Rohingya Genocide & Refugee Crisis in Myanmar

Who are the Rohingya and what is happening in Myanmar?

Nearly four years have passed since a wave of violence broke out in the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, targeted towards the Rohingya people. The Rohingya are a small stateless Muslim minority who live in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, along the coast of the Indian Ocean. Although a majority of the 100 million Rohingya who live in Myanmar are able to trace their roots back hundreds of years in the country’s history, they are denied citizenship political representation and considered to be illegal immigrants from the neighboring nation of Bangladesh. As a result of this, the Rohingya have managed to form a unified political, ethnic, and religious identity that is strikingly different from the rest of Myanmar’s 135 ethnic groups. Their distinct and solitary culture has led them to face severe discrimination since the 1970s, experiencing everything from stripping of legal rights to alleged abuses by police and other officials.

Since 2017, the international community, led by the United Nations has repeatedly pushed for an end to the violence, calling for the nation to address the systematic persecution, stateless statuses, and military impunity that prevents accountability. The UN has also continued to call for an end to the sexual and gender-based violence that has been used in the targeting of Rohingya Muslims. Individual countries have taken steps towards justice, with protests taking place in countries throughout Southeast Asia, as well as sanctions being put in place by multiple UN counties. However, the largest effort for accountability came in 2018, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) took on two cases of prosecuting Suu Kyi and multiple top military leaders. The ICJ case ended in January of 2020 and issued orders for Myanmar’s government and military to end the genocide, which the country responded to by releasing two presidential directives to legislate liability for responsible authorities and to mandate the preservation of evidence surrounding the genocide. The ICC’s case continues, with the ICC Office of the Prosecutor currently in the process of gathering evidence.

Despite the ICJ’s orders and the subsequent presidential directives, the persecution and violence continued. In 2018, fighting grew between the Myanmar military and armed groups from the country’s ethnic minorities - including the Rohingya Muslims. Civilians have continued to be targeted, many of whom are women and children who are subject not just to armed violence but to sexual assault and trafficking. Myanmar once again returned to the news on January 31, 2021, when the country’s military overthrew democratically elected State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and took power. The coup allowed for a new form of nationalism to take hold in the country and provided new abilities for military leaders to continue their persecution of the Rohingya amid growing instability, protests, and military crackdowns on pro-democracy efforts.