Who are the Rohingya?
Rohingya are an old Muslim minority that has long been part of Myanmar, going back to the 15th century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Rohingya is a self-identifying term that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity.
Over one-third of the Rohingya are concentrated in the western state of Rakhine – one of Myanmar’s least developed states, with plentiful land. The Rohingya are poor, with more than 78% of households living below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates. Their poverty might further enable their evictions to make room for development projects.
Co-existence was never exactly peaceful, but from the 1990s until 2012 there were no major killings (pdf). But in 2012 Arakanese Buddhists called for their persecution after three Muslim men were accused of raping an Arakanese woman. That year, Arakanese political parties, local monks’ associations, and civic groups publicly urged the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya. A particular sect of Buddhists went so far as to re-interpret sections of Buddhist texts to urge people to kill Rohingya. The vast majority of Buddhists did not join in.
After 2012 the Rohingya begin to leave Myanmar in large numbers: it had become clear that they were now an actively persecuted people. The 2012 violence against the Rohingya civilian population “resulted in approximately 200 deaths and over 140,000 displaced” according to the US state department. The UN high commissioner for refugees estimates that since 2012, 160,000 Rohingya left by sea to neighbouring countries – mostly to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. More than 120,000 Rohingya are still housed in over 40 internment camps in Myanmar according to the regional rights organisation Fortify Rights.