Who are the Rohingya Muslims? The stateless minority fleeing violence in Burma

laporcupina:

The 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims squeezed precariously into the
north-west state of Rakhine, in mainly Buddhist Burma, bordering
majority Muslim Bangladesh, are stateless and unwanted.

Neither country will give them citizenship even though their
families’ roots in modern-day Rakhine, once called Arakan, can be traced
back to the Eighth Century.

Since World
War Two they have been treated increasingly by Burmese authorities as
illegal, interloping Bengalis, facing apartheid-like conditions that
deny them free movement or state education while government forces
intermittently drive out and slaughter them.

Over the
past year, military operations against Rohingya villages have been so
intense and cruel that the minority’s defenders have warned of an
unfolding genocide.

The United Nations has reported that the army may have committed ethnic cleansing.

The inhumane treatment of the Rohingyas has tarnished the image of Myanmar’s civilian leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, once a famously unflinching defender of human rights and darling of the West.

…The
latest military crackdown, which began on August 25, caused almost
90,000 Rohingyas to flee under fire to squalid, overflowing relief camps
across the Bangladeshi border in just two weeks. Officially close to 400 people had died by early September, but human
rights activists claim to have confirmation of at least 1,000 deaths
and believe the figure is much higher. The death toll will inevitably rise after Burma, also known as
Myanmar, blocked UN agencies from delivering vital food, water and
medicine supplies to 250,000 Rakhine residents desperately in need.

Who are the Rohingya Muslims? The stateless minority fleeing violence in Burma