Myanmar’s Rohingya: Stateless, persecuted and fleeing

Yangon / AFP

Scores of Rohingya Muslims have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown since early October, when sword-wielding assailants raided police posts in the remote marshlands bordering Bangladesh.
The military struck back with ground clearances, most recently backed by helicopter gunships.
Access to the conflict areas is heavily restricted, but witness testimony has seeped out alleging mass rapes, indiscriminate killings and the razing of entire Rohingya villages by Myanmar’s security forces—claims they deny.
It is the latest chapter in the grim recent history of the Rohingya, a one million population reviled across Myanmar as illegal immigrants and denied citizenship.
The following is a fact box on the Rohingya.
Who are they?
The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim ethnic group described by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.
Using a dialect similar to that spoken in Chittagong in southeast Bangladesh, the Sunni Muslims are loathed by many in majority Buddhist Myanmar who see them as illegal immigrants and call them “Bengali” —even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations. Most live in impoverished western Rakhine state, but are denied citizenship and smothered by restrictions on movement and work.
The UN refugee agency says well over 120,000 have fled Rakhine since religious violence in 2012—an exodus that continues, despite the perils of the sea journey. Last year, thousands were stranded at sea after a well-worn trafficking route through Thailand collapsed after the discovery of scores of shallow graves on the Malaysia border.
There are around 300,000 Rohingya living in Bangladesh’s southern coastal district bordering Myanmar, the vast majority of whom have fled Myanmar in recent decades. Bangladesh recognises only a small portion as refugees and regularly turns back those trying to cross the border.

What’s happening?
On October 9 armed men ambushed border posts killing nine policeman and escaping with guns.
Security forces were sent in, vowing to repel the attacks. Nearly 30 civilians died in the ensuing clashes. That number has surged over the following weeks as troops clear remote villages.
The government says the attacks amount to an insurgency.
They accuse a previously unknown Pakistani Taliban-trained militant of leading the attacks and rallying hundreds of disgruntled Rohingya to his cause.

B’desh to send back Rohingya escaping Myanmar unrest 

Teknaf / AFP

Bangladesh police on Wednesday detained dozens of Rohingya migrants, some of them children, and said they would return them to Myanmar where there are reports the military is burning villages and raping women.
Rohingya community leaders say there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who make it across the border into Bangladesh and an estimated 500 arrived overnight, using cover of darkness to evade detection.
Up to 30,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group that Myanmar does not recognise as its citizens, have been forced to flee their homes according to the United Nations, which is urging Bangladesh to open its border to them.
More than 2,000 are thought to have crossed the border in recent days following a surge in violence in Myanmar, many with stories of villages raised to the ground by the military, which some also accused of raping and killing Rohingya.
Police in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar said on Wednesday they had detained 70 Rohingya, including women and children, and would send them back across the border.