9 okt. 2016 23:30:00 – 1 jan. 2018 02:30:00
Myanmar (Birma)The 2016–17 Rohingya persecution in Myanmar refers to the ongoing military crackdown by Myanmar Army and police on Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State in the country's northwestern region. The crackdown was in response to attacks on Burmese border posts in October 2016 by Rohingya insurgents. The Burmese army have been accused of wide-scale human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, arson and infanticides, claims which the Burmese government dismisses as "exaggerations". The military crackdown on the Rohingya people has drawn criticism from the United Nations (which cited possible "crimes against humanity"), the human rights group Amnesty International, the U.S. Department of State, the government of neighboring Bangladesh, and the government of Malaysia (where many Rohingya refugees have fled to). The de facto head of government of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, has particularly been criticized for her inaction and silence over the issue and for doing little to prevent military abuses.
The Rohingya people (/ˈroʊɪndʒə/, /ˈroʊhɪndʒə/, /ˈroʊɪŋjə/, or /ˈroʊhɪŋjə/; historically also termed Arakanese Indians) are a stateless Indo-Aryan people from Rakhine State, Myanmar. There were an estimated 1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis.The majority are Muslim while a minority are Hindu. Described by the United Nations in 2013 as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya population are denied citizenship under the 1982 Burmese citizenship law. According to Human Rights Watch, the law "effectively deny to the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring a nationality. Despite being able to trace Rohingya history to the 8th century, Burmese law does not recognize the ethnic minority as one of the national races". They are also restricted from freedom of movement, state education and civil service jobs. The Rohingyas have faced military crackdowns in 1978, 1991–1992, 2012, 2015 and 2016–2017. UN officials and HRW have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, while there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide. Yanghee Lee, the UN special investigator on Myanmar, believes the country wants to expel its entire Rohingya population.
Migration from the Indian subcontinent to Myanmar (formerly Burma) had taken place for centuries, including as part of the spread of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in the region. The historical region of Bengal (now Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal) has historical and cultural links with Rakhine State (formerly Arakan). Bengali-speaking settlers are recorded in Arakan since at least the 15th century, when the Kingdom of Mrauk U reigned. The population increased in the 17th century, as slaves were brought in by Arakanese raiders and Portuguese settlers following raids into Bengal. The term Rohingya, in the form of Rooinga, was recorded by the East India Company as early as 1799, but Burmese nationalists dispute its origins. Indian migration increased during the period of British rule, as Burma was a part of British India until 1937. Arakan had the largest percentage of British Indians in Burma. British Indians dominated the Arakanese capital and port city of Akyab.
During World War II, the Arakan massacres in 1942 involved communal violence between British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and pro-Japanese Rakhines, polarizing the region along ethnic lines. In 1936 and 1939, several Arakanese Indians like Gani Markan were elected to the Legislative Council of Burma under the Burmese native category in British Burma. After independence in 1948, Rohingya leaders held high ranking positions in the Burmese government and parliament. In 1948, M. A. Gaffar sought official recognition for the Rohingya as one of Burma's ethnic groups. One of Burma's first two female legislators, Zura Begum, was elected by Rohingyas in 1951. In 1960, Sultan Mahmud proposed a separate province for the Rohingyas. Discrimination against minorities increased after the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. In 1982, General Ne Win's government enacted the Burmese nationality law, which did not recognize the Rohingya as one of the eight "national races", stripping the citizenship rights of Rohingyas. Following the 8888 Uprising (8 August 1988) and return of martial law, the Burmese military junta launched a crackdown against Rohingyas in 1991–1992, which caused 250,000 refugees to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and brought the two countries to the brink of war.
The Rohingya maintain they are long-standing residents of western Myanmar, and that their community includes both a mixture of precolonial and colonial settlers. The official stance of the Myanmar government, however, has been that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar's government does not recognize the term "Rohingya" and it prefers to refer to the community as Bengalis. Rohingya campaign groups, notably the Arakan Rohingya National Organization, demand the right to "self-determination within Myanmar".
The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared with apartheid. Prior to the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis and the military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.1 to 1.3 million They reside mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they form 80–98% of the population. Many Rohingyas have fled to southeastern Bangladesh, where there are 670,000 refugees, as well as to India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar live in camps for internally displaced persons, and the authorities do not allow them to leave. Probes by the UN have found evidence of increasing incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by "ultra-nationalist Buddhists" against Rohingyas while the Burmese security forces have been conducting "summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment and forced labour" against the community. According to the United Nations, the human rights violations against the Rohingyas could be termed "crimes against humanity".
