Rohingyas

In News

• The US declared that the Myanmar military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the country’s minority Rohingya community. 

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• Earlier, massacres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Iraq, and Darfur, Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidis and other minorities, and China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority has been declared as genocide by the US. 
• More than 7.30 lakh Rohingya people fled Myanmar to Bangladesh after the military crackdown started in the Rakhine state in 2017. 
• Currently, over a million Rohingya people live in refugee camps of Bangladesh waiting for repatriation to their homeland in the Rakhine province of Myanmar. 

Who are Rohingya?

• Rohingya are an ethnic group, representing the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar and predominantly live in the Western Myanmar province of Rakhine.
• They speak a dialect of Bengali, as opposed to the commonly spoken Burmese language.
• They are described by the United Nations (UN) as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
• The Rohingya population is denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. They have denied the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring a nationality.
• The flow of Rohingya from Myanmar intensified in 2017 and the coast near the Bangladeshi city of Cox’s Bazar was taken over by refugee settlements.
• Recently, Bangladesh started relocating Rohingya refugees from overcrowded camps at Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char Island, which is an ecologically fragile area prone to floods.

Source: AIR