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ID:
162690
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the vulnerable southeastern Bangladeshi city, Cox’s Bazar, an estimated 1 million Rohingyas languish in spartan refugee camps following brutal ethnic cleansing from their homes in Rakhine, a state over the border in western Myanmar (see Figure 1).1
1 Official estimates suggest that 888,111 have arrived in Bangladesh following the vicious military action against the Rohingya by Myanmar’s Tatmadaw, the country’s armed forces. As of June 30, 2018, the UNHCR claims that there is 888,111 individuals and 204,472 families housed in the sprawling camp complex in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar. UNHCR, “Bangladesh Refugee Emergency Population factsheet (as of June 30, 2018),” July 4, 2018, https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/64651. Also see International Crisis Group, “Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis Enters a Dangerous New Phase,” International Crisis Group Asia Report no. 292 (Belgium: International Crisis Group, December 7, 2017): https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/292-myanmar-s-rohingya-crisis-enters-a-dangerous-new-phase.pdf. However, Bangladeshi and international NGO officials interviewed by me in June of 2018 assert that the number is more like 1 million. This is in addition to Rohingya in the country from previous exoduses from Myanmar.
View all notes
This was not the first—nor likely to be the last—catastrophe to fall upon the Rohingya, but it has been the most devastating since anti-Rohingya violence in the country began escalating in the early 1990s. Since independence from the British in 1948, the Rakhine state has generally been neglected by Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, affecting the state’s Buddhists, Muslims (not all of whom are Rohingya), Christians, animists and others. There is a long-standing belief among the Buddhist majority that Muslims seek to undermine Myanmar’s Theraveda Buddhist identity, stemming from fears of Rohingya Muslims in particular, but increasingly toward all Muslims in Myanmar generally. Myanmar’s extremist clergy, called Sangha, and their followers are joined by counterparts in Sri Lanka and Thailand who also espouse conspiratorial canards of Muslims weaponizing their fertility and male virility to achieve numerical, social, religious and cultural dominance in these countries, and thus eradicate Theraveda Buddhism in those nations.
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