The Rohingya people () are a
stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
who predominantly follow Islam and reside in
Rakhine State
Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...
,
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
(previously known as Burma). Before the
Rohingya genocide
The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the Burmese military. The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 ...
in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar.
[UNHCR news briefing, 20 October 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/10/5f8d7c004/unhcr-calls-solidarity-support-solutions-rohingya-refugees-ahead-urgent.html,accessed December 20, 2020] Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied
citizenship
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
under the
1982 Myanmar nationality law.
There are also restrictions on their
freedom of movement
Freedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country,Jérémiee Gilbert, ''Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights' ...
, access to state education and civil service jobs.
The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
[Ibrahim, Azeem (fellow at Mansfield College, ]Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, and 2009 Yale World Fellow
Yale World Fellows is an international fellowship program at Yale University for rising global leaders.
World Fellows come from around the world and from diverse disciplines. They are selected through a competitive application process. Each year ...
"War of Words: What's in the Name 'Rohingya'?"
16 June 2016 ''Yale Online'', Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, 21 September 2017["Aung San Suu Kyi’s Ultimate Test"](_blank)
Sullivan, Dan, 19 January 2017, ''Harvard International Review
The ''Harvard International Review'' is a quarterly international relations journal published by the Harvard International Relations Council at Harvard University. The ''HIR'' offers commentary on global developments in politics, economics, busin ...
'', Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. Retrieved 21 September 2017 by some academics, analysts and political figures, including
Nobel laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
Bishop
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 193126 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop ...
, a South African
anti-apartheid activist
The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), was a British organisation that was at the centre of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid, apartheid system and supporting South Africa's non-White population who were persecuted by ...
.
[Tutu, Desmond, former Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize (anti-apartheid and national-reconciliation leader)]
"Tutu: The Slow=Genocide Against the Rohingya"
19 January 2017, ''Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', citing "Burmese apartheid" reference in 1978 ''Far Eastern Economic Review
The ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' (''FEER'') was an Asian business magazine published between 1946 and December 2009 in the English language. Based in Hong Kong, the news magazine published weekly until December 2004, when it converted to a m ...
'' at Oslo Conference on Rohingyas
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of i ...
; also online at
Desmond Tutu Foundation USA
Retrieved 21 September 2017 The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals ...
investigating crimes against humanity, and led to the
International Court of Justice
The International Court of Justice (ICJ; french: Cour internationale de justice, links=no; ), sometimes known as the World Court, is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). It settles disputes between states in accordanc ...
investigating
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
.
The Rohingya maintain they are
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the
Arabs
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...
,
Mughals
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
, and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
. The community claims it is descended from people in
precolonial Arakan and
colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom between
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
and the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
.
The
Myanmar government
Myanmar ( also known as Burma) operates ''de jure'' as a unitary assembly-independent republic under its 2008 constitution. On 1 February 2021, Myanmar's military took over the government in a coup, causing ongoing anti-coup protests.
...
considers the Rohingya as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from neighbouring
Chittagong/East Bengal respectively Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is recognized as
Kaman Kaman may refer to:
* Kaman (surname)
* Kamein (Kaman), an ethnic group in Burma
* Kaman Aircraft, an American aerospace company and helicopter manufacturer
* Kaman Music Corporation, a company of several musical instrument manufacturers
* Kaman Ro ...
, and that the Rohingya conflate their history with the history of Arakan Muslims in general to advance a separatist agenda.
In addition, Myanmar's government does not recognise the term "Rohingya" and prefers to refer to the community as "
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
". Rohingya campaign groups and human rights organizations demand the right to "
self-determination
The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a ''jus cogens'' rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. It stat ...
within Myanmar".
Various
armed insurrections by the Rohingya have taken place since the 1940s and the population as a whole has faced military crackdowns in
1978
Events January
* January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.
* January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...
,
1991–1992,
2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
,
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...
, and particularly in
2016–2018, when most of the Rohingya population of Myanmar was driven out of the country, into neighbouring Bangladesh.
[Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention: ''Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar,''](_blank)
(Advance Unedited Version: English) 24 August 2018, United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
, Human Rights Council
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), CDH is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. ...
, 39th session, 10–28 September 2018, Agenda item 4. Retrieved 28 August 2018["U.N. calls for Myanmar generals to be tried for genocide, blames Facebook for incitement,"](_blank)
27 August 2018, Reuters News Service
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was establ ...
. Retrieved 28 August 2018["Myanmar Rohingya: UN says military leaders must face genocide charges,"](_blank)
27 August 2018, ''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
''. Retrieved 28 August 2018["Investigators call for genocide prosecutions over slaughter of Rohingyas,"](_blank)
27 August 2018, ''CBS News
CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
''. Retrieved 28 August 2018["Myanmar Generals Had 'Genocidal Intent' Against Rohingya, Must Face Justice: U.N.,"](_blank)
27 August 2018, ''U.S. News
''U.S. News & World Report'' (USNWR) is an American media company that publishes news, consumer advice, rankings, and analysis. It was launched in 1948 as the merger of domestic-focused weekly newspaper ''U.S. News'' and international-focused ...
''. Retrieved 28 August 2018["Year After Rohingya Massacres, Top Generals Unrepentant and Unpunished,"](_blank)
27 August 2018, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Retrieved 28 August 2018 By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
since August 2017. UN officials and Human Rights Watch have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as
ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
.
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
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
",
["UN expert alarmed at worsening human rights situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state"](_blank)
7 April 2014, United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
News Centre. Retrieved 18 September 2017 and there have been warnings of an unfolding
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
. 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 execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes include ...
s, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and
forced labour
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
" against the community.
Before the
2015 Rohingya refugee crisis
In 2015, tens of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Some fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, but most travelled to Southeast Asian countrie ...
and the
military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was close to 1.4 million,
chiefly in the northern Rakhine townships, which were 80–98% Rohingya.
Since 2015, over
900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to south-eastern Bangladesh alone,
and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations.
More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for
internally displaced person
An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.
A ...
s.
Shortly before a Rohingya rebel attack that killed 12 security forces on 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military launched "clearance operations" against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state
that, according to NGOs, the Bangladeshi government and international news media, left many dead, and many more injured, tortured or raped, with villages burned. The government of Myanmar has denied the allegations.
Nomenclature
The modern term Rohingya emerged from colonial and pre-colonial terms ''Rooinga'' and ''Rwangya''. The Rohingya refer to themselves as ''Ruáingga'' . In Burmese they are known as ''rui hang gya'' (following the
MLC Transcription System
The Myanmar Language Commission Transcription System (1980), also known as the MLC Transcription System (MLCTS), is a transliteration system for rendering Burmese in the Latin alphabet. It is loosely based on the common system for romanization of ...
) ( my, ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ) while in Bengali they are called ''Rohingga'' ( bn, রোহিঙ্গা ). The term "Rohingya" may come from ''Rakhanga'' or ''Roshanga'', the words for the state of
Arakan
Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...
. The word ''Rohingya'' would then mean "inhabitant of Rohang", which was the early Muslim name for Arakan.
The usage of the term ''Rohingya'' has been historically documented prior to the
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
. 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
The ''SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research'' is an academic journal specializing in Burma studies and history that was published twice a year at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. It was last published in 2008.
Art ...
'' in 2003.
Among the native groups of Arakan, he wrote are the: "''
Mohammedan
''Mohammedan'' (also spelled ''Muhammadan'', ''Mahommedan'', ''Mahomedan'' or ''Mahometan'') is a term for a follower of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. It is used as both a noun and an adjective, meaning belonging or relating to, either Muham ...
s'', who have long settled in ''Arakan'', and who call themselves ''Rooinga'', or natives of ''Arakan''."
The ''Classical Journal'' of 1811 identified "Rooinga" as one of the languages spoken in the "Burmah Empire". In 1815,
Johann Severin Vater
Johann Severin Vater (; May 27, 1771, Altenburg – March 16, 1826, Halle) was a German theologian, biblical scholar, and linguist.
Biography
He was a student and professor at Jena and Halle. In 1809, he became professor at Königsberg. In 1820 ...
listed "Ruinga" as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
.
In 1936, when Burma was still under
British rule
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
, the "''Rohingya Jam’iyyat al Ulama''" was founded in Arakan.
According to
Jacques Leider
Jacques Pierre Leider (; born 1862) is a French and Luxembourgian historian, teacher and former diplomat.
He is known for his historical research on Burma/Myanmar, particularly pre-colonial Buddhism, the history of Arakan, today called Rakhine, ...
, the Rohingya were referred to as "
Chittagonians" during the British colonial period, and it was not controversial to refer to them as "Bengalis" until the 1990s. 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".
[Leider 2013: 218][See (Leider 2013) for a comprehensive survey of the academic opinion on the historical usage of the term. ]
(Leider 2013: 216) citing Christina Fink: "small armed group of Muslims generally known as Rohingya".
(Leider 2013: 215–216): Lewa in 2002 wrote that "the Rohingya Muslims are ethnically and religiously related to the Chittagonians of southern Bangladesh."
Selth in 2003: "These are Bengali Muslims who live in Arakan State ... Most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries." Others, such as anthropologist Christina Fink, use Rohingya not as an ethnic identifier but as a political one. Leider believes the Rohingya is a political movement that started in the 1950s to create "an autonomous Muslim zone" in Rakhine.
[Leider 2013: 208]
The government of Prime Minister
U Nu
Nu ( my, ဦးနု; ; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995), commonly known as U Nu also known by the honorific name Thakin Nu, was a leading Burmese statesman and nationalist politician. He was the first Prime Minister of Burma under the pr ...
, when Burma was a democracy from 1948 to 1962, used the term "Rohingya" in radio addresses as a part of peace-building effort in Mayu Frontier Region.
The term was broadcast on Burmese radio and was used in the speeches of Burmese rulers.
A
UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
report on refugees caused by
Operation King Dragon referred to the victims as "Bengali Muslims (called Rohingyas)".
[Leider 2013: 212–213] Nevertheless, the term ''Rohingya'' wasn't widely used until the 1990s.
[Leider 2013: 216]
Today the use of the name "Rohingya" is polarised. The government of Myanmar refuses to use the name.
In the 2014 census, the Myanmar government forced the Rohingya to identify themselves as "Bengali".
Many Rohingya see the denial of their name similar to denying their basic rights,
[Leider 2013: 211] and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar has agreed.
Jacques Leider writes that many Muslims in Rakhine simply prefer to call themselves "Muslim Arakanese" or "Muslims coming from Rakhine" instead of "Rohingya".
The
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
embassy in
Yangon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...
continues to use the name "Rohingya".
History
Early history
The Rohingya population is concentrated in the historical region of
Arakan
Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...
, an old coastal country in
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
.
It is not clear who the original settlers of Arakan were. Burmese traditional history claims that the
Rakhine have inhabited Arakan since 3000 BCE but there is no archaeological evidence to support the claim.
By the 4th century, Arakan became one of the earliest
Indianized kingdom
Greater India, or the Indian cultural sphere, is an area composed of many countries and regions in South and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by Indian culture, which itself formed from the various distinct indigenous cultures ...
s in Southeast Asia. The first Arakanese state flourished in
Dhanyawadi
Kingdom of Dhanyawaddy ( my, ဓညဝတီ; pi, Dhaññavatī) was the capital of the first Arakanese Kingdom, located in what is now Northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. The name is a corruption of the Pali word ''Dhannavati'', which means "large ...
. Power then shifted to the city of
Waithali
Waithali ( my, ဝေသာလီမြို့, , pi, Vesālī) located in today's northern Rakhine State, Myanmar, was the capital of the Waithali Kingdom from 788 to 1018. The former capital site is approximately north-east of Sittwe, and e ...
.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
inscriptions in the region indicate that the founders of the first Arakanese states were Indian. Arakan was ruled by the
Chandra dynasty
The Chandra kingdom was a Buddhist kingdom, originating from the Indian subcontinent, which ruled the Samatata region of Bengal, as well as northern Arakan. Later it was a neighbor to the Pala Empire to the north. Rulers of Chandra kingdom were ...
.
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
Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptyi ...
".
Arrival of Islam
Due to its coastline on the
Bay of Bengal
The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line between ...
, Arakan was a key centre of maritime trade and cultural exchange between Burma and the outside world, since the time of the Indian
Maurya Empire
The Maurya Empire, or the Mauryan Empire, was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in the Indian subcontinent based in Magadha, having been founded by Chandragupta Maurya in 322 BCE, and existing in loose-knit fashion until 1 ...
.
According to Syed Islam, a political science scholar,
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
merchants had been in contact with Arakan since the third century, using the Bay of Bengal to reach Arakan.
A southern branch of the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
connected India, Burma, and China since the
neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
period.
Arab traders are recorded in the coastal areas of southeast Bengal, bordering Arakan, since the 9th century. The Rohingya population trace their history to this period.
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.
This claim by Sayed Islam saying that, by 788 CE, locals in Arakan were being converted into Muslims clearly contradicts historian Yegar's findings which say, even in 1203, Bengal is the easternmost point of Islamic expansion, not to say further into Arakan.
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". According to Southeast Asian Buddhism history scholar and an ordained Buddhist monk Ashon Nyanuttara, there is scant historical data and archaeological 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
''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing bra ...
tradition, was well established by the 4th-century in the region under the Candra Buddhist dynasty.
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
engal in the 20th-century, states historian Aye Chan.
Kingdom of Mrauk U
![Muhghazi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Muhghazi.jpg)
The Rakhines were one of the tribes of the Burmese
Pyu city-states
, conventional_long_name = Pyu city-states
, common_name = Pyu City States
, era = Classical antiquity
, status = City
, event_start = Earliest Pyu presence in Upper Burma
, year_start = c. 2nd century BCE
, date_start =
, event_en ...
.
The Rakhines began migrating to Arakan through the
Arakan Mountains
The Arakan Mountains ( my, ရခိုင်ရိုးမ), also known as the Rakhine Yoma, are a mountain range in western Myanmar, between the coast of Rakhine State and the Central Myanmar Basin, in which flows the Irrawaddy River. It is th ...
in the 9th century. The Rakhines established numerous cities in the valley of the
Lemro River
The Lemro ( my, လေးမြို့မြစ်, ) originally called Aizannadi is a river of Myanmar flowing through Chin State and Rakhine State. It flows into the Bay of Bengal east of Sittwe. The name of the river was given after establish ...
. These included Sambawak I, Pyinsa, Parein, Hkrit, Sambawak II, Myohaung, Toungoo and Launggret. Burmese forces invaded the Rakhine cities in 1406.
The Burmese invasion forced Rakhine rulers to seek help and refuge from neighbouring Bengal in the north.
Early evidence of Bengali Muslim settlements in Arakan date back to the time of
Min Saw Mon
Narameikhla Min Saw Mon ( Arakanese:နရမိတ်လှ မင်းစောမွန်; , Arakanese transliteration: Meng Sao Mwan, Arakanese pronunciation: ; also known as Suleiman Shah; 1380–1433) was the last king of Launggyet Dynas ...
(1430–34) of the
Kingdom of Mrauk U
The Kingdom of Mrauk-U ( Arakanese: မြောက်ဦး နေပြည်တော်,) was a kingdom that existed on the Arakan littoral from 1429 to 1785. Based out of the capital Mrauk-U, near the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, t ...
. After 24 years of exile in Bengal, he regained control of the Arakanese throne in 1430 with military assistance from the
Bengal Sultanate
The Sultanate of Bengal ( Middle Bengali: শাহী বাঙ্গালা ''Shahī Baṅgala'', Classical Persian: ''Saltanat-e-Bangālah'') was an empire based in Bengal for much of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. It was the dominan ...
. The
Bengalis
Bengalis (singular Bengali bn, বাঙ্গালী/বাঙালি ), also rendered as Bangalee or the Bengali people, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the ...
who came with him formed their own settlements in the region. The Santikan Mosque built in the 1430s, features a court which "measures from north to south and from east to west; the shrine is a rectangular structure measuring ."
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
A vassal or liege subject is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain. W ...
status, the Buddhist kings of Arakan received Islamic titles and used the Bengali
gold dinar
The gold dinar ( ar, ﺩﻳﻨﺎﺭ ذهبي) is an Islamic medieval gold coin first issued in AH 77 (696–697 CE) by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The weight of the dinar is 1 mithqal ().
The word ''dinar'' comes from the La ...
within the kingdom. Min Saw Mon minted his own coins with the
Burmese alphabet
The Burmese alphabet ( my, မြန်မာအက္ခရာ ''mranma akkha.ra'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese ...
on one side and the
Persian alphabet
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...
on the other.
Arakan's vassalage to Bengal was brief. After Sultan
Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah
Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah ( bn, জালালউদ্দীন মুহম্মদ শাহ; born as Yadu or Jadu) was a 15th-century Sultan of Bengal and an important figure in medieval Bengali history. Born a Hindu to his aristocratic fat ...
's death in 1433, Narameikhla's successors invaded Bengal and occupied
Ramu
The Ramu River is a major river in northern Papua New Guinea. The headwaters of the river are formed in the Kratke Range from where it then travels about northwest to the Bismarck Sea.
Along the Ramu's course, it receives numerous tributaries ...
in 1437 and Chittagong in 1459. Arakan would hold Chittagong until 1666.
[Phayre 1883: 78][Harvey 1925: 140–141]
Even after independence from the Sultans of Bengal, the Arakanese kings continued the custom of maintaining Muslim titles. The Buddhist kings compared themselves to
Sultan
Sultan (; ar, سلطان ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it ...
s and fashioned themselves after
Mughal rulers. They also continued to employ Muslims in prestigious positions within the royal administration. Some of them worked as
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
scribe
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...
s in the Arakanese courts, which, despite remaining Buddhist, adopted Islamic fashions from the neighbouring Bengal Sultanate.
The population increased in the 17th century, as slaves were brought in by Arakanese raiders and
Portuguese settlers following raids into Bengal.
Slaves included members of the Mughal nobility. A notable royal slave was
Alaol
Syed Alaol ( bn, সৈয়দ আলাওল; 1607 – 1680) was a 17th century poet of Bengal. His most well known work is ''Padmavati'', which depicts the story of Padmavati, the Sinhalese princess. He is considered to be one of the most prol ...
, 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.
In 1660,
Prince Shah Shuja, the governor of
Mughal Bengal
The Bengal Subah ( bn, সুবাহ বাংলা; fa, ), also referred to as Mughal Bengal ( bn, মোগল বাংলা), was the largest subdivision of the Mughal Empire (and later an independent state under the Nawabs of Beng ...
and a claimant of the
Peacock Throne
The Peacock Throne ( Hindustani: ''Mayūrāsana'', Sanskrit: मयूरासन, Urdu: تخت طاؤس, fa, تخت طاووس, ''Takht-i Tāvūs'') was a famous jewelled throne that was the seat of the emperors of the Mughal Empire in India ...
, fled to Arakan with his family after being defeated by his brother
Emperor Aurangzeb
Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...
during the
Battle of Khajwa
The Battle of Khajuha was a battle fought on January 5, 1659, between the newly crowned Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and Shah Shuja who also declared himself Mughal Emperor in Bengal. Shuja's army rested by the tank of Khajwa, about 30 miles to the w ...
. Shuja and his entourage arrived in Arakan on 26 August 1660.
He was granted
asylum
Asylum may refer to:
Types of asylum
* Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome
* Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute
* Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea
...
by King
Sanda Thudhamma
Sanda Thudamma (Arakanese language, Arakanese:စန္ဒသုဓမ္မရာဇာ, or islamized name Saad Ummadar), was 24th king of the Mrauk U Kingdom. He reigned from 1652 to 1674. He lost the control of Chittagong under his reign.
T ...
. In December 1660, the Arakanese king confiscated Shuja's gold and jewellery, leading to an
insurrection
Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority.
A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and ...
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
Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanm ...
. 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.
The Arakanese continued their raids of Mughal Bengal.
Dhaka
Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city ...
was raided in 1625.
Emperor Aurangzeb gave orders to his governor in Mughal Bengal,
Shaista Khan
Mirza Abu Talib (22 November 1600 – 1694), better known as Shaista Khan, was a general and the subahdar of Mughal Bengal. A maternal uncle to the emperor Aurangzeb, he acted as a key figure during his reign. Shaista Khan initially governed ...
, to end what the Mughals saw as Arakanese-Portuguese
piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
.
In 1666, Shaista Khan led a army and 288 warships to seize
Chittagong
Chittagong ( /ˈtʃɪt əˌɡɒŋ/ ''chit-uh-gong''; ctg, চিটাং; bn, চিটাগং), officially Chattogram ( bn, চট্টগ্রাম), is the second-largest city in Bangladesh after Dhaka and third largest city in B ...
from the Kingdom of Mrauk U. The Mughal expedition continued up till the
Kaladan River
The Kaladan River ( my, ကုလားတန်မြစ်, ; also Kysapnadi, Beino, Bawinu and Kolodyne) is a river in eastern Mizoram State of India, and in Chin State and Rakhine State of western Myanmar. The Kaladan River is called the Chh ...
. The Mughals placed the northern part of Arakan under its administration and vassalage.
Burmese conquest
Following the
Konbaung Dynasty
The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...
'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
The Bamar (, ; also known as the Burmans) are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group native to Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Southeast Asia. With approximately 35 million people, the Bamar make up the largest ethnic group in Myanmar, constituting 68% of th ...
and to seek protection under the
British Raj
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
. The Bamar executed thousands of men and deported a considerable portion of the population to central Burma, leaving Arakan a scarcely populated area by the time the British occupied it.
According to an article on the "''Burma'' Empire" published by the British
Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
Francis Buchanan (15 February 1762 – 15 June 1829), later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, was a Scottish physician who made significant contributions as a geographer, zoologist, and botanist whil ...
in 1799, "the ''
Mohammedan
''Mohammedan'' (also spelled ''Muhammadan'', ''Mahommedan'', ''Mahomedan'' or ''Mahometan'') is a term for a follower of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. It is used as both a noun and an adjective, meaning belonging or relating to, either Muham ...
s'', who have long settled in ''Arakan''", "call themselves ''Rooinga'', or natives of ''Arakan''".
However, according to Derek Tokin, Hamilton no longer used the term to refer to the Muslims in Arakan in his later publications.
Sir Henry Yule
Sir Henry Yule (1 May 1820 – 30 December 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist and geographer. He published many travel books, including translations of the work of Marco Polo and ''Mirabilia'' by the 14th-century Dominican Friar Jordanus. ...
saw many Muslims serving as
eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function.
The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millennium ...
s in
Konbaung
The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...
while on a diplomatic mission to the Burmese capital, Ava.
British colonial rule
![Akyab mosque 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Akyab_mosque_2.jpg)
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
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
extended the
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...
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. 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.
The British census of 1872 reported 58,255 Muslims in Akyab District. By 1911, the Muslim population had increased to 178,647. 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.
[Myint-U 2006: 185–187] 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.
According to
Thant Myint-U
Thant Myint-U ( my, သန့်မြင့်ဦး ; born 31 January 1966) is an American-born Burmese historian, writer, grandson of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, former UN official, and former special adviser to the p ...
, historian and adviser to President
Thein Sein
Thein Sein ( my, သိန်းစိန်; IPA: ; born 20 April 1944) is a Burmese politician and retired general in the Myanmar Army who served as the eighth President of Myanmar from 2011 to 2016. He previously served as Prime Minister ...
, "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
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...
,
Akyab
Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptyi ...
,
Bassein and
Moulmein
Mawlamyine (also spelled Mawlamyaing; , ; th, เมาะลำเลิง ; mnw, မတ်မလီု, ), formerly Moulmein, is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar (Burma), ''World Gazetteer'' south east of Yangon and south of Thaton, at th ...
, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. All of Burma was officially a
Province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...
within the
British Indian Empire
The British Raj (; from Hindi language, Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Q ...
('the Raj') from November 1885 until 1937, when Burma became a separate
Crown colony
A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony administered by The Crown within the British Empire. There was usually a Governor, appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the UK Government, with or without the assistance of a local Counci ...
within the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
. The Burmese under British rule felt helpless, and reacted with a "racism that combined feelings of superiority and fear".
Professor Andrew Selth of
Griffith University
Griffith University is a public research university in South East Queensland on the east coast of Australia. Formally founded in 1971, Griffith opened its doors in 1975, introducing Australia's first degrees in environmental science and Asian s ...
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.
Most have argued that Rohingya existed from the four waves of Muslim migrations from the ancient times to medieval, to the British colony. Gutman (1976) and Ibrahim (2016) claiming that the Muslim population dates before the arrival of ethnic Rakhine in the 9th to 10th century. Suggesting the Rohingya are descendants of the of a pre-Arakan population who existed for 3 thousand years and waves of Muslim who intermingled forming modern Rohingya.
The impact of this immigration was particularly acute in Arakan. Although it boosted the colonial economy, local Arakanese bitterly resented it.
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."
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.
Shipping
![HMIS indus IWM ADNO 9148](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/HMIS_indus_IWM_ADNO_9148.jpg)
Due to the difficult terrain of the
Arakan Mountains
The Arakan Mountains ( my, ရခိုင်ရိုးမ), also known as the Rakhine Yoma, are a mountain range in western Myanmar, between the coast of Rakhine State and the Central Myanmar Basin, in which flows the Irrawaddy River. It is th ...
, the Arakan region was historically most accessible by sea.
In British Arakan Division, the port of
Akyab
Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptyi ...
had
ferry
A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
services and a thriving trade with the ports of
Chittagong
Chittagong ( /ˈtʃɪt əˌɡɒŋ/ ''chit-uh-gong''; ctg, চিটাং; bn, চিটাগং), officially Chattogram ( bn, চট্টগ্রাম), is the second-largest city in Bangladesh after Dhaka and third largest city in B ...
,
Narayanganj
Narayanganj ( bn, নারায়ণগঞ্জ ''Naraeongônj'') is a city in central Bangladesh. It is in the Narayanganj District, about southeast of the capital city of Dhaka, and has a population of about 2 million. It is the 6th larges ...
, Dacca and Calcutta in
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
;
as well as with
Rangoon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...
. Akyab was one of the leading
rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
ports in the world, hosting ship fleets from Europe and China.
Many Indians settled in Akyab and dominated its seaport and hinterland. The 1931 census found 500,000 Indians living in Akyab.
Legislators
Several Rohingyas 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
Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptyi ...
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.
World War II
![Australian officers in Akyab, Burma](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Australian_officers_in_Akyab%2C_Burma.jpg)
During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded British rule in Burma, 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
and to counteract the largely pro-Japanese Rakhine people, ethnic Rakhines.
The period also witnessed violence between groups loyal to the British and the Burmese nationalists.
The Arakan massacres in 1942 involved communal violence between British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and , polarising the region along ethnic lines.
Tensions boiling in Arakan before the war erupted during the South-East Asian theatre of World War II, 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.
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.
Aye Chan, a historian at Kanda University of International Studies, Kanda University in Japan, has written that as a consequence of acquiring arms from the British during World War II, Rohingyas 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 Township, Minbya and Mrauk-U Townships were killed by Rakhines and Karenni people, Red Karens.
As in the rest of Burma, the IJA committed acts of rape, murder and torture against Muslims in Arakan. 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. 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.
According to the secretary of the Governor of Burma, 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.
Pakistan Movement
During the Pakistan Movement in the 1940s, Rohingya Muslims in western Burma organised a separatist movement to merge the region into East Pakistan. The commitments of the British regarding the status of Muslims after the World War II, 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.
Before the Burma Campaign, 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. The North Arakan Muslim League was founded in Akyab (modern Sittwe) two months later. The proposal never materialised since it was reportedly turned down by Jinnah, saying that he was not in a position to interfere in Burmese matters.
Post-WWII migration
The numbers and the extent of post-independence immigration from
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
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."
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."
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. ICG adds that there were "some 17,000" refugees from the Bangladesh liberation war who "subsequently returned home".
Burmese independence
![M](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/M._A._Gaffar_Rohingya.jpg)
On 25 September 1954, the then Prime Minister U Nu in his radio address to the nation talked about Rohingya Muslims’ political loyalty to predominantly Buddhist Burma. This usage of the term ‘Rohingya’ is important in the sense that today Myanmar denies to accept this category altogether and calls them ’Bengali’. During the same time a separate administrative zone May Yu was established comprising most of the present North Rakhine State, which had Rohingya as its majority ethnic group. One of the objectives of this Muslim majority zone was to ‘strive for peace with Pakistan’. Brigadier Aung Gyi, one of the deputies of General Ne Win, in 1961 explained Rohingya as; “On the west, May Yu district borders with Pakistan. As is the case with all borderlands communities, there are Muslims on both sides of the borders. Those who are on Pakistan’s side are known as Pakistani while the Muslims on our Burmese side of the borders are referred to as ‘Rohingya’.
But since 1962 Burmese coup d'état, Burma's military junta took control of the country in 1962, the Rohingya have been systematically deprived of their political rights.
In 1962 military dictator General Ne Win, took over the government and started implementing a Nationalist agenda, which had its roots in racial discrimination. In 1978 military government launched operation Nagamin to separate nationals from non-nationals. This was the first concerted large scale violent attack on Rohingya. National Registration Cards (NRC) were taken away by state actors never to be replaced. Violence that followed forced 200,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Bangladesh denied Rohingya admission into her territory and blocked food rations leading to death of 12,000 of them. After bilateral negotiations Rohingya were repatriated.
Rohingya political participation in Burma
In the prelude to independence, two Rohingyas were elected to the Legislature of Burma, Constituent Assembly of Burma in 1947, M. A. Gaffar and Sultan Ahmed (Parliamentary Secretary), 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 name of the ethnicity. Sultan Ahmed, who served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Minorities, was a member of the Justice Ba U, Sir Ba U Commission charged with exploring whether Arakan Division should be granted statehood. During the 1951 Burmese general election, 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 1956 Burmese general election and subsequent by-elections. Sultan Mahmud (minister), Sultan Mahmud, a former politician in British India, became Minister of Health in the cabinet of Prime Minister of Burma
U Nu
Nu ( my, ဦးနု; ; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995), commonly known as U Nu also known by the honorific name Thakin Nu, was a leading Burmese statesman and nationalist politician. He was the first Prime Minister of Burma under the pr ...
. In 1960, Mahmud suggested that either Rohingya-majority northern Arakan remain under the central government or be made a separate province. However, during the 1960 Burmese general election, 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 1990 Burmese general election, the Rohingya-led Democracy and Human Rights Party, 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 State Law and Order Restoration Council, 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 (politician), Shwe Maung was disbarred from the 2015 Burmese general election, on grounds that his parents were not Burmese citizens under the 1982 citizenship law.
As of 2017, Burma does not have a single Rohingya MP and the Rohingya population have no voting rights.
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
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...
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 Burmese Way to Socialism, socialist military government nationalised 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.
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
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
.
The return of refugees to Burma has been the second largest repatriation process in Asia after the return of Cambodian refugees from Thailand.
1982 Citizenship Law
In 1982, the Myanmar nationality law, citizenship law enacted by the Military of Burma, Burmese military junta did not list the Rohingya as one of the 135 "Ethnic groups in Myanmar, national races" of Burma. This made much of the Rohingya population in Burma Statelessness, stateless in their historical homeland of
Arakan
Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...
. General Ne Win drafted Citizenship Act in 1982, which denied citizenship rights to any community/group that was not listed in a survey conducted by British in 1824. All other ethnic groups were considered aliens to the land or invaders. Eight major ethnicities Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Mon, Shan, and Burmese were broken into 135 small ethnic groups. Groups like Rohingya who do not belong to any of these 135 ethnicities were denied citizenship rights. Taking into account just one survey for defining the history of a group of people is highly problematic. It overlooks the fact that Rohingya were mentioned in records earlier to this survey.
Scholars like Maung Zarni have argued that Burmese military ‘encoded its anti-Indian and anti-Muslim racism in its laws and policies’. He further argues;
“The 1982 Citizenship Act serves as the state’s legal and ideological foundation on which all forms of violence, execution, restrictions, and human rights crimes are justified and committed with state impunity if carried out horizontally by the local ultra-nationalist Rakhine Buddhists.
In light of the on-the-ground link between the legalised removal of citizenship from the Rohingya and the implementation of a permanent set of draconian laws and policies—as opposed to periodic “anti-immigration” operations—amount to the infliction on the Rohingya of conditions of life designed to bring about serious bodily and mental harm and to destroy the group in whole or in part. As such, the illegalisation of the Rohingya in Myanmar is an indication of the intent of the State to both remove the Rohingya permanently from their homeland and to destroy the Rohingya as a group.”
Refugee crisis of 1991–1992
After Burmese military junta began persecuting the political opposition following Aung San Suu Kyi's victory in the 1990 Myanmar general election, 1990 election and the earlier 1988 Uprising, military operations targeting Muslims (who strongly favoured the pro-democracy movement) began in Arakan State. The Rohingya-led Democracy and Human Rights Party, 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.
An estimated 250,000 refugees crossed over into Bangladesh.
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 mobilised thousands of troops along the border during the crisis. The government of Bangladesh emphasised a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
After diplomatic negotiations, a repatriation agreement was put in place to allow the return of refugees to Burma under a
UNHCR
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...
-supervised process.
Name change from Arakan to Rakhine State
In 1989, the junta officially changed the name of Burma to
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. In the 1990s, the junta changed the name of the province of Arakan to
Rakhine State
Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...
, 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
Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...
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. Since the 1982 Myanmar nationality law, citizenship law, Burmese juntas and governments have strongly objected to the usage of the term of Rohingya, preferring to label the community as "bengali illegal immigrants". The derogatory slur ''kalar'' is widely used in Myanmar against the Rohingya.
Myanmar's government has often pressured diplomats and foreign delegates against uttering the term ''Rohingya''.
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."
''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
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
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.
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. 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 Ne Win, 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 King Dragon operation in Arakan, Operation King Dragon, which took place in 1978; as a result, many Muslims in the region fled to neighbouring Bangladesh as refugees. In addition to Bangladesh, a large number of Rohingyas also migrated to Karachi, Pakistan.
Rohingya mujahideen are still active within the remote areas of Arakan.
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. 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. 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". In 1982, the Burmese government enacted the citizenship law and declared the "Bengalis" are foreigners.
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.
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 characterised by lobbying internationally by overseas diaspora, establishing indigenous claims by Rohingya scholars, publicising the term "Rohingya" and denying Bengali origins by Rohingya politicians.
Rohingya scholars 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.
Some Rohingya politicians have labelled Burmese and international historians as "Rakhine sympathizers" for rejecting the purported historical origins.
The movement has garnered sharp criticisms from ethnic Rakhines and Kamans, the latter of whom are a recognised 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.
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". 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.
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.
Successive Burmese governments have been accused of provoking riots led by Buddhist monks against ethnic minorities like the Rohingyas 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. In 2009, a senior Burmese envoy to Hong Kong branded the Rohingyas "ugly as ogres" and a people that are alien to Myanmar.
Under the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar, 2008 constitution, the Tatmadaw, Myanmar military still control much of the country's government, including the ministries of home, defence and border affairs, 25% of seats in parliament and one vice-president.
Rakhine State conflicts and refugees (2012–present)
2012 Rakhine State riots
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. 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.
There is evidence that the pogroms in 2012 were incited by the government asking the Rakhine men to defend their "race and religion". The Rakhine men were said to have been given knives and free food, and bused in from Sittwe.
The Burmese government denied having organised the pogroms, but has never prosecuted anyone for the attacks against the Rohingyas.
''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.
On both sides, entire villages were "decimated".
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.
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. Rohingya NGOs abroad have accused the Burmese army and police of targeting Rohingya Muslims through arrests and participating in violence.
A field observation conducted by the International Crisis Group concluded that both communities were grateful for the protection provided by the military. 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.
In July 2012, the Burmese Government did not include the Rohingya minority group in the census—classified as Statelessness, stateless Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh since 1982. About 140,000 Rohingya in Myanmar remain confined in IDP camps.
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".
In 2015, to escape violence and persecution, thousands of Rohingyas migrated from Myanmar and Bangladesh, collectively dubbed as 'boat people' by international media,
to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates about 25,000 people have been taken to boats from January to March in 2015. There are claims that around 100 people died in Indonesia, 200 in Malaysia, and 10 in Thailand 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. 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."
Autumn 2016 – Summer 2017
On 9 October 2016, insurgents attacked three Burmese border posts along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh.
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.
On 11 October 2016, four soldiers were killed on the third day of fighting.
Following the attacks, reports emerged of several human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by Burmese security forces in their crackdown on suspected Rohingya insurgents.
Shortly after, the Tatmadaw, Myanmar military forces and extremist Buddhists started a major crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims in the country's western region of
Rakhine State
Rakhine State (; , , ; formerly known as Arakan State) is a Administrative divisions of Myanmar, state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady R ...
in response to attacks on border police camps by unidentified insurgents. The crackdown resulted in wide-scale human rights violations at the hands of security forces, including extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, arsons, and other brutalities.
The military crackdown on Rohingyas drew criticism from various quarters including the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
, human rights group Amnesty International, the United States Department of State, US Department of State, and the government of Malaysia.
The de facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi has particularly been criticised for her inaction and silence over the issue and for doing little to prevent military abuses.
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;
however, on 17 October 2016, a group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) claimed responsibility.
In the following days, six other groups released statements, all citing the same leader.
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.
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.
The Tatmadaw, 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.
The United Nations believes over 1,000 people have been killed since October 2016, which contradicts the death toll provided by the Myanmar government.
Autumn 2017 crisis
Starting in early August 2017, the Myanmar security forces began "clearance operations" against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine state.
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, brutalising thousands more, and driving hundreds of thousands out of the country into neighbouring 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 organisations 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
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
" and/or "
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
."
[Rowlatt, Justi]
"Could Aung San Suu Kyi face Rohingya genocide charges?"
18 December 2017, ''BBC Panorama'', BBC. Retrieved 22 December 2017 In August 2018, study
estimated that more than 24,000+ Rohingya people were killed by the Myanmar military and the local Buddhists since the "clearance operations" started on 25 August 2017. The study
also estimated that 18,000+ the Rohingya Muslim women and girls were raped, 116,000 Rohingya were beaten, 36,000 Rohingya were thrown into fire
=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 organisation 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.
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.
[ "The Latest: UN Security Council condemns Rohingya violence,"](_blank)
13 September 2017, ABC News. Retrieved 17 September 2017[Associated Press report]
"Bleak Future for Myanmar’s Rohingya,"
8 September 2017, ''U.S. News & World Report''. Retrieved 17 September 2017
The following morning, according to Myanmar military officials, a Rohingya rebel group (ARSA, or 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.
["The Rohingya in Myanmar: How Years of Strife Grew Into a Crisis,"](_blank)
13 September 2017, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Retrieved 17 September 2017 (also at ''Bangkok Post'' unde
same title
)["U.N. chief, Security Council call on Myanmar to end violence,"](_blank)
12 September 2017, Reuters. Retrieved 17 September 2017["Indian Prime Minister blames Rohingya violence on extremists,"](_blank)
7 September 2017, Cable News Network (CNN). Retrieved 17 September 2017[Associated Press report]
"Myanmar's Rohingya beat a perilous path in search of safety,"
5 September 2017, Fox News Channel. Retrieved 17 September 2017
=Conflict escalation
=
![Rohingya displaced Muslims 010](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Rohingya_displaced_Muslims_010.jpg)
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
)—attacking Rohingya villages throughout northern Rakhine state.
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.
However, in December 2017, following a detailed survey of Rohingya refugees, a humanitarian organisation serving refugees, Médecins Sans Frontières 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."
["MSF estimates more than 6,700 Rohingya killed in Myanmar,"](_blank)
14 December 2017, ''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
''. Retrieved 20 December 2017["At Least 6,700 Myanmar Rohingya Killed In Single Month, Aid Group Says,"](_blank)
14 December 2017, ''The Two-Way'', NPR["Myanmar/Bangladesh: MSF surveys estimate that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed during the attacks in Myanmar,"](_blank)
12 December 2017, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International. Retrieved 22 December 2017
Refugees reported numerous civilians—including women and children—being indiscriminately 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.
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.
In the first four weeks of the 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.
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."
[[ "Militant Rohingya Group Declares Month-Long Cease-Fire in Myanmar,"] 10 September 2017, ''Wall Street Journal,'' retrieved 17 September 2017]
The violence and humanitarian 'catastrophe,' inflamed international tensions, especially in the region, and throughout the Muslim world.
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.
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.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, on 4 September, estimated 123,000 refugees have escaped western Myanmar since 25 August 2017. (By 15 September, that number had surpassed 400,000
) 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.
Myanmar's de facto civilian leader and Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi,
["Aung San Suu Kyi breaks silence on Rohingya, sparks storm of criticism,"](_blank)
19 September 2017, CNN. Retrieved 20 September 2017["The Rohingya crisis: Why won't Aung San Suu Kyi act?"](_blank)
8 September 2017, ''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
'', 14 September 2017 criticised 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.
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.
A Holy See diplomat stated that at least 3000 people were killed by Myanmar security forces in August and September 2017.
The U.N. Secretary General issued a statement, 13 September 2017, implying that the situation facing the Rohingya in Rakhine state was "
ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
." 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) recognise the refugees' right to return to their homes.
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.
[Associated Press]
"The Latest: UN Security Council condemns Rohingya violence,"
13 September 2017, ABC News. Retrieved 19 September 2017
On 19 September 2017, Myanmar's civilian leader, State Counsellor of Myanmar, 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.
["Rohingya crisis: Suu Kyi does not fear global 'scrutiny',"](_blank)
19 September 2017, ''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
''. Retrieved 19 September 2017["Aung San Suu Kyi, a Much-Changed Icon, Evades Rohingya Accusations,"](_blank)
18 September 2017, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Retrieved 19 September 2017["5 dubious claims Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi made in her speech,"](_blank)
19 September 2017, CNN. Retrieved 19 September 2017
By the end of September, conflicts between Rohingya Muslims and outnumbered Hindus, became apparent—including the Kha Maung Seik massacre, 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.
["Myanmar: bodies of 28 Hindu villagers found in Rakhine, army claims,"](_blank)
24 September 2017, Reuters in ''The Guardian'' retrieved 25 September 2017["Grave of 28 Hindus Killed by Rohingya Militants Found, Says Myanmar Army,"](_blank)
25 September 2017, Agence France-Presse (unedited) in NDTV (India). Retrieved 25 September 2017["Myanmar searches for more Hindu corpses as mass grave unearthed,"](_blank)
25 September 2017, Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 26 September 2017
In other cases, in Myanmar and in Bangladeshi refugee camps Hindu (particularly women) are reported to have faced kidnapping, religious abuse and "forced conversions" by Muslim Rohingyas.
[Loiwal, Manogya, (Posted by Ashna Kumar)]
"Exclusive: Forced to remove sindoor, read namaz: Horror engulfs Hindu Rohingya women in camps,"
in "Mail Today," 26 September 2017, ''India Today'' retrieved 26 September 2017
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
["Rohingya refugees have 'absolutely nothing'; A perilous journey for Rohingya refugees,"](_blank)
28 September 2017 BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
. Retrieved 29 September 2017["Rohingya crisis: UN chief warns of 'humanitarian nightmare',"](_blank)
28 September 2017 BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
. Retrieved 29 September 2017—the current conflict, since late August 2017, had driven 500,000 more Rohingya from Myanmar into Bangladesh,
[Pitman, Todd, Associated Press]
"Myanmar refugee exodus tops 500,000 as more Rohingya flee,"
29 September 2017 Fox News. Retrieved 30 September 2017 creating what UN Secretary General António Guterres described as "the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency ... a humanitarian nightmare."
["Asia's largest refugee crisis: Myanmar tops as 500,000 Rohingya flee,"](_blank)
30 September 2017, ''The Economic Times'' (India) retrieved 30 September 2017 (Same topic at
In November 2017 Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding for the return home of Rohingya refugees. In April 2018 the first group of Rohingya refugees returned to Myanmar from Bangladesh.
Relocation to Bhasan Char island
In January 2016, the government of Bangladesh initiated a plan to relocate tens of thousands of forcibly displaced Rohingyas, who had fled to the country following persecution in Myanmar.
The refugees are to be relocated to the island of Bhasan Char.
The move has received substantial opposition. Human rights groups have seen the plan as a forced relocation.
Additionally, concerns have been raised about living conditions on the island, which is low-lying and prone to flooding.
The island has been described as "only accessible during winter and a haven for pirates".
It is nine hours away from the camps in which the Rohingya currently live.
In October 2019, Bangladeshi authorities again announced plans to relocate refugees to the island.
On 9 July 2020, HRW urged Bangladeshi authorities to immediately move over 300 Rohingya refugees, including children, from the silt island of Bhasan Char to the Cox's Bazar refugee camps to let them reside with their families. Families in Cox's Bazar told HRW that relatives on Bhasan Char are being held without freedom of movement or adequate access to food or medical care, and face severe shortages of safe drinking water.
Since the 2021 coup d'état
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, the majority of Bamar population, usually antagonistic against Rohingya people, have also become targeted by its own brutal military. Because of growing brutality and violence penetrated by the Tatmadaw, a growing number of Burmese have voiced support for the Rohingya people. The underground National Unity Government of Myanmar, National Unity Government, formed as an opposition to the authoritarian State Administration Council, issued recognition of the war crimes committed by the Tatmadaw against the Rohingya people for the first time, which was hailed as a major step toward ethnic reconciliation.
Genocide
In 2015, an assessment by the Yale Law School concluded that the government of Myanmar was waging a concerted campaign against the Rohingya, a campaign which could be classified as
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
under international law.
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 Ethnic group, ethnicity and religion.
The International State Crime Initiative of the University of London issued a report stating that a genocide is taking place against the Rohingya.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has used the term
ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
to describe the exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar. In December 2017, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, dismissed the Myanmar government's claims that its operations were merely a response to rebel attacks, and it also indicated that "for us, it was clear... that these operations were organised and planned," and could amount to "genocide."
On 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 was not made public until 27 August) which summarised its findings after an investigation was completed into 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
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals ...
and charged with "crimes against humanity", including "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide."
In July 2022, a report from Reuters revealed an extensive plan by the Tatmadaw to eradicate the Rohingyas.
Demographics
![Map of Rohingya people in Rakhine State](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Map_of_Rohingya_people_in_Rakhine_State.png)
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.
Rohingyas have 46% more children than Myanmar's national average.
In 2018, 48,000 Rohingya babies were born in Bangladesh, out of a total population of 120,000 fertile women. As of 2014, about 1.3 million Rohingyas lived in Myanmar and an estimated 1 million lived overseas. They constitute 40% of Rakhine State's total population or 60% of it if the overseas Rohingya population is included. As of December 2016, 1/7th Statelessness, stateless of the entire world's stateless population is Rohingya according to United Nations figures.
Prior to the
2015 Rohingya refugee crisis
In 2015, tens of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Some fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, but most travelled to Southeast Asian countrie ...
and the
military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.1 to 1.3 million
They reside mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they form 80–98% of the population.
Many Rohingyas have fled to southeastern Bangladesh, where there are over Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, 900,000 refugees,
as well as to India,
Thailand,
Malaysia,
Indonesia,
Saudi Arabia
and Rohingya people in Pakistan, Pakistan.
More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar live in camps for
internally displaced person
An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.
A ...
s, and the authorities do not allow them to leave.
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 John Sydenham Furnivall, 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.
Culture
Rohingya culture shares many similarities to that of other ethnic groups in the region. The clothing worn by most Rohingyas is indistinguishable from those worn by other groups in Myanmar.
Men wear ''bazu'' (long sleeved shirts) and ''longgi'' or ''doothi'' (loincloths) covering down to the ankles. Religious scholars prefer wearing ''kurutha'', ''jubba'' or ''panjabi'' (long tops). In special occasions, Rohingya men sometimes wear ''taikpon'' (collarless jackets) on top of their shirts.
''Lucifica'' is a type of flat bread regularly eaten by Rohingyas,
while ''bola fica'' is a popular traditional snack made of rice noodles. Betel leaves, colloquially known as ''faan'', are also popular amongst Rohingyas.
Language
The Rohingya language is part of the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the greater Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and is related to the Chittagonian language spoken in the southernmost part of Bangladesh bordering Myanmar.
While both Rohingya and Chittagonian are related to Bengali, they are not Mutual intelligibility, 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 alphabet, Arabic, Hanifi alphabet, Hanifi, Urdu alphabet, Urdu, Roman, and
Burmese alphabet
The Burmese alphabet ( my, မြန်မာအက္ခရာ ''mranma akkha.ra'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese ...
s, where Hanifi is a newly developed alphabet derived from Arabic with the addition of four characters from Latin and Burmese.
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.
Religion
![ROHINGYA (8093615213)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/ROHINGYA_%288093615213%29.jpg)
Due to the fact that members of Burma's Rohingya Muslim population are not considered citizens of the country, they are not protected against discrimination by the Burmese government. Therefore, concerns exist with regard to the community's lack of religious freedom, especially in the legal and political sphere.
The overwhelming majority of Rohingya people practice Islam, including a blend of Sunni Islam and Sufism
and about 2.5% of Rohingya are Hinduism, Hindu.
The government restricts their educational opportunities; so many of them 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.
Muslims have often faced obstacles and struggled to practice their religion in the same way as other individuals in Burma. These struggles have manifested themselves in the form of difficulty in receiving approval for the construction of places of worship, whether they be informal or formal. In the past, they have also been arrested for teaching and practising their religious beliefs.
Health
The Rohingya face discrimination and barriers to health care.
According to a 2016 study published in the medical journal ''The Lancet'', Rohingya children in Myanmar face low birth weight, malnutrition, diarrhoea, and barriers to reproduction on reaching adulthood.
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).
The paper also found that 40% of Rohingya children suffer from diarrhoea in internally displaced persons camp within Myanmar at a rate five times that of diarrhoeal illness among children in the rest of Rakhine.
Human rights and refugee status
![Cox's Bazaar Refugee Camp (8539828824) (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Cox%27s_Bazaar_Refugee_Camp_%288539828824%29_%28cropped%29.jpg)
The Rohingya people have been described as "one of the world's least wanted minorities" and "some of the world's most persecuted people". Médecins Sans Frontières claimed that the discrimination and human rights challenges which 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."
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."
The Rohingya are denied
freedom of movement
Freedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country,Jérémiee Gilbert, ''Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights' ...
as well as the right to receive a Higher education in Myanmar, higher education. They have been denied Burmese citizenship since the 1982 nationality law was enacted.
Post the 1982 law, Burma has had Myanmar nationality law, different types of citizenship. Citizens possessed red identity cards; Rohingyas were given white identity cards which essentially classified them as foreigners who were living 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 they 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.
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 Unfree labour, forced labour. (Typically, a Rohingya man has to work on military or government projects one day a week, and perform sentry duty one night a week.)
The Rohingya have also lost a lot of arable land, which has been confiscated by the military and given to Buddhist settlers who have moved there from elsewhere in Myanmar.
The military is partially responsible for the human rights violations which have been committed against the Rohingya. These violations include destruction of property and forced relocation to another country. One such violation was committed when the military forced Rohingyas in Rakhine to move to Bangladesh. Other human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims include physical violence and sexual violence. The country's military officials rationalised these violations by stating that they were required as part of a census that was going to be conducted in Burma and the military needed to perform these acts in order to find out what the Rohingya Muslims's nationality was.
According to Amnesty International, the Rohingya have been subjected to human rights violations by Burma's military dictatorship since
1978
Events January
* January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.
* January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...
, and many of them have fled to neighbouring
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
as a result.
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 the discrimination which they have been subjected to by the government.
Members of the Rohingya community were displaced to Bangladesh where the government of the country, non-governmental organisations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR gave aid to the refugees by providing them with homes and food. These external organisations (other than those which were controlled by the government) were important because the immigration of the Rohingyas was massive due to the number of people who needed help.
In 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helped the Bangladeshi government repatriate Rohingyas from Bangladesh, but allegations of human rights abuses inside the refugee camps threatened this effort. In 2015, 140,000 Rohingyas were still living in IDP camps, three years after fleeing communal riots in 2012. Despite earlier repatriation efforts by the United Nations, UN, the vast majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are unable to return to Myanmar due to the communal violence which occurred there in 2012 and their 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. In February 2009, many Rohingya refugees were rescued by Acehnese people, Acehnese sailors in the Strait of Malacca, after 21 days at sea.
Thousands of Rohingyas have also fled to Thailand. There have been charges that Rohingyas were shipped and towed out to the open sea from Thailand. In February 2009, evidence showing the Thai army towing a boatload of 190 Rohingya refugees out to sea surfaced. A group of refugees who were rescued by Indonesian authorities stated that they were captured and beaten by the Thai military, and then abandoned at sea.
Steps to repatriate Rohingya refugees began in 2005. In 2009, the government of Bangladesh announced that it would repatriate around 9,000 Rohingyas who were living in refugee camps inside the country back to Myanmar, after a meeting with Burmese diplomats. On 16 October 2011, the new government of Myanmar agreed to take back registered Rohingya refugees. However, these repatriation efforts were hampered by the Rakhine riots in 2012.
On 29 March 2014, the Burmese government banned the word "Rohingya" and asked that members of the minority group be registered as "Bengalis" in the 2014 Myanmar Census, the first census to be held in three decades. 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.
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
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
against the Rohingya. In November 2016, a senior UN official in Bangladesh accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas.
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.
In September 2020, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has warned that the killing and abductions of Rohingyas have not stopped, despite the International Court of Justice ordering Myanmar's leadership to prevent genocide and stop the killings in December 2019.
Some countries like Malaysia have rejected the resettlement of Rohingya refugees and sent them back to sea because of economic difficulties and the COVID-19 pandemic, Coronavirus pandemic. Malaysian authorities have also expressed concern that militant Rohingya groups have been raising funds by extorting money from Rohingya refugees in the country.
See also
* International reactions to the Rohingya genocide
* Kamein
* List of ethnic groups in Myanmar
* Min Aung Hlaing
* Persecution of Muslims
* Rohingya refugees in India
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General and cited sources
''(in alphabetical order)''
*
"Burma's Western Border as Reported by the Diplomatic Correspondence (1947–1975)"by Aye Chan
"Burma's Western Border as Reported by the Diplomatic Correspondence (1947–1975)"by Aye Chan
*
*
International Center for Transitional Justice, Myanmar*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
{{Authority control
Rohingya people,
Ethnic groups in Bangladesh
Ethnic groups in Myanmar
Ethnic groups in Pakistan
Indo-Aryan peoples
Islam in Myanmar
Muslim ethnoreligious groups
Refugees in Indonesia
Refugees in Malaysia
Stateless nationalism in Asia
Stateless people