The Rohingya: Stateless and Targeted
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmar who have been rendered stateless by law and subjected to systematic massacre, rape, and expulsion by the Myanmar military. The 2017 campaign was described by UN investigators as genocide. Buddhist nationalist ideology drove it.
Who the Rohingya Are
The Rohingya are a Muslim people who have lived in the Arakan (Rakhine) region of present-day Myanmar for centuries. In 1982, the Myanmar government passed a citizenship law that stripped the Rohingya of citizenship, rendering them stateless, one of the largest stateless populations in the world.
The 2017 Campaign
In August 2017, following an attack by a Rohingya militant group on police posts, the Myanmar military launched a "clearance operation" against Rohingya villages that the UN described as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Over the following weeks:
- Over 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh: the largest refugee exodus in Asia since the 1947 partition
- An estimated 10,000–25,000 Rohingya were killed
- Hundreds of villages were burned
- Systematic rape was used as a weapon of war
- Children were killed
The UN Fact-Finding Mission concluded in 2018 that Myanmar military commanders should be investigated for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The Buddhist Nationalism Connection
The ideological driver of the campaign was Buddhist nationalist monks, particularly the organisation Ma Ba Tha and its figurehead Ashin Wirathu, who had built a movement explicitly targeting Muslims as a threat to Buddhist Myanmar. His sermons and publications called for boycotts of Muslim businesses and described Muslims as enemies of Buddhism.
This is the anti-Islamic coalition documented in the hub entry in concrete form: a Buddhist majority using religious identity to justify the elimination of a Muslim minority, with the backing of a military and the silence of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Aung San Suu Kyi, far from condemning the campaign, appeared before the International Court of Justice in 2019 to defend the Myanmar military against genocide charges, a choice that permanently damaged her international standing and led many of her former international supporters to withdraw their admiration.
The Ongoing Crisis
The Rohingya in Bangladesh live in the world's largest refugee camp, Cox's Bazar, home to over a million people. They have no right to work, no access to formal education, and no path to return to Myanmar. They are trapped between a country that expelled them and a host country that cannot absorb them.
The International Court of Justice began proceedings against Myanmar for genocide in 2019, brought by The Gambia on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The case continues.
Scholar References
- UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (2018)
- Azeem Ibrahim, The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide
- Human Rights Watch documentation of the 2017 campaign
- International Court of Justice: The Gambia v Myanmar proceedings