The threat to Burma’s minorities

Burma’s Rohingya people are being slowly squeezed from their homeland by decades-long government policies that critics say deny them citizenship, health care, work, and schooling, with such tactics punctuated by killings, destroyed homes, and tens of thousands sent to camps.

That was the picture painted by Harvard scholars and Burmese activists who gathered in Cambridge to discuss what they described as the slow genocide of Burma’s Rohingya, a Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority country that has endured a wide array of abuse at the hands of the former military government.

Though the international community has welcomed steps toward Burmese democracy in recent years, the situation for the Rohingya has improved little, speakers said Tuesday. The Rohingya, who have a long history in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, remain a stateless people, denied citizenship and subject not just to official oppression, but also to violence from the local Rakhine people, as evidenced by the 2012 riots that displaced 90,000 inhabitants. (Courtesy of news.harvard.edu)

Myanmar Policy’s Message to Muslims: Get Out

The Myanmar government has given the estimated one million Rohingya people in this coastal region of the country a dispiriting choice: Prove your family has lived here for more than 60 years and qualify for second-class citizenship, or be placed in camps and face deportation.

The policy, accompanied by a wave of decrees and legislation, has made life for the Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority, ever more desperate, spurring the biggest flow of Rohingya refugees since a major exodus two years ago.

In the last three weeks alone, 14,500 Rohingya have sailed from the beaches of Rakhine State to Thailand, with the ultimate goal of reaching Malaysia, according to the Arakan Project, a group that monitors Rohingya refugees. (Courtesy of nytimes.com)