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Thesis About Rohingya

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Who are the Rohingya? Described as the world’s most persecuted people, 1.1 million Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Buddhists for decades. Rohingya people say they are descendants of Muslims, perhaps Persian and Arab traders, who came to Myanmar generations ago. Unlike the Buddhist community, they speak a language similar to the Bengali dialect of Chittagong in Bangladesh. The Rohingya are reviled by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants and they suffer from systematic discrimination. The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, denying them citizenship. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access …show more content…

On 4 September, the UN said its aid agencies had been blocked from supplying life-saving supplies such as food, water and medicine to thousands of civilians in northern Rakhine state. What’s the background to the story? For decades ethnic tensions have simmered in Rakhine state, with frequent outbreaks of violence. In October 2016 nine police officers were killed by armed men, believed by officials to be Muslims. Amid the ensuing violence, 87,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh and government troops expanded their presence in Rakhine state. At the time, a senior UN official alleged that the Myanmar government was seeking to rid the country of its Muslim minority – an accusation that has been made repeatedly by human rights groups. The government denies the charge. In August, Myanmar further increased the number of troops in Rakhine, after seven Buddhists were found hacked to death. The buildup of troops prompted warnings of a fresh wave of violence. The most recent violence is seen as a major escalation not only because of the scale, but because of the involvement of the new Rohingya militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. It says the attacks on government forces were an act of

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