Who are the Rohingya?

The United States is about to officially declare on Monday that the Burmese army's violence against Rohingya Muslims, which has forced more than 700,000 people to flee the country, is a case of genocide and crimes against humanity.

This is the last chapter in the long and tumultuous history of this community, one of the largest stateless populations in the world.

Around a million Rohingya lived in the Buddhist-majority Western Burma state of Rakhain before much of this community was forced to flee the area during a harsh repression campaign by the army in 2017.

But questions about their origins and identity are still widely discussed, they raise heated debates and are behind much of the recent altercations.

- A long story -

According to some experts, the Rohingya are descendants of Arab, Turkish or Mongolian merchants and soldiers who in the 15th century migrated to the state of Rakain, formerly known as the Kingdom of Arakan.

Other historians say they emigrated from Bangladesh in different waves, a widespread theory in Burma.

For centuries, the country's Muslim minority lived peacefully with the Buddhist majority in the independent kingdom.

The conflict began from the end of the 18th century, when the kingdom was conquered by the Burmese and later by the British.

As part of their “divide and rule” policy, the British favored Muslims, recruiting them as soldiers during World War II and confronting them with Japanese-aligned Buddhists as the conflict raged on Burmese soil.

Their status was strengthened in 1947 when a new Constitution was drafted, which gave them full legal and voting rights.

- Recent persecution -

The military coup of 1962 ushered in a new era of repression, and in 1982, a law took away their recognized ethnic minority status in the country.

Most of them lived in Rakhain, but they were denied citizenship and began to be harassed, limiting their ability to move and imposing restrictions on work.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in successive waves of violence, in 1978 and 1991-92.

Because of their use of a dialect similar to that spoken in Chittagong, south-eastern Bangladesh, the Rohingya are despised by many Burmese people, who see them as illegal immigrants and call them “Bengali”.

After the military junta was dissolved in 2011, the country saw an increase in Buddhist extremism that further marginalized the Rohingya and ushered in the last era of tensions.

- Rape, murder and other atrocities -

Sectarian violence between Sunni Rohingya Muslims and local Buddhist communities began in 2012, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya escaped the country in the next five years to Bangladesh and other countries in Southeast Asia, traveling by sea on dangerous expeditions organized by trafficking networks.

Despite decades of persecution, the Rohingya had largely avoided violence. But in 2016, a small and previously unknown militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), carried out a series of lethal attacks on the security forces.

Burma's army responded with a brutal and massive campaign of repression: an estimated 391,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017, according to the United Nations, bringing with them harrowing stories of murder, rape and other atrocities.

- False hopes-

Aung San Suu Kyi, an opponent who was internationally praised for decades of resistance to the junta, after being elected as the country's de facto leader not only ignored the abuse of the Rohingya, but defended the conduct of the army and in 2019 traveled to The Hague to challenge the charges of genocide in the UN high court.

In February 2021, the same generals who had defended her reimprisoned her while the country suffered another coup d'état. The current board states that the UN court has no jurisdiction and has asked for the case to be dismissed.

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