THE PREPLANNED GENOCIDE OF MYANMAR GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE ROHINGYA

Introduction 

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group in Arakan State (now Rakhine State), are considered among the most persecuted, vulnerable, and oppressed minorities in the world according to the United Nations. Recently, persecution, discrimination, and genocide against the Rohingya Muslims have escalated due to Buddhist nationalism, Arakan Army and the Myanmar government. “Rohingya” is an ethno-religious term referring to Muslim people whose ancestral home is Arakan State or Rakhine in Myanmar. The total number of Rohingya in Rakhine State is estimated at over one million, with the majority residing in four townships in the northern part of Rakhine State such as Maungdaw , Buthidaung, Rathidaung and Sittwe . The Rohingya continue to face various forms of restrictions and human rights violations in Myanmar, primarily stemming from being denied Myanmar citizenship. The identity of the Rohingya was recognized as an ethnolinguistic ethnic group under successive Burmese regimes after independence in 1948 but has been systematically erased by anti-Muslim military-controlled governments since 1962. In Myanmar’s state media, official policy documents, and school textbooks, the Rohingya are labeled as Bengali, a racist local reference, portraying them as illegal economic migrants from colonial era, a narrative accepted by the majority of Burmese over the past six decades. In contrast, the international community continues to recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group as stated in “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas” by Dr. Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley, 2014. The state and the predominantly Buddhist community have collaborated to DE indigenize, illegalize, dehumanize, and annihilate the entire Rohingya community, whose ancestral land is originally western Myanmar, known as Arakan State. Over the past forty-five years, evidence points to a concerted effort to demolish the Rohingya people through assaults on their identity, killings during multiple pogroms, physical and mental harm, intentional imposition of life conditions designed to bring about mass extinction, and measures to prevent births. Myanmar’s Rohingya people are victims of genocide carried out collaboratively by the central government and anti-Muslim ultra-nationalists among the Buddhist Rakhine people. The Myanmar government forced them into IDP camps (internal displaced person) and neighboring country Bangladesh, where Rohingya could not engage in economic, social, or other activities outside of their camps. The latest genocidal campaign, launched in late 2016 and 2017 against this Muslim minority, resulted in massive destruction of over 400 Muslim villages in Rakhine State being burned down to ashes due to Myanmar military operations according to (Human Rights Watch 2017), with nearly one million people displaced (Barry 2017).