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.[33][19] 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.[34][35][36][37][38] In addition, Myanmar's government does not recognise the term "Rohingya" and prefers to refer to the community as "Bengali".[39][40] Rohingya campaign groups and human rights organizations demand the right to "self-determination within Myanmar".[41]
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,[42]2012, 2015, and particularly in 2016–2018, when most of the Rohingya population of Myanmar was driven out of the country, into neighbouring Bangladesh.[43][44][45][46][47][48] By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.[49][50][51][52][53] UN officials and Human Rights Watch have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing.[54][55] The UN human rights envoy to Myanmar reported "the long history of discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya community... could amount to crimes against humanity",[56] and there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide.[57][58] Probes by the UN have found evidence of increasing incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by "ultra-nationalist Buddhists" against Rohingyas while the Myanmar security forces have been conducting "summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and forced labour" against the community.[59][60][61]
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,[16][17][62][63][1][64] chiefly in the northern Rakhine townships, which were 80–98% Rohingya.[65] Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to south-eastern Bangladesh alone,[66] and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations.[67][68][69][6][70] More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.[71][72] Shortly before a Rohingya rebel attack that killed 12 security forces on 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military launched "clearance operations" against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state[73][74] that, according to NGOs, the Bangladeshi government and international news media, left many dead, and many more injured, tortured or raped, with villages burned. The government of Myanmar has denied the allegations.
^ abcCite error: The named reference Mahmood2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Kristof, Nicholas (28 May 2014). "Myanmar's Appalling Apartheid". The New York Times (Opinion). Archived from the original on 7 April 2022. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
^Rehman, Zia Ur (23 February 2015). "Identity issue haunts Karachi's Rohingya population". Dawn. Retrieved 26 December 2016. Their large-scale migration had made Karachi one of the largest Rohingya population centres outside Myanmar but afterwards the situation started turning against them.
^"Mission report of OHCHR rapid response mission to Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, 13–24 September 2017"(PDF). U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations. 11 October 2017. Archived from the original(PDF) on 13 March 2024. Retrieved 12 October 2017. The 'clearance operations' started before 25 August 2017, and as early as the beginning of August. The apparently well-organised, coordinated and systematic nature of the attacks carried out by the Myanmar security forces against the entire Rohingya population across northern Rakhine State has led to a mass exodus of more than 500,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh. The testimonies gathered by OHCHR indicate that the attacks against Rohingya villages constitute serious human rights violations. As recalled by many victims, the security forces and the Rakhine Buddhist individuals incited hatred, violence and killings against the Rohingya population within northern Rakhine State through extremely derogatory abuse based on their religion, language and culture and ethnic identity. There are indications that violence is still ongoing at the time of writing this report.