Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
November 23, 2020
An exhausted Rohingya refugee woman touches the shore after crossing the Bay of Bengal, in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh, Sept. 11, 2017. (Reuters)
The Rohingya people have faced sustained persecution in Burma/Myanmar since it gained independence in 1948. At the core of this discrimination lies the false narrative that they have no place in the ethnic mix of the country because, it is alleged, they migrated from what is now Bangladesh in the 19th century.
At its most benign, this falsity resulted in them being denied full citizenship in 1948 (though they were granted conventional civic rights). By the 1970s, the country’s military dictatorship began taking a series of steps to strip them of even this limited status and, as a result of several campaigns of violence, expelled many to Bangladesh.