The Rohingyas : Stateless & Identityless

In August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar’s army on Rohingya Muslims caused one of the many exodus that has been going on since 1970s. Over 1 million Rohingya who has been living in the Rakhine (formerly known as Arakhan) for generations, have been forcibly displaced. More than 914,000 are currently settled on a narrow strip of hilly land below the city of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Bordering with Bangladesh, Rakhine State is situated on the western coast of Myanmar with the Naf River being the border in between. Around 3.2 million people live in Rakhine state, with the majority of the population being ethnic Rakhine and predominately Buddhist. Among 135 ethnic minority groups living in Myanmar, Rohingyas are the second largest minority. They have their own Rohingya dialect, culture and are Muslim by faith. However, unlike hundreds of other ethnic groups, the Rohingyas are not allowed to have citizen- ship and even excluded from the 2014 Burmese cen- sus, refusing to recognise them as a people. For the Rohingyas in Rakhine State of Myanmar, it is forbidden to travel, to do trading, to build concrete buildings or to study in schools.

Discrimination against the Rohingyas has been in- creasing since Myanmar’s independence in 1948. Perceived as illegal immigrants brought by British colonisers’ from Bangladesh, they have been incrementally stripped of their political rights. In addition to discriminatory policies, there have been regular outbreaks of violence and attacks by the Burmese army and the lo- cal Buddhist mobs which has resulted in gross human right violations. Rohingyas arriving in Bangladesh said they fled after troops, backed by local Buddhist mobs, responded by burning their villages and attacking and killing civilians. Amnesty International says the Myanmar military also raped and abused Rohingya women and girls. A report published by UN investigators in August 2018 accused Myanmar’s military of carrying out mass killings and rapes with “genocidal intent”.

As a result of the mounting discrimination and the reg- ular outbreak of violence against Rohingya civilians, they risked everything to escape by sea or on foot crossing the Naf River across to Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar city. In terms of escalation this is the greatest mass exodus since 1944 Rwandan genocide.

In 2021 this humanitarian crises which is described as “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” by the United Nations will be entering its fifth year with the global pandemic, devastating fires and floods cause by cy- clones in Bay of Bengal.