The Rohingya Crisis, the World's newest Humanitarian Disaster

Written by Lexie Joo, Grade 11

The Rohingya people are known as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. They live in western Myanmar known as the Rhakine state. Even though they live in Myanmar, they are very different from the rest of the population. The Rohingya people are Muslims, and they are the indigenous people, that descended from the Arakan Kingdom unlike the citizens of Myanmar who are Buddhists they don’t share the same historic background. Until the WW2 Myanmar was ruled by the British Empire. The people of Myanmar, called Burmans at that time, sided with Japan during the war, in order to gain independence, however, the Rohingya people sided with British colonialists. This was when they became more persecuted as a minority group. Because of the specific branch of Buddhism, the Myanmar people believe in, Theravada, which is a very extremist, racist branch among other Buddhism branches, causes the people of Myanmar to think of Rohingya people as vermins. The people of Rohingya weren’t allowed to have a passport thus not being registered as proper citizens. They are discriminated but also not allowed to leave. They live in ghettos, they don’t have the chance of education like the others and there is also discrimination against them when they marry.

In the 2000s, as the severity of discrimination and the tension between the two groups became worse, the Rohingya people formed a rebellion militant group called ARSA. First, in 2012, a group of Rohingya people raped a Buddhist woman which led to an attack on the Rohingya villagers by the Buddhists. The situation got even worse when the ARSA attacked the Myanmar police, killing 9 police officers in 2016. This was when the military based government reacted, burning villages, massacring, and brutally raping people. The official attacks are said to have begun in 2017 and are still ongoing. Since the attacks, the Rohingya people have been fleeing to various countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand where they live in refugee camps. The country they flee to the most is Bangladesh, and their government is allowing them to cross the border to come into their country, but the living conditions aren’t any better than where they used to live. Furthermore, the government of Myanmar is also building landmines to prevent the Rohingya people from coming back to the Rakhine state. They denied access to foreigners and is refusing to give the UN investigators a VISA to come and investigate the situation, thus making them incapable to assess the situation thoroughly.

The most important thing is, people are still dying in the Rhakine state, and even when they leave Myanmar, they are refugees in neighbouring countries, and the treatment is devastating. Many reports have been made of the neighbouring countries is very discriminatory to Rohingya people. At least 650 men have been arrested because of not having a legal document and harassed by the immigration officers in Saudi Arabia. The Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship by the government of Myanmar, making them stateless. They don’t have a country to protect them, thus, can not have a legal document.