Rohingya people facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Rohingya people

Total population
1,547,778–2,000,000+
Regions with significant populations
Bangladesh	1,300,000+ (March 2018)
Myanmar (Rakhine State)	600,000 (November 2019)
Pakistan	500,000 (September 2017)
Saudi Arabia	190,000 (January 2017)
Malaysia	150,000 (October 2017)
UAE	50,000 (December 2017)
India	40,000 (September 2017)
United States	12,000+ (September 2017)
Thailand	5,000 (October 2017)
Australia	3,000 (October 2018)
China	3,000 (October 2014)
Indonesia	1,478 (December 2023)
Japan	300 (May 2018)
Nepal	200 (September 2017)
Canada	200 (September 2017)
Ireland	107 (December 2017)
Sri Lanka	36 (June 2017)
Finland	11 (October 2019)
Languages
Rohingya
Religion
Predominantly Muslims; minorities of Hindus and Christians

The Rohingya people ( Rohingya) are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist. The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice to investigate genocide.

The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals, and Portuguese. The community claims it is descended from people in precolonial Arakan and colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is recognized as Kaman, 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". Rohingya campaign groups and human rights organizations demand the right to "self-determination 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, 1991–1992, 2012, 2015, and particularly in 2016–2018, when most of the Rohingya population of Myanmar was driven out of the country, into neighbouring Bangladesh. By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.

Before the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis 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 persons.

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) (Burmese: ရိုဟင်ဂျာ) while in Bengali they are called Rohingga (Bengali: রোহিঙ্গা). The term "Rohingya" may come from Rakhanga or Roshanga, the words for the state of Arakan. 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. 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 in 2003. Among the native groups of Arakan, he wrote are the: "Mohammedans, 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 listed "Ruinga" as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in German.

In 1936, when Burma was still under British rule, the "Rohingya Jam’iyyat al Ulama" was founded in Arakan.

According to Jacques Leider, 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". 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.

The government of Prime Minister U Nu, 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 report on refugees caused by Operation King Dragon referred to the victims as "Bengali Muslims (called Rohingyas)". Nevertheless, the term Rohingya wasn't widely used until the 1990s.

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, 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 embassy in Yangon continues to use the name "Rohingya".

History

Early history

The Rohingya population is concentrated in the historical region of Arakan, an old coastal country in Southeast Asia. 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 kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The first Arakanese state flourished in Dhanyawadi. Power then shifted to the city of Waithali. Sanskrit inscriptions in the region indicate that the founders of the first Arakanese states were Indian. Arakan was ruled by the Chandra dynasty. 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".

Arrival of Islam

Due to its coastline on the Bay of Bengal, 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. According to Syed Islam, a political science scholar, Arab 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 connected India, Burma, and China since the neolithic 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 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 [Bengal]" in the 20th-century, states historian Aye Chan.

Kingdom of Mrauk U

A coin from Arakan used in the Bengal Sultanate, minted c. 1554–1555

Set against the backdrop of the Arakan Mountains, Mrauk U was home to a multiethnic population, including the poet Alaol

Prince Shah Shuja received asylum in Arakan in 1660

The Rakhines were one of the tribes of the Burmese Pyu city-states. The Rakhines began migrating to Arakan through the Arakan Mountains in the 9th century. The Rakhines established numerous cities in the valley of the Lemro River. 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 (1430–34) of the Kingdom of Mrauk U. After 24 years of exile in Bengal, he regained control of the Arakanese throne in 1430 with military assistance from the Bengal Sultanate. The Bengalis who came with him formed their own settlements in the region. The Santikan Mosque built in the 1430s, features a court which "measures 65 ft from north to south and 82 ft from east to west; the shrine is a rectangular structure measuring 33 ft by 47 ft."

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 status, the Buddhist kings of Arakan received Islamic titles and used the Bengali gold dinar within the kingdom. Min Saw Mon minted his own coins with the Burmese alphabet on one side and the Persian alphabet on the other.

Arakan's vassalage to Bengal was brief. After Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah's death in 1433, Narameikhla's successors invaded Bengal and occupied Ramu in 1437 and Chittagong in 1459. Arakan would hold Chittagong until 1666.

Even after independence from the Sultans of Bengal, the Arakanese kings continued the custom of maintaining Muslim titles. The Buddhist kings compared themselves to Sultans 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, Persian and Arabic scribes 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, 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 and a claimant of the Peacock Throne, fled to Arakan with his family after being defeated by his brother Emperor Aurangzeb during the Battle of Khajwa. Shuja and his entourage arrived in Arakan on 26 August 1660. He was granted asylum by King Sanda Thudhamma. In December 1660, the Arakanese king confiscated Shuja's gold and jewellery, leading to an insurrection 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. 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 was raided in 1625.

Emperor Aurangzeb gave orders to his governor in Mughal Bengal, Shaista Khan, to end what the Mughals saw as Arakanese-Portuguese piracy. In 1666, Shaista Khan led a 6000 man army and 288 warships to seize Chittagong from the Kingdom of Mrauk U. The Mughal expedition continued up till the Kaladan River. The Mughals placed the northern part of Arakan under its administration and vassalage.

Burmese conquest

Following the Konbaung Dynasty'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 and to seek protection under the British Raj. 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 in 1799, "the Mohammedans, 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 saw many Muslims serving as eunuchs in Konbaung while on a diplomatic mission to the Burmese capital, Ava.

British colonial rule

An old mosque in Akyab during British rule

A mosque in Akyab

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 extended the Bengal Presidency 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. 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, historian and adviser to President Thein Sein, "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, Akyab, Bassein and Moulmein, the Indian immigrants formed a majority of the population. All of Burma was officially a Province within the British Indian Empire ('the Raj') from November 1885 until 1937, when Burma became a separate Crown colony within the British Empire. 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 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 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

A Royal Indian Navy ship in Akyab Harbour

Due to the difficult terrain of the Arakan Mountains, the Arakan region was historically most accessible by sea. In British Arakan Division, the port of Akyab had ferry services and a thriving trade with the ports of Chittagong, Narayanganj, Dacca and Calcutta in British India; as well as with Rangoon. Akyab was one of the leading rice 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 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 with Rohingya men wearing typical lungis

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded 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 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 pro-Japanese Rakhines, polarising the region along ethnic lines.

Tensions boiling in Arakan before the war erupted during the 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 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 and Mrauk-U Townships were killed by Rakhines and Red Karens.

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 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 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 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 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. A. Gaffar, a member of Burma's constituent assembly, called for recognising Rohingyas in 1948

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 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 Constituent Assembly of Burma in 1947, M. A. Gaffar and 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 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, a former politician in British India, became Minister of Health in the cabinet of Prime Minister of Burma U Nu. 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 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 Burmese military junta banned the National Democratic Party for Human Rights in 1992. Its leaders were arrested and jailed.

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 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 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 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 Bazar. Diplomatic initiatives over 16 months resulted in a repatriation agreement, which allowed the return of most refugees under a process facilitated by UNHCR. 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 citizenship law enacted by the Burmese military junta did not list the Rohingya as one of the 135 "national races" of Burma. This made much of the Rohingya population in Burma stateless in their historical homeland of Arakan. General Ne Win drafted the Citizenship Act in 1982, which denied citizenship rights to any community/group that was not listed in a survey conducted by British in 1823. 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.

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 election and the earlier 1988 Uprising, military operations targeting Muslims (who strongly favoured the pro-democracy movement) began in Arakan State. The Rohingya-led 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. 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-supervised process.

Name change from Arakan to Rakhine State

In 1989, the junta officially changed the name of Burma to Myanmar. In the 1990s, the junta changed the name of the province of Arakan to Rakhine State, 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 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 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 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 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 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, the 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.

Demographics

The yellow-green striped section show the approximate location of the Rohingya in Myanmar

Rohingya people in Rakhine State

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 stateless of the entire world's stateless population is Rohingya according to United Nations figures.

Prior to the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis 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 900,000 refugees, as well as to India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar live in camps for internally displaced persons, 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 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 sub-branch of the greater 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 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, Hanifi, Urdu, Roman, and Burmese alphabets, 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 orphans in a madrasa in Selayang, Malaysia

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. Significant minorities of the Rohingya practice Hinduism and Christianity. The government restricts their educational opportunities; as a result, many 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.

See also

In Spanish: Rohinyá para niños

• Min Aung Hlaing
• Persecution of Muslims