[In October 2013, thousands of Buddhist men carried out coordinated attacks on Muslim villages throughout Rakhine. Human rights groups say the violence that erupted in 2012 and continued into 2013 amounted to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. A 2013 Human Rights Watch report said violence in Rakhine was a “coordinated campaign to forcibly relocate or remove the state’s Muslims.” The response from world leaders, however, has been limited.]
By Megan Specia
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Rohingya
refugees this month near the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and
Bangladesh. Villages in Myanmar burned in the
background.
Credit
Adam Dean for The New York Times
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A military crackdown against the Rohingya
ethnic group has driven hundreds of thousands of men, women and children from
their homes in Myanmar’s embattled Rakhine State.
The Rohingya have faced violence and
discrimination in the majority-Buddhist country for decades, but are now
fleeing in unprecedented numbers, from violence that the United Nations human
rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has called “a textbook example of ethnic
cleansing.”
Here is what you need to know about the
Rohingya and the latest developments in an old and bitter dispute.
Who
are the Rohingya?
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group that
practices a form of Sunni Islam and have lived in Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s
poorest states, for generations. Before the latest exodus, an estimated one
million Rohingya lived there, but even then they were a minority in the state.
The group has their own language and cultural practices.
Some trace their origins there to the 15th
century, a claim the government disputes. Their name itself refers to the area
they claim as home, according to the Council on Foreign Relations: Rohang
derives from the word “Arakan,” (the former name of Rakhine state) in the
Rohingya dialect and ga or gya means “from.”
Myanmar doesn’t recognize Rohingya as
citizens, and sees them instead as immigrants from Bangladesh who came to Rakhine
under British rule. The country’s first census in 30 years, carried out in
2014, didn’t count the Rohingya; those who identify as part of the group were
told to register as Bengali and indicate that their origins were in Bangladesh.
The government’s stance makes them one of the largest stateless groups in the
world.
Many live in squalid conditions similar to
refugee camps.
Violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine is
part of a “longstanding pattern of violations and abuses; systematic and
systemic discrimination; and policies of exclusion and marginalization” that
have persisted for decades, according to the United Nations human rights
agency.
Myanmar
has passed discriminatory laws.
Since a 1962 coup in Myanmar, the country’s
successive governments have significantly limited the rights of the Rohingya.
A law passed in 1982 denied them citizenship,
leaving them off a list of 135 ethnic groups formally recognized by the
government. This limited the Rohingyas’ access to schools and health care and
their ability to move in and out of the country. The government in Rakhine at
times has also enforced a two-child limit on Rohingya families and has
restricted interfaith marriage.
Waves
of violence have been occurring for years.
Tensions in Rakhine have often erupted into
violence, prompting hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Bangladesh and
Pakistan in different waves over the decades.
In May 2012, the rape and murder of a
Buddhist prompted a series of revenge attacks against Muslims. The violence
quickly intensified. The military began a wide-ranging crackdown and hundreds
of thousands fled.
In October 2013, thousands of Buddhist men carried
out coordinated attacks on Muslim villages throughout Rakhine. Human rights
groups say the violence that erupted in 2012 and continued into 2013 amounted
to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. A 2013 Human Rights Watch
report said violence in Rakhine was a “coordinated campaign to forcibly
relocate or remove the state’s Muslims.” The response from world leaders,
however, has been limited.
Last October, an armed Rohingya insurgency
came to light when militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, then
known as Harakah al-Yaqin, attacked three border guard posts.
Over the four months that followed, Myanmar’s
army, known as the Tatmadaw, and the police killed hundreds, gang-raped women
and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya from their homes.
How
did the latest bloodshed begin?
On Aug. 25, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army attacked again, targeting police posts and an army base. Security forces
cracked down on the wider population, and rights groups accused them of
killing, raping, burning villages and shooting civilians from helicopters. The
exodus into Bangladesh began: More than 370,000 Rohingya fled.
Another 12,000 people, mainly ethnic Rakhine
Buddhists and other non-Muslims, are also displaced within the state, according
to Human Rights Watch. Myanmar has halted humanitarian aid to Rakhine, leaving
those still in the state with limited access to food and water.
Myanmar has framed the actions as a necessary
counterinsurgency operation.
What
has Aung San Suu Kyi done about it?
Governments from several predominantly Muslim
countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey, have expressed
concern about the most recent violence. Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Bishop
Desmond Tutu of South Africa have both called on their fellow Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de factor leader, to do something
about the bloodshed.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads Myanmar’s
civilian government but does not control the military, has largely avoided
public statements about the crackdown and the flight of refugees.
But during a phone call last week with
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, she complained of “a huge iceberg of
misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different
communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists,”
according to her office.
Analysts have said that it would be
politically difficult for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to denounce the crackdown, given
the military’s political power and the unpopularity of the Rohingya among the
country’s Buddhists. Her critics say she has a moral obligation to speak out,
and some have called for her Nobel to be withdrawn.