The Rohingya in Myanmar: How Years of Strife Grew Into a Crisis

A military crackdown against the Rohingya ethnic group has driven hundreds of thousands of men, women and children from their homes in Myanmar.

The Rohingya have faced violence and discrimination in the majority-Buddhist country for decades, but they are now fleeing in unprecedented numbers from violence that the United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Here’s how an old and bitter dispute has managed to become even more charged.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group that practices a form of Sunni Islam and have lived in Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest states, for generations. Before the latest exodus, an estimated one million Rohingya lived there, but even then they were a minority in the state. The group has its own language and cultural practices.

Some trace their origins there to the 15th century, an assertion the government disputes. Their name itself refers to the area they claim as home, according to the Council on Foreign Relations: Rohang derives from the word Arakan, the former name of Rakhine State, in the Rohingya dialect, and ga or gya means from.

Myanmar doesn’t recognize Rohingya as citizens and sees them instead as immigrants from Bangladesh who came to Rakhine under British rule. The country’s first census in 30 years, carried out in 2014, didn’t count the Rohingya; those who identify as part of the group were told to register as Bengali and indicate that their origins were in Bangladesh. The government’s stance makes them one of the largest stateless groups in the world.