A Brief History of the Rohingya Muslims

Myanmar is a country in Southeast Asia, bounded by the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, and India to the west, and China, Laos, and Thailand to the east. Although its border had not changed over the years, the Rohingya were where they belonged, and so were the other ethnic groups. Despite the facts, the Burmese Government refused Rakhine State Members existence and considered them as descendants of people who arrived during the British colonial administration. The siding provoked other ethnic groups’ actions that started in 1785 with the sweep of Rohingya done by the dominant ethnic group, Bamar. Over the years, thousands of Rakhine men were executed while some of them were deported to central Burma. By 1799, over 35.000 Rohingya fled to Bengal.

At the time Burma gained its independence from the British Colonial, the government refused to acknowledge Rohingya as rightful citizens. As a consequence, the Muslim part of Rohingya slightly started to join the newly formed state of Pakistan. Thereat, the Myanmar government which was in cooperation with Communist China, ensured military support from their co-op in order to carry out military operations against Rohingya. As the years passed, the Myanmar Government obtained much support, forcibly or not, from countries that could deepen their actions towards Muslim Rakhine State members as happened during the Bangladeshi Liberation War. The Bengalis were forced to find refuge in neighboring Arakan and to be returned. However, the local Buddhist population of Arakan was afraid of the Rohingya being outnumbered in the area so it ended with Buddhists’ protests. In the end, the Burmese government was obliged to expel over 200.00 Muslims to get back to Cox’s Bazar.

In 1982, the Burmese government enacted the 1982 citizenship law that identifies 135 ethnic groups and not Rohingya according to the government that had settled in Burma prior to 1823. The Burmese government’s statement on this topic is based on British Colonial years when Myanmar was struggling to deal with the Anglo-Burman war, and Britanians encouraged immigration into Burma. Thus, the Rohingya are seen as an immigrant group who came under British occupation and are originally not from Burma. However, after the incidents, the British Government presented evidence that included British census records taken after the occupation that show the Rohingya are indigenous and lived for centuries in the area.