More than hundred civilians have been killed and thousands have escaped the country's Rakhine state, passing through inhospitable territories, searching for safety in neighbouring Bangladesh. According to the UNHCR, about 58,600 Rohingyas have reached the neighbourhood of the country in the last week. Moreover, nearly 400,000 refugees have already left Rakhine in the last year because of the Burmese government’s behaviour. Many of them reported of inhuman treatments, including mass rapes and burn injuries.
The Rohingyas are an ethnic minority in Myanmar and have been stripped off of their citizenship by the military government that ruled the country in 1982. Indeed, they are considered as the most unwanted people in the world. They have constantly faced discrimination and violence by the state’s Buddhist majority, including restrictions to movement and work. In 2013, ARSA had been created and it is considered a terrorist organization by the Burmese government nowadays.
The international community is committed to helping the Rohingya people. Britain proposed a closed-door meeting of the Security Council and the UN created a special commission to investigate on another military attack on this minority community, although the team has been lately banned by the government from the country. The state counsellor of Myanmar, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, has been questioned several times about these crimes, which resemble the ethnic cleansing happened in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Kosovo. However, she seems insensitive to the Rohingya people’s suffering and accused the international aid organizations of overstating the crisis.
For more information, please read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/rohingya-myanmar-bangladesh-refugees-massacre.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-myanmar-rohingya/myanmar-urges-rohingya-muslims-to-help-hunt-insurgents-amid-deadly-violence-idUKKCN1BE0BX
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-suu-kyi-.html
https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/283-myanmar-new-muslim-insurgency-rakhine-state
