The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.

“Rohingya have been discriminated against significantly. That’s a part of the reason they are fleeing. I think if I were a Rohingya, I would want to stay where I was born and I would want to stay in the land where my parents had lived. But I want to make sure that my government was protecting me and people were treating me fairly. That is what I want.”

- Barack Obama, President of the United States

From one of South East Asia’s largest empires to a conquered British colony, and from military dictatorship to an independent democratic nation; Burma, formally known as Myanmar boasts a thriving ecosystem and a rigorous economy dominated by oil, natural gas and gems.

Due to a coup d’état in 1962, the military has since played an integral part of Myanmar’s political climate, including orchestrating one of the largest ethnic cleansing witnessed in the modern era.

After its independence from the British Empire, Myanmar has been the subject of rampant ethnic strife and humanitarian violations. Due to its geographical location, Myanmar has over 135 distinct ethnic groups, in particular to the South are the marginalised Rohingya, a sizeable Muslim minority who have lived there for a generation. They are globally recognised as the most endangered ethnic minority by human rights groups as mass deportation, annexation and genocide are becoming the norm.

Myanmar is predominantly Buddhist, run under a makeshift democratic government with leading human rights activist and Nobel Laureate, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’ as the acting head of state. She has been reluctant in addressing the massacre of her own people and refuses to recognise them as her own citizens.

It seems the military are the true rulers of Myanmar as they are the main perpetrators of this ongoing genocide. The junta have suppressed nearly all basic rights and committed multiple atrocities acting with extreme impunity.

Refugees fleeing to Bangladesh recount stories of soldiers arriving in the dead of night and burning entire villages and farms, leaving nothing but ash and rubble. They would shoot indiscriminately at those fleeing the burning flames of their homes and their livelihoods. Men, women and children.

Some of the children would be captured to use as child soldiers on the subsequent raids, while the women would be raped and kept as slaves. Those wounded, too burned or too sick to move would be hacked to death and mutilated where they lay. The military plan to exterminate all evidence of the Rohingya ever being there, in a process known as ‘Burmisation.’

This conflict has been ongoing, the Rohingya have faced these violations for years. They are not allowed to travel without official permission, they are banned from owning any land and they are not permitted to more than two children.

They are officially classified as “stateless Bengali Muslims” since 1982 and have thus no claim to citizenship. The regime has repeatedly tried to expel the Rohingya and replace them with other natives, currently over 800 000 have been forcibly removed from their homes to neighbouring countries, most notably Bangladesh, and this number is ever growing.

The Myanmar government has blocked all United Nations aid agencies from delivering vital supplies of food, water and medicine via military blockades. The Burmese counteroffensive has rapidly accelerated as global attention is finally acknowledging the atrocities being committed.

With limited humanitarian relief, there are hundreds of thousands of people without food, without water, without shelter. They are witnessing their entire livelihoods erased in front of their very eyes. They can see the smoke of what was once their homes and communities, the mutilated bodies of what was once their friends and family. As the military are now ramping up their actions and escalating the violence, it is only a matter of time before the Rohingya will become a distant memory of history.