Rayhan Ahmed Topader :
Thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, many taking to the sea to try to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The latest surge in refugees was prompted by a long-building crisis: the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government in Rakhine state, which have caused hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee since the late 1970s.Their plight has been compounded by the responses of many of Myanmar’s neighbors, which have been slow to take in refugees for fear of a migrant influx they feel incapable of handling. The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group living primarily in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state; they practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam. The estimated one million Rohingya in Myanmar account for nearly a third of Rakhine’s population. The Rohingya differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. The Rohingya trace their origins in the region to the fifteenth century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Bengal and the Rakhine territory were governed by colonial rule as part of British India. Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya’s historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups.
The Rohingya are largely identified as illegal Bengali immigrants, despite the fact that many Rohingya have resided in Myanmar for centuries.
Both the Myanmar government and the Rakhine state’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, reject the use of the label “Rohingya,” a self-identifying term (PDF) that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity. Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the most widely accepted origin is that “Rohang” is a derivation of the word “Arakan” in the Rohingya dialect and the “ga” or “gya” means “from”By identifying as Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group asserts its ties to land that was once under the control of the Arakan Kingdom, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project,a Thailand-based advocacy group. The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship status, and as a result the vast majority of the group’s members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless. Though Myanmar’s 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, the military junta introduced a citizenship law in 1982 whose strict provisions stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. Until recently, the Rohingya have been able to register as temporary residents with identification cards, known as “white cards,” which Myanmar’s regime began issuing to many Muslims (both Rohingya and non-Rohingya) in the 1990s.
Muslim minorities continue to “consolidate under one Rohingya identity” says Lewa. Government policies, including restrictions (PDF) on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement have institutionalized systemic discrimination against the ethnic group. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Parliamentarians for Human Rights wrote in April 2015 that “the longstanding persecution of Rohingya has led to the highest outflow of asylum seekers by sea [in the region] since the U.S. war in Vietnam. “Rakhine state is also Myanmar’s least developed state, with more than 78 percent of households living below the poverty threshold, according to World Bank estimates. Widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities exacerbate the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya. This tension is deepened by religious differences that have at times erupted into conflict. A woman walks among debris after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016. (Photo: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters). Violence broke out in 2012, when a group of Rohingya men were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist woman. Groups of Buddhist nationalists burned Rohingya homes and killed more than 280 people, displacing tens of thousands of people.
Human Rights Watch described the anti-Rohingya violence as amounting to crimes against humanity (PDF) carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” Since 2012, the region’s displaced population has been forced to take shelter in squalid refugee camps. More than 120,000 Muslims, predominantly Rohingya, are still housed in more than forty internment camps, according to regional rights organization Fortify Rights. Many Rohingya have turned to smugglers, choosing to pay for transport out of Myanmar to escape persecution .”The fact that thousands of Rohingya prefer a dangerous boat journey they may not survive to staying in Myanmar speaks volumes about the conditions they face there,” says Amnesty International’s Kate Schuetze. Fleeing repression and extreme poverty, more than eighty-eight thousand migrants took to sea from the Bay of Bengal between January 2014 and May 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The flow of migrants slowed in the second half of 2015 after thousands were abandoned at sea. Though volume (PDF) of migration has abated and the crisis has fallen from international view, little has been done to address the status quo for Rohingya in Myanmar and for those who brave the maritime journey. “An international response that consists primarily of assigning blame for this humanitarian tragedy is no longer tenable.
Thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, many taking to the sea to try to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The latest surge in refugees was prompted by a long-building crisis: the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government in Rakhine state, which have caused hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee since the late 1970s.Their plight has been compounded by the responses of many of Myanmar’s neighbors, which have been slow to take in refugees for fear of a migrant influx they feel incapable of handling. The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group living primarily in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state; they practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam. The estimated one million Rohingya in Myanmar account for nearly a third of Rakhine’s population. The Rohingya differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. The Rohingya trace their origins in the region to the fifteenth century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Bengal and the Rakhine territory were governed by colonial rule as part of British India. Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya’s historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups.
The Rohingya are largely identified as illegal Bengali immigrants, despite the fact that many Rohingya have resided in Myanmar for centuries.
Both the Myanmar government and the Rakhine state’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, reject the use of the label “Rohingya,” a self-identifying term (PDF) that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity. Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the most widely accepted origin is that “Rohang” is a derivation of the word “Arakan” in the Rohingya dialect and the “ga” or “gya” means “from”By identifying as Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group asserts its ties to land that was once under the control of the Arakan Kingdom, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project,a Thailand-based advocacy group. The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship status, and as a result the vast majority of the group’s members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless. Though Myanmar’s 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, the military junta introduced a citizenship law in 1982 whose strict provisions stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. Until recently, the Rohingya have been able to register as temporary residents with identification cards, known as “white cards,” which Myanmar’s regime began issuing to many Muslims (both Rohingya and non-Rohingya) in the 1990s.
Muslim minorities continue to “consolidate under one Rohingya identity” says Lewa. Government policies, including restrictions (PDF) on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement have institutionalized systemic discrimination against the ethnic group. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Parliamentarians for Human Rights wrote in April 2015 that “the longstanding persecution of Rohingya has led to the highest outflow of asylum seekers by sea [in the region] since the U.S. war in Vietnam. “Rakhine state is also Myanmar’s least developed state, with more than 78 percent of households living below the poverty threshold, according to World Bank estimates. Widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities exacerbate the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya. This tension is deepened by religious differences that have at times erupted into conflict. A woman walks among debris after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016. (Photo: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters). Violence broke out in 2012, when a group of Rohingya men were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist woman. Groups of Buddhist nationalists burned Rohingya homes and killed more than 280 people, displacing tens of thousands of people.
Human Rights Watch described the anti-Rohingya violence as amounting to crimes against humanity (PDF) carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” Since 2012, the region’s displaced population has been forced to take shelter in squalid refugee camps. More than 120,000 Muslims, predominantly Rohingya, are still housed in more than forty internment camps, according to regional rights organization Fortify Rights. Many Rohingya have turned to smugglers, choosing to pay for transport out of Myanmar to escape persecution .”The fact that thousands of Rohingya prefer a dangerous boat journey they may not survive to staying in Myanmar speaks volumes about the conditions they face there,” says Amnesty International’s Kate Schuetze. Fleeing repression and extreme poverty, more than eighty-eight thousand migrants took to sea from the Bay of Bengal between January 2014 and May 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The flow of migrants slowed in the second half of 2015 after thousands were abandoned at sea. Though volume (PDF) of migration has abated and the crisis has fallen from international view, little has been done to address the status quo for Rohingya in Myanmar and for those who brave the maritime journey. “An international response that consists primarily of assigning blame for this humanitarian tragedy is no longer tenable.
