Why Burma Is Trying to Stop People From Using the Name of Its Persecuted Muslim Minority

Despite international calls to help the country's Rohingya people, indications are that Burma's new government is trying to scrub the very term Rohingya from use

Burma’s newly installed government is trying to get foreign diplomats to refrain from using the name Rohingya, in the latest blow to the country’s heavily persecuted Muslim group. The move is an apparent bow to pressure from a small but influential ultra-nationalist movement that refuses to recognize the rights of the Rohingya people to belong in Burma.

A spokeswoman for Burma’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Aye Aye Soe, told TIME that the government was “not objecting [to] the term [Rohingya] but requesting not to use it.” The suggestion was made during private “courtesy calls” between Aung San Suu Kyi — in her role as Minister of Foreign Affairs — and the U.S. Ambassador to Burma Scot Marciel, after the embassy had been targeted by Burmese over its use of the word. Protesters see the term — which means a person of Rohang, the old Muslim term for what is now Arakan state in western Burma — as conferring historical legitimacy on the Muslim presence in the country. (Courtesy of TIME)