2015 Rohingya refugee crisis

See also: Rohingya genocide
Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
Rohingya refugee camp in Aceh, Indonesia in 2015

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Nearly one million fled to neighbouring Bangladesh and some travelled to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.[1][2][3][4][5]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 50,000 people had left by boat from January to March in 2015 by migrant smugglers.[6][7] There are claims that, while on their journey, around 100 people died in Indonesia,[8] 200 in Malaysia,[9] and 10 in Thailand,[10] after the traffickers abandoned them at sea.[11][12]

In October 2015, researchers from the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London released a report drawing on leaked government documents that reveal an increasing "ghettoization, sporadic massacres, and restrictions on movement" on Rohingya people. The researchers suggest that the Myanmar government are in the final stages of an organised process of genocide against the Rohingya and have called upon the international community to redress the situation as such.[13]

  1. ^ Dipankan Bandopadhyay. "Reflections on the Rohingya Crisis". Politics Now. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  2. ^ "The Rohingya boat crisis: why refugees are fleeing Burma". The Week. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  3. ^ Hookway, James (22 May 2015). "Rohingya Refugee Crisis Likely to Ease During Monsoon, but Only Temporarily". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  4. ^ "South-east Asia migrant crisis: Gambia offers to resettle all Rohingya refugees". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  5. ^ Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah; Aubrey Belford (17 May 2015). "Pressure mounts on Myanmar over Asia 'boat people' crisis". Reuters. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  6. ^ "Malaysia tells thousands of Rohingya refugees to 'go back to your country'". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 May 2015.
  7. ^ "Bay of Bengal people-smuggling doubles in 2015: UNHCR". Reuters. 8 May 2015.
  8. ^ "Rohingya migrants 'died in fight for food' on boat". The Pakistan Today. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  9. ^ Langsa, Kate Lamb in. "'They hit us, with hammers, by knife': Rohingya migrants tell of horror at sea". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  10. ^ "SE Asia migrants 'killed in fight for food' on boat". BBC News. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  11. ^ Ng, Eileen (25 May 2015). "Rohingya seek better life in Malaysia, but reality is stark". Huffington Post. AP. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  12. ^ Rachman, Anita; Mahtani, Shibani (25 May 2015). "Indonesia Joins Search for Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslim Migrants at Sea". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  13. ^ "Campaigns of violence towards Rohingya are highly organised and genocidal in intent". Queen Mary University of London. 29 October 2015. Archived from the original on 7 November 2015. Retrieved 2 November 2015.