Discrimination In The Rohingya

Rohingya have often been called the most persecuted minority in the world. The 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims squeezed precariously into the north-west state of Rakhine, in mainly Buddhist Burma, bordering majority Muslim Bangladesh, are stateless and unwanted.

Neither country will give them citizenship even though their families’ roots in modern-day Rakhine, once called Arakan, can be traced back to the Eighth Century.

How are they being persecuted?

Some 420,000 Rohingya Muslims, a religious and ethnic minority community in Myanmar, have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August this year.

The United Nations has called the Rohingya the world’s most persecutedminority group whereby one group removes another ethnic or religious community through violence.

My research on the Rohingya Muslim experience in Myanmar shows that this pattern of persecution goes back to 1948 – the year when the country achieved independence from their British colonizers.

How many have they fled?

The latest evidence came Thursday, when the United Nations reported that some 500,000 Rohingya ethnic Muslims had fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August 25. They’re trying to escape a campaign of indiscriminate violence at the hands of the Myanmarese military. Even Myanmar authorities themselves now say that 176 of 471 Rohingya villages are empty. That brutal, sustained campaign seems to be working. On Thursday, up to 63 Rohingya refugees — many of them women and children — appear to have drowned when their boat capsized en route to Bangladesh. Only 23 bodies were recovered.

What does the Myanmar say about the Rohingya?

Aung San Suu Kyi has broken her silence on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, delivering a speech denounced as a “mix of untruths and victim-blaming” by Amnesty