Ethnic Cleansing of the Rohingya People

Abstract

The world has recently witnessed a massive influx of the Rohingyas, known as the most persecuted ethnic minority in the world, to Bangladesh as they fled unprecedented atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces in 2017. The denial of citizenship through adaptation of the Myanmar Citizenship Law in 1982 rendered the Rohingya people stateless which became instrumental behind merciless killing, ruthless violence against Rohingya women including random raping, reckless burning house and properties, and an unexplainable persecution in Rakhine state. Though it has recently taken an extreme form and drew a wider global attention, the Rohingya people had been undergoing various forms of discrimination, forced displacement, arbitrary detention, and an acute vulnerability in their everyday lives since 1962 when for the first time the military took over the power of then Burma. Since then state-sponsored violence, systemic persecution under state policy, massive human rights violations, and forcibly pushing them to cross the border became everyday experiences of Rohingya people. The latest one that started from August 25, 2017, superseded all previous records, and the intensity of brutality was so extreme that the United Nations Human Rights Council termed it as “the text book example of ethnic cleansing.” This chapter presents the scenario and evidence of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people with a vivid picture of their present conditions along with their struggling past in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar.