were repatriated to Myanmar, some against their will.^[183] In 2009, a senior Burmese envoy to Hong Kong branded the Rohingyas "ugly as ogres" and a people that are alien to Myanmar.^[184][185]

Under the 2008 constitution, the Myanmar military still control much of the country's government, including the ministries of home, defense and border affairs, 25% of seats in parliament and one vice president.^[186][187]

Rakhine State conflicts and refugees (2012–present)

2012 Rakhine State riots

Emergency food, drinking water and shelter to help people displaced in Rakhine State, western Burma, 2012.

2014 view of ruins of Narzi, former Rohingya neighborhood in Sittwe town destroyed and razed in the 2012 anti-Rohingya pogroms.

The 2012 Rakhine State riots were a series of conflicts between Rohingya Muslims who form the majority in the northern Rakhine and ethnic Rakhines who form the majority in the south. Before the riots, there were widespread fears among the Buddhist Rakhines that they would soon become a minority in their ancestral state.^[176] The riots occurred after weeks of sectarian disputes, including a gang rape and murder of a Rakhine woman by Rohingyas and killing of ten Burmese Muslims by Rakhines.^[188][189] There is evidence that the pogroms in 2012 were incited by the government asking the Rakhine men to defend their "race and religion".^[190] The Rakhine men were said to have been given knives and free food, and bused in from Sittwe.^[129] The Burmese government denied having organized the pogroms, but has never prosecuted anyone for the attacks against the Rohingyas.^[129]The Economist argued that since the transition to democracy in Burma in 2011, the military has been seeking to retain its privileged position, forming the motivation for it to encourage the riots in 2012 and allowing it to pose as the defender of Buddhism against Muslim Rohingya.^[129]

On both sides, entire villages were "decimated".^[189][191] According to the Burmese authorities, the violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims left 78 people dead, 87 injured, and up to 140,000 people displaced.^[192][193] The government has responded by imposing curfews and deploying troops in the region. On 10 June 2012, a state of emergency was declared in Rakhine, allowing the military to participate in the administration of the region.^[194][195] Rohingya NGOs abroad have accused the Burmese army and police of targeting Rohingya Muslims through arrests and participating in violence.^[192][196]

A field observation conducted by the International Crisis Group concluded that both communities were grateful for the protection provided by the military.^[197] A number of monks' organisations have taken measures to boycott NGOs which they believe helped only Rohingyas in the past decades even though Rakhines were equally poor.^[198] In July 2012, the Burmese Government did not include the Rohingya minority group in the census—classified as stateless Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh since 1982.^[199] About 140,000 Rohingya in Myanmar remain confined in IDP camps.^[66]

2015 refugee crisis

In 2015, the Simon-Skjodt Centre of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated in a press statement the Rohingyas are "at grave risk of additional mass atrocities and even genocide".^[129] In 2015, to escape violence and persecution, thousands of Rohingyas migrated from Myanmar and Bangladesh, collectively dubbed as 'boat people' by international media,^[200] to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.^{[200][201][202][203]} The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates about 25,000 people have been taken to boats from January to March in 2015.^[204][205] There are claims that around 100 people died in Indonesia,^[206] 200 in Malaysia,^[207] and 10 in Thailand^[208] during the journey. An estimated 3,000 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been rescued or swum to shore and several thousand more are believed to remain trapped on boats at sea with little food or water. A Malaysian newspaper claimed crisis has been sparked by smugglers.^[209] However, the Economist in an article in June 2015 wrote the only reason why the Rohingyas were willing to pay to be taken out of Burma in squalid, overcrowded, fetid boats as "... it is the terrible conditions at home in Rakhine that force the Rohingyas out to sea in the first place."^[129]

2016–2017 conflict

See next sections:

• Autumn 2016–summer 2017


• Autumn 2017

Autumn 2016–summer 2017

On 9 October 2016, jihadist insurgents commenced terrorist attacks at three Burmese border posts along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh.^[210] According to government officials in the mainly Rohingya border town of Maungdaw, the attackers brandished knives, machetes and homemade slingshots that fired metal bolts. Several dozen firearms and boxes of ammunition were looted by the attackers from the border posts. The attack resulted in the deaths of nine border officers.^[211] On 11 October 2016, four soldiers were killed on the third day of fighting.^[212] Following the attacks, reports emerged of several human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by Burmese security forces in their crackdown on suspected Rohingya insurgents.^[213]

Shortly after, the Myanmar military forces and extremist Buddhists started a major crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims in the country's western region of Rakhine State in response to attacks on border police camps by unidentified insurgents.^[214] The crackdown resulted in wide-scale human rights violations at the hands of security forces, including extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, arsons, and other brutalities.^{[215][216][217]} The military crackdown on Rohingyas drew criticism from various quarters including the United Nations, human rights group Amnesty International, the US Department of State, and the government of Malaysia.^{[218][219][220][221][222]}

The de facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi has particularly been criticized for her inaction and silence over the issue and for doing little to prevent military abuses.^{[215][216][223]}

Government officials in Rakhine State originally blamed the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), an Islamist insurgent group mainly active in the 1980s and 1990s, for the attacks;^[224] however, on 17 October 2016, a group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) claimed responsibility.^[225] In the following days, six other groups released statements, all citing the same leader.^[226] The Myanmar Army announced on 15 November 2016 that 69 Rohingya insurgents and 17 security forces (10 policemen, 7 soldiers) had been killed in recent clashes in northern Rakhine State, bringing the death toll to 134 (102 insurgents and 32 security forces). It was also announced that 234 people suspected of being connected to the attack were arrested.^[227][228]

A police document obtained by Reuters in March 2017 listed 423 Rohingyas detained by the police since 9 October 2016, 13 of whom were children, the youngest being ten years old. Two police captains in Maungdaw verified the document and justified the arrests, with one of them saying, "We, the police, have to arrest those who collaborated with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty; we are not the ones who decide." Myanmar police also claimed that the children had confessed to their alleged crimes during interrogations, and that they were not beaten or pressured during questioning. The average age of those detained is 34, the youngest is 10, and the oldest is 75.^[229][230]

The Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) stated on 1 September 2017 that the death toll had risen to 370 insurgents, 13 security personnel, 2 government officials and 14 civilians.^[231] The United Nations believes over 1,000 people have been killed since October 2016, which contradicts the death toll provided by the Myanmar government.^[232][233]

Autumn 2017 crisis

Starting in early August 2017, the Myanmar security forces began "clearance operations" against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine state.^[67][68] Following an attack by Rohingya militants of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) against several security forces' outposts, 25 August, the operations escalated radically—killing thousands of Rohingya, brutalizing thousands more, and driving hundreds of thousands out of the country into neighboring Bangladesh while their villages burned—with the Myanmar military claiming that their actions were solely attacks on rebels in response to the ARSA attack. However, subsequent reports from various international organizations have indicated that the military operations were widespread indiscriminate attacks on the Rohingya population, already underway before the ARSA attacks, to purge northern Rakhine state of Rohingya, through "ethnic cleansing" and/or "genocide."^[234]

Precipitating events

According to BBC reporters, during the summer of 2017, the Myanmar military began arming and training Rakhine Buddhist natives in northern Rakhine state, and in late summer advised that any ethnic Rakhines "wishing to protect their state" would be given the opportunity to join "the local armed police." Matthew Smith, chief executive of human rights organization Fortify Rights says that arming the Rakhines "was a decision made to effectively perpetrate atrocity crimes against the civilian population." At the same time, northern Rakhine state faced food shortages, and, starting in mid-August, the government cut off all food supply to the area. On 10 August, the military flew in a battalion of reinforcements to the area, triggering a public warning from the resident United Nations human rights representative to Myanmar, who urged Myanmar authorities to restrain themselves.^[234]

A few weeks later, on 24 August 2017, the Rakhine Commission (chaired by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan)—established by the new civilian Myanmar government to recommend solutions to the ethnic conflict and related issues in Rakhine state—released its recommendations for alleviating the suffering of minorities (especially the Rohingya), calling for measures that would improve security in Myanmar for the Rohingya, but not calling for all measures sought by various Rohingya factions.^[235][236]

The following morning, according to Myanmar military officials, a Rohingya rebel group—ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) -- led multiple coordinated attacks on 30 police outposts and border guards, killing a dozen government forces, at the cost of over 50 dead among the rebels.^{[235][237][238][239][240][236][241]}

Conflict escalation

Almost immediately the Myanmar military—apparently teaming with local authorities with mobs of Rakhine Buddhist civilians—launched massive reprisals that it described as its anti-terrorist "clearance operations" (which, UN investigators and BBC reporters later determined, had actually begun earlier^{[67][68][234]})—attacking Rohingya villages throughout northern Rakhine state.^{[235][239][238][240]}

Within the first three weeks, the military reported over 400 dead (whom it described as mostly "militants" and "terrorists")—the U.N. estimated over 1,000 dead (mostly civilians), and other sources initially suggested as many as 3,000—in the first four weeks of the reprisals.^{[235][239][238][240]}

However, in December 2017, following a detailed survey of Rohingya refugees, a humanitarian organization serving refugees, Médecins Sans Frontières International, (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) calculated that at least 6,700 Rohingya men, women and children were killed in the first month of the major attacks, including at least 750 children (that number later revised to "over 1,000"). MSF estimated that 69% were killed by gunshots, 9% were burnt to death (including 15% of children killed), and 5% beaten to death. However, MSF cautioned "The numbers of deaths are likely to be an underestimation, as we have not surveyed all refugee settlements in Bangladesh and because the surveys don't account for the families who never made it out of Myanmar."^{[242][243][244]}

Refugees reported numerous civilians—including women and children—being indiscriminantly beaten, raped, tortured, shot, hacked to death or burned alive. and whole villages being burnt down by authorities and Buddhist mobs. Human Rights Watch released satellite photos showing the villages burning, but the Myanmar government insisted the fires were lit by Rohingya, themselves, or specifically Rohingya militants—though the authorities offered no proof of the allegation, and refused or tightly controlled all media and foreign access to the area.^{[235][237][238][240][236]}

Myanmar's presidential spokesman reported that 176 ethnic Rohingya villages—out of the original a total of 471 Rohingya villages in three townships—had become empty. In addition to the 176 "abandoned" villages, some residents reportedly fled from at least 34 other villages.^[235]

In the first four weeks of he conflict, over 400,000 Rohingya refugees (approximately 40% of the remaining Rohingya in Myanmar) fled the country on foot or by boat (chiefly to Bangladesh—the only other country bordering the Rakhine state area under attack) -- creating a major humanitarian crisis. In addition, 12,000 Rakhine Buddhists, and other non-Muslim Rakhine state residents were displaced within the country.^[237][238]

On 10 September 2017, ARSA declared a temporary unilateral ceasefire to allow aid groups to work in the region. Its statement read that "ARSA strongly encourages all concerned humanitarian actors resume their humanitarian assistance to all victims of the humanitarian crisis, irrespective of ethnic or religious background during the ceasefire period." However, the Myanmar government dismissed the gesture, saying "we don't negotiate with terrorists."^{[245][246][247]}

The violence and humantarian 'catastrophe,' inflamed international tensions, especially in the region, and throughout the Muslim world.^{[235][237][238][239]}

13 September, Myanmar's presidential spokesman announced Myanmar would establish a new commission to implement some recommendations of Annan's Rakhine Commission, in their August 2017 report.^[235]

The United Nations initially reported in early September 2017 that more than 120,000 Rohingya people had fled Myanmar for Bangladesh due to a recent rise in violence against them.^[248] The UNHCR, on 4 September, estimated 123,000 refugees have escaped western Myanmar since 25 August 2017.^[249] (By 15 September, that number had surpassed 400,000^[238]) The situation was expected to exacerbate the current refugee crisis as more than 400,000 Rohingya without citizenship were trapped in overcrowded camps and in conflict regions in Western Myanmar.^[248]

Myanmar's de facto civilian leader and Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi,^[250][251] criticized the media's reporting on the crisis, saying that her government is protecting everyone in Rakhine state, and argued that the reporting was misinformation that benefitted the aims of terrorists.^[252]

Some reports suggest that the Myanmar military has ceded some border outposts to rebels armed with wooden clubs as part of encouraging Rohingyas to leave the country.^[247]

A Holy See diplomat stated that at least 3000 people were killed by Myanmar security forces in August and September 2017.^[253]

The U.N. Secretary General issued a statement, 13 September 2017, implying that the situation facing the Rohingya in Rakhine state was "ethnic cleansing." He urged Myanmar authorities to suspend military action and stop the violence—insisting that Myanmar's government uphold the rule of law, and (noting that "380,000" Rohingya had recently fled to Bangladesh) recognize the refugees' right to return to their homes.^[238][254]

The same day, the U.N. Security Council issued a separate, unanimous statement, on the crisis following a closed-door meeting about Myanmar. In a semi-official press statement (its first statement on the situation in Myanmar in nine years)—the Council expressed "concern" about reported excessive violence in Myanmar's security operations, called for de-escalating the situation, reestablishing law and order, protecting civilians, and resolution of the refugee problem.^[238][254]

On 19 September 2017, Myanmar's civilian leader, State Councillor Aung San Suu Kyi, made a major televised speech on the crisis—in English—stating "We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence," and indicated a desire to know why the Rohingya were fleeing. But Suu Kyi largely defended her prior position supporting the Myanmar military and its actions, and deflected international criticism by saying most Rohingya villages remained intact, and conflict had not broken out everywhere. Expressing no criticism of the Myanmar military, and denying that it had engaged in any "armed clashes or clearance operations" since 5 September, she added, "We are committed to the restoration of peace and stability and rule of law throughout the state," and that the country was "committed to a sustainable solution… for all communities in this state", but was vague as to how that would be achieved.^{[250][255][256][257]}

By the end of September, conflicts between Rohingya Muslims and outnumbered Hindus, became apparent—including the killing of around 100 Hindu villagers in Rakhine state, around late August—according to the Myanmar military who claimed to have found the bodies of 20 women and eight boys in mass graves, 24 September, after a search near Ye Baw Kya village, in northern Rakhine state. The search was reportedly in response to a refugee in Bangladesh who contacted a local Hindu leader in Myanmar. Authorities quoted the refugee as saying about 300 ARSA militants, on 25 August, marched about 100 people out of the Hindu village and killed them. ARSA denied involvement, saying it was committed to not killing civilians. International news media were not immediately allowed free access to the area to verify the reports.^{[258][259][260]}

In other cases, in Myanmar and in Bangladeshi refugee camps—according to some media accounts—Hindu Rohingyas (particularly women) faced kidnapping, religious abuse and "forced conversions" at the hands of Muslim Rohingyas.^[259][261]

By the end of September 2017, UN, Bangladesh and other entities were reporting that—in addition to 200,000-300,000 Rohingya refugees already in Bangladesh after fleeing prior attacks in Myanmar^[262][263]—the current conflict, since late August 2017, had driven 500,000 more Rohingya from Myanmar into Bangladesh,^{[262][263][264]} creating what UN Secretary General António Guterres described as "the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency ... a humanitarian nightmare."^[263][265]

In November 2017 Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding for the return home of Rohingya refugees.^[266] In April 2018 the first group of Rohingya refugees returned to Myanmar from Bangladesh.^[267]

Refugee relocation to Thengar Char island (2016–present)

In January 2016, the government of Bangladesh initiated a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, who had fled to the country following persecution in Myanmar.^[268][269] The refugees are to be relocated to the island of Thengar Char.^[268][269] The move has received substantial opposition. Human rights groups have seen the plan as a forced relocation.^[268][269] Additionally, concerns have been raised about living conditions on the island, which is low-lying and prone to flooding.^[268][269] The island has been described as "only accessible during winter and a haven for pirates".^[268][269] It is nine hours away from the camps in which the Rohingya currently live.^[268][269] 65,000 refugees have been estimated to have entered Bangladesh since October 2016: more than 200,000 are estimated to have been there already.^[268][269]

Genocide accusations

In 2015, an assessment by the Yale Law School concluded that there was a concerted campaign against the Rohingya, which could be classified as genocide under international law.^[270] An investigation by the media channel Al Jazeera English, along with the group Fortify Rights, found that the Myanmar military was systematically targeting the Rohingya population because of its ethnicity and religion.^[270] The International State Crime Initiative of the University of London issued a report stating that a genocide is taking place against the Rohingya.^[271]

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has used the term ethnic cleansing to describe the exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar.^[272] In December 2017, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, dismissed Myanmar's claims that their operations were merely a response to rebel attacks, and indicated that "for us, it was clear... that these operations were organised and planned," and could amount to "genocide."^[273]

24 August 2018, the day before the anniversary of the eruption of extreme violence that came to be known as the "Rohingya Crisis," the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report (which did not go public until 27 August) summarizing its findings from an investigation of the events of August–September 2017. It declared that the events constituted cause for the Myanmar government—particularly the Myanmar military (the "Tatmadaw") and its commanding officers—to be brought before the International Criminal Court for "crimes against humanity", including "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide." Myanmar officials immediately rejected the charges.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42]}

Demographics

The yellow-green striped section show the approximate location of the Rohingya in Myanmar

Rohingya people in Rakhine State

Those who identify as Rohingyas typically reside in the northernmost townships of Arakan bordering Bangladesh where they form 80–98% of the population. A typical Rohingya family has four or five surviving children but numbers up to twenty eight have been recorded in rare cases.^[55][274] Rohingyas have 46% more children than Myanmar's national average.^[55] As of 2014, about 1.3 million Rohingyas live in Myanmar and an estimated 1 million overseas. They form 40% of Rakhine State's population or 60% if overseas population is included. As of December 2016, 1 in 7 stateless persons worldwide are Rohingya per United Nations figures.^[1][275]

Prior to the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis and the military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.1 to 1.3 million^{[57][55][56][1][57]} They reside mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they form 80–98% of the population.^[58] Many Rohingyas have fled to southeastern Bangladesh, where there are over 900,000 refugees,^[59] as well as to India,^[60]Thailand,^[61]Malaysia,^[61]Indonesia,^[62]Saudi Arabia^[63] and Pakistan.^[64] More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar live in camps for internally displaced persons, and the authorities do not allow them to leave.^[65][66]

The following table shows the statistics of Muslim population in Arakan. The data is for all Muslims in Arakan (Rakhine), regardless of ethnicity. The data for Burmese 1802 census is taken from a book by J. S. Furnivall. The British censuses classified immigrants from Chittagong as Bengalis. There were a small number of immigrants from other parts of India. The 1941 census was lost during the war. The 1983 census conducted under the Ne Win's government omitted people in volatile regions. It is unclear how many were missed. British era censuses can be found at Digital Library of India.

Language

The Rohingya language is part of the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the greater Indo-European language family and is related to the Chittagonian language spoken in the southernmost part of Bangladesh bordering Myanmar.^[23] While both Rohingya and Chittagonian are related to Bengali, they are not mutually intelligible with the latter. Rohingyas do not speak Burmese, the lingua franca of Myanmar, and face problems in integration. Rohingya scholars have written the Rohingya language in various scripts including the Arabic, Hanifi, Urdu, Roman, and Burmese alphabets, where Hanifi is a newly developed alphabet derived from Arabic with the addition of four characters from Latin and Burmese.^[277]

More recently, a Latin alphabet has been developed using all 26 English letters A to Z and two additional Latin letters Ç (for retroflex R) and Ñ (for nasal sound). To accurately represent Rohingya phonology, this alphabet also uses five accented vowels (áéíóú). It has been recognised by ISO with ISO 639-3 "rhg" code.^[278]

Religion

Hashimiah orphans in a madrasa in Selayang, Malaysia

Due to the fact that members of the Rohingya Muslim population are not considered citizens in Burma, they are not protected by the government against issues of discrimination. Therefore, there exist concerns about the community's religious freedom, especially in the legal and political sphere.^[279]

The predominant majority of Rohingya people practice Islam, including a blend of Sunni Islam and Sufism.^{[280][281][282][283]} A minority are Hindu.^{[282][284][285]} The government restricts their educational opportunities; many pursue fundamental Islamic studies as their only option. Mosques and madrasas are present in most villages. Traditionally, men pray in congregations and women pray at home.^[286]

Muslims have often faced obstacles and struggled to practice their religion in the same way as other individuals in Burma. These struggles have manifested in the form of difficulty in receiving approval for the construction of places of worship, whether it be informal or formal. They have, in the past, also been arrested for teaching and practicing their religious beliefs.^[279]

Health

The Rohingya face discrimination and barriers to health care.^[1][287] According to a 2016 study published in the medical journal The Lancet, Rohingya children in Myanmar face low birth weight, malnutrition, diarrhea, and barriers to reproduction on reaching adulthood.^[1] Rohingya have a child mortality rate of up to 224 deaths per 1,000 live births, more than 4 times the rate for the rest of Myanmar (52 per 1,000 live births), and 3 times rate of rest non-Rohingya areas of Rakhine state (77 per 1,000 live births).^[288][1] The paper also found that 40% of Rohingya children suffer from diarrhea in internally displaced persons camp within Myanmar at a rate five times that of diarrheal illness among children in the rest of Rakhine.^[288]

Human rights and refugee status

The Rohingya people have been described as "one of the world's least wanted minorities" and "some of the world's most persecuted people".^[289][290]Médecins Sans Frontières claimed that the discrimination and human rights challenges the Rohingya people have faced at the hands of the country's government and military are "among the world's top ten most under-reported stories of 2007.”^[291] In February 1992, Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a press release, “In actual fact, although there are (135) national races living in Myanmar today, the so-called Rohingya people is not one of them. Historically, there has never been a 'Rohingya' race in Myanmar."^[291]

The Rohingya are deprived of the right to free movement and the right to higher education.^[292] They have been denied Burmese citizenship since the 1982 nationality law was enacted.^[293] Post the 1982 law, Burma has had different types of citizenship. Citizens possessed red identity cards; Rohingyas were given white cards, essentially labeling them as foreigners in Burma. Limitations and restrictions imposed on Rohingya are facilitated by this difference in citizenship. For example, Rohingyas cannot enlist in the army or participate in the government, and are potentially faced with the issue of illegal immigration. The citizenship law also significantly underlies the human rights violations against the Rohingya by the military. ^[294]

They are not allowed to travel without official permission and they were previously required to sign a commitment not to have more than two children, though the law was not strictly enforced. They are subjected to routine forced labour. (Typically, a Rohingya man will have to give up one day a week to work on military or government projects, and one night a week for sentry duty.)^[52] The Rohingya have also lost a lot of arable land, which has been confiscated by the military and given to Buddhist settlers from elsewhere in Myanmar.^[295][293]

The military is partially responsible for the humans rights violations suffered by the Rohingya. These include the destruction of property, and forced relocation to a different country. An example of this is when the military forced Rohingyas in Rakhine to move to Bangladesh. Other violations against Rohingya Muslims include physical violence and sexual violence. These violations were rationalised by the country's military officials by stating they were requirements for a census that was going to be conducted by Burma and the military needed to do these acts to find out the Rohingya Muslims's nationality.^[294] According to Amnesty International, the Rohingya have suffered from human rights violations under the military dictatorship since 1978, and many of them have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh as a result.^[296] The dislocation of the Rohingya Muslims from their homes to other areas can be attributed to factors such as how isolated and undeveloped Rakhine is, the conflict between the Rohingya Muslims and the Buddhists, and discrimination by the government.^[297] 

Members of the Rohingya community were displaced to Bangladesh where the government of the country, non-governmental organisations and UNHCR gave aid to the refugees in terms of homes and food. These external organisations (other than the government) were important because the immigration of the Rohingyas was massive in terms of the number of people requiring help as well as the political change.^[297]  In 2005, even though the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had assisted with the repatriation of Rohingyas from Bangladesh, allegations of human rights abuses in the refugee camps threatened this effort.^[298] In 2015, 140,000 Rohingyas remain in IDP camps after communal riots in 2012.^[299] Despite earlier efforts by the UN, the vast majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are unable to return to Myanmar due to the 2012 communal violence and fear of persecution. The Bangladeshi government has reduced the amount of support it allocates to the Rohingyas in order to prevent an outflow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh.^[300] In February 2009, many Rohingya refugees were rescued by Acehnese sailors in the Strait of Malacca, after 21 days at sea.^[301]

Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The camp is one of three, which house up to 300,000 Rohingya people fleeing inter-communal violence in Myanmar.

Thousands of Rohingyas have also fled to Thailand. There have been charges that Rohingyas were shipped and towed out to open sea from Thailand. In February 2009, evidence of the Thai army towing a boatload of 190 Rohingya refugees out to sea has surfaced. A group of refugees rescued by Indonesian authorities told that they were captured and beaten by the Thai military, and then abandoned at sea.^[302]

Steps to repatriate Rohingya refugees began in 2005. In 2009, the government of Bangladesh announced that it will repatriate around 9,000 Rohingyas living in refugee camps inside the country back to Myanmar, after a meeting with Burmese diplomats.^[303][304] On 16 October 2011, the new government of Myanmar agreed to take back registered Rohingya refugees. However, the Rakhine riots in 2012 hampered the repatriation efforts.^[305][306]

On 29 March 2014, the Burmese government banned the word "Rohingya" and asked for registration of the minority as "Bengalis" in the 2014 Myanmar Census, the first in three decades.^[307][308] On 7 May 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed the United States House resolution on persecution of the Rohingya people in Burma that called on the government of Myanmar to end the discrimination and persecution.^[309][310] Researchers from the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London suggest that the Myanmar government is in the final stages of an organised process of genocide against the Rohingya.^[311][312] In November 2016, a senior UN official in Bangladesh accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas.^[216] However, Charles Petrie, a former top UN official in Myanmar, said that "Today using the term, aside from being divisive and potentially incorrect, will only ensure that opportunities and options to try to resolve the issue to be addressed will not be available."^[70][313]

See also

• Arakan Rohingya National Organisation


• Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army


• Internal conflict in Myanmar


• International reactions to the 2016–17 Rohingya persecution in Myanmar


• Kamein


• List of ethnic groups in Myanmar


• Min Aung Hlaing


• Rakhine people


• Rohingya language


• Rohingya conflict

Notes

References

Sources

• 
  Charney, Michael W. (8 April 2018). "A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire written by Francis Buchanan". SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  


• 
  Leider, Jacques (2013). Rohingya: The name, the movement and the quest for identity. Myanmar Egress and the Myanmar Peace Center. pp. 204–255.
  


• 
  Yegar, Moshe (2002). Between integration and secession: The Muslim communities of the Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand, and Western Burma / Myanmar. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0356-3.
  


• 
  Yegar, Moshe (1972). Muslims of Burma (PDF). Wiesbaden: Verlag Otto Harrassowitz.
  


• 
  "Myanmar:The Politics of Rakhine State" (PDF). International Crisis Group. 22 October 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 November 2014. Retrieved 8 February 2015.
  


• 
  Khin Maung Saw (May 1993). "Khin Maung Saw on Rohingya" (PDF).
  


• 
  Aye Chan (2005). "The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar)" (PDF). SOAS. SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
  


• 
  "Myanmar, The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied". Amnesty International. Retrieved 13 August 2005.
  


• 
  Harvey, G. E. (1925). History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
  


• 
  Myint-U, Thant (2006). The River of Lost Footsteps—Histories of Burma. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-16342-6.
  


• 
  Phayre, Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur P. (1883). History of Burma (1967 ed.). London: Susil Gupta.
  


• 
  "Burma's Western Border as Reported by the Diplomatic Correspondence (1947–1975)" by Aye Chan


• International Center for Transitional Justice, Myanmar

External links

• 
  Media related to Rohingya people at Wikimedia Commons