I must admit before a few days ago, I too had no idea about the events unfolding in the South Asian country of Myanmar (or Burma). I came across a story, on Snapchat actually, about ethnoreligious unrest in Myanmar. I found the story interesting, mostly because I knew basically nothing about it. I hadn’t heard about it on the news, I hadn’t seen anything about it on Facebook, I barely even knew where the country was.
I did research, and found out some startling facts about the issue. For years now, what many have called a “slow genocide” has been taking place in the state of Rakhine in Myanmar. It is here that a majority of the country’s Rohingya people live. Besides being practitioners of Islam, while a majority of Burmese identify as Buddhist, they are also ethnically distinct. They make up about 4% of the Burmese population, placing their numbers at around two million. They live alongside Rakhine Buddhists within the Burmese border state.
The Rakhine people have lived in the region for centuries. The Rohingya Muslims are relatively new arrivals to the region, but their numbers have boomed exponentially. Fearing that they might be made a minority in their own country, the Rakhine have developed a distinct hatred for the Rohingya. Tensions came to a head in 2012 when riots broke out across the state. A state of emergency was declared by the government allowing the Burmese military to clamp down. They government, predominantly Buddhist themselves, sided with the Rakhine and focused their efforts on containing the Rohingya. As a result of the riots, an estimated 1,000 have been killed. This number is difficult to confirm, and it may be more. We also know that military forces have wiped out whole Rohingya villages.
The unrest in the region has caused a refugee crisis in the region. It is estimated that 140,000 Rohingya are trapped in Burmese refugee camps, while a further 300,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. In the past two years, the crisis has become even more exasperated by recent developments. In October of 2016, Rohingya terrorists attacked three Burmese border posts. These attacks only served to give the government a reason to crack down on the Rohingya even harder. Hundreds of more killings have ensued, and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. Another developing problem is the plan that Bangladesh has for the more than 300,000 Rohingya seeking refuge there. Their plan, which the U.N. has condemned, is to move them to the island of Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal. The problem with this plan is that the undeveloped, uninhabited, and underwater for four months due to monsoon season.
This issue is a developing crisis, with many genocide watch organizations issuing warnings about an impending ethnic cleansing.
