Myanmar (2011-Present)
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority indigenous to Buddhist-majority Myanmar, also known as Burma. For centuries, the Rohingya’s forebears were integrated into the Arakan Kingdom, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious entity north of the Bay of Bengal, between the then Burmese Empire and Mughal India (later British East India-controlled Bengal).
The Arakan Kingdom covered the area of present-day Rakhine State, which is now one of seven divisions within Myanmar. Myanmar annexed Arakan in 1784, but subsequent conflicts with Britain resulted in more than a century of British colonial rule beginning in 1824. During this era, while Rohingya enjoyed full civil and political rights, resentments grew against foreign rule and those perceived to have benefited from it, felt most deeply by the Buddhist majority. Following independence in 1948, government figures continued to recognize the Rohingya as a legitimate part of Myanmar’s national political fabric.
Nationwide political instability provided the pretext for a 1962 coup d’état that brought to power a military dictatorship rooted in Buddhist nationalism and xenophobia. Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, weaponized history, ethnicity, and religion as tools of political control. The military targeted the Rohingya and steadily eroded their rights, generating genocidal conditions that drove many to flee.
In 1978, the military launched Operation Naga Min (“Dragon King”) in Arakan to detect “illegal immigrants,” pushing approximately 250,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. The 1982 Citizenship Law made ethnicity the primary criteria for nationality, granting citizenship to “national races,” defined as those present prior to British colonial rule. The Rohingya were not regarded as such. When the law was enforced in Rakhine State in the early 1990s, they were stripped of citizenship, rendering them the world’s largest stateless population.
Subsequent laws further entrenched systemic discrimination. In 2012, two waves of sectarian violence pitted the Rohingya against the Buddhist majority in Rakhine State, killing hundreds and displacing tens of thousands. Officials confined more than 140,000 Rohingya to internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, restricted their movement, limited access to healthcare, and neglected basic services.
Propaganda campaigns by Rakhine politicians and the government demonized the Rohingya. Their freedom of movement was curtailed further, and they were fully disenfranchised when barred from voting in both the 2015 and 2020 elections. Prejudice against the Rohingya runs deep in Myanmar society. Even members of the pro-democracy movement have labeled them “illegal immigrants.”
The lack of global response allowed the Tatmadaw to escalate ethnic cleansing into full-scale genocide in northern Rakhine State in 2016 and during the violence of the 2017 “clearance operations.” The Tatmadaw justified the bloodshed as a response to attacks by the newly formed armed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Tens of thousands of Rohingya were killed, and the Tatmadaw used rape as a weapon of war on a massive scale.
Much of northern Rakhine State was depopulated as most Rohingya fled to the relative safety of refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. More than one million currently live there in overcrowded, unsafe, and squalid conditions. They are denied freedom of movement and the right to work, dependent on humanitarian aid for survival. Over 120,000 remain internally displaced within Rakhine State.
In 2019, the Republic of The Gambia brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya. The activist group Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK filed a separate case in Argentina under universal jurisdiction, and Rohingya activists pursued similar efforts in Indonesia. Myanmar’s political situation worsened on February 1, 2021, when the Tatmadaw staged another coup, arresting democratically elected politicians.
The country’s economy has since collapsed, three million people are internally displaced, and more than thirty thousand have been arrested for opposing military rule. The Arakan Army (AA), a Rakhine ethnic armed group fighting for autonomy in Rakhine State, launched a major offensive in November 2023, seizing 14 of the state’s 17 townships. However, the AA has been accused of committing serious human rights abuses against the Rohingya, including a massacre of villagers in Buthidaung Township in 2024.