Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar

# The Rohingya: Genocide Against a Muslim People in Myanmar

Who Are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are a Muslim people who have lived for centuries in the Arakan region of western Burma (Myanmar), a coastal territory bordering Bangladesh. Their origins are debated — Rohingya scholars and advocates trace continuous presence to the 7th-8th centuries CE, when Arab traders and Muslim settlers established communities along the Bay of Bengal coast; the Arakan kingdom (known in Arabic chronicles as Rakhang) had Muslim court officials and a tradition of Islamic influence for centuries. The Burmese military government, by contrast, dismisses the Rohingya as "Bengali immigrants" who arrived during British colonial rule — a characterization rejected by scholars of the region and by the Rohingya themselves.

By the mid-20th century, the Rohingya numbered approximately 1 million people in Arakan (now called Rakhine State), primarily concentrated in the northern townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung. They were Sunni Muslims speaking a dialect related to the Chittagonian dialect of Bengali, practicing a traditional form of Hanafi Islam with Sufi influences common across South Asian Muslim communities.

The tragedy of the Rohingya is not a sudden crisis but the culmination of decades of systematic persecution — citizenship denial, movement restrictions, forced labor, restrictions on marriage and childbirth, denial of education and healthcare, periodic massacres and mass expulsions — that culminated in the 2017 genocidal campaign that the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar all characterized as genocide.

The Road to Statelessness: The 1982 Citizenship Law

The most consequential legal act against the Rohingya was Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law, enacted under the military government of Ne Win, which recognized 135 "national races" of Myanmar but excluded the Rohingya. Under this law, citizenship was tied to membership in one of the recognized national races. The Rohingya, classified as "Bengali" foreigners, were effectively rendered stateless.

Without citizenship, the Rohingya could not vote, own land in their own names, attend university, work in government positions, or move freely without government permission. They required official permission to marry, with marriages limited and subject to bureaucratic obstacles. Births had to be registered under restrictive conditions. The systematic denial of these rights over decades created conditions that international law recognizes as persecution — a category of crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.

The citizenship law was paired with an ideological framework, promoted through Buddhist nationalist movements (particularly the Ma Ba Tha organization), that defined the Rohingya as alien to Myanmar's Buddhist identity and an existential threat to Burmese culture and religion. This framework dehumanized the Rohingya in Burmese public discourse and created the ideological preconditions for mass violence.

The 2017 Genocide: Operation and Scale

The immediate trigger for the 2017 genocide was an attack by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Myanmar police posts on August 25, 2017 CE (3 Dhul Hijja 1438 AH). The Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) responded with a "clearance operation" that bore no proportionality to the ARSA attack and was clearly premeditated — involving military assets pre-positioned before the August 25 attacks.

The operation involved:

Mass killings: The Tatmadaw and allied Buddhist militias conducted village-by-village massacres. The most documented was the massacre at Tula Toli village on August 30, 2017, where hundreds of Rohingya civilians were killed after being gathered at a riverbank. The independent UN Fact-Finding Mission documented dozens of such massacres.

Sexual violence: Mass rape was used systematically as a weapon of terror and destruction. The UN Fact-Finding Mission documented gang rape, sexual mutilation, and other forms of sexual violence on a scale indicating a coordinated military strategy.

Burning: Hundreds of Rohingya villages were burned. Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch and other organizations documented the burning of over 350 villages in Rakhine State — an area equivalent to the size of a small country. In some villages, people were burned alive inside their homes.

Forced displacement: The combination of killings, rape, and burning drove the mass exodus. Within weeks of August 25, 2017, approximately 700,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar into Bangladesh — the fastest displacement of a civilian population in recent history. By early 2018, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees had arrived in Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh, creating what became the world's largest refugee settlement — the Kutupalong-Balukhali settlement.

Cox's Bazar: The World's Largest Refugee Camp

The arrival of nearly a million people in a relatively short period created a humanitarian emergency of enormous scale. The Kutupalong-Balukhali camp in Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh, accommodates over 600,000 people in a densely packed settlement of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters — one of the most concentrated human settlements on earth. UNHCR, UNICEF, MSF, Islamic Relief, and dozens of other organizations provide food, water, sanitation, healthcare, and education.

The conditions are extremely difficult. The settlement is prone to flooding during monsoon season; diseases spread in the dense conditions; the children, who constitute over half the population, have limited access to formal education; and the prospects for return to Myanmar remain distant given that the conditions that drove the Rohingya out — military rule, Buddhist nationalist persecution, statelessness — have not changed.

Bangladesh, a lower-middle-income country with a large population of its own, has borne an extraordinary burden in hosting the Rohingya. The government's periodic statements about plans for repatriation have not been implemented because Myanmar has not guaranteed the conditions — citizenship, safety, return of property — that would make return possible.

International Legal Proceedings

The Rohingya crisis has generated the most significant international legal proceedings regarding the genocide of a Muslim people since the Bosnian cases.

The ICJ Case: The Gambia, acting on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), filed a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice in November 2019 under the Genocide Convention. In January 2020, the ICJ issued provisional measures ordering Myanmar to take all necessary measures to protect the Rohingya from genocide and to preserve evidence. This was significant: the court found that the Rohingya's rights under the Genocide Convention were at risk of "irreparable prejudice." The substantive case continues.

The ICC Investigation: The International Criminal Court opened a formal investigation into the situation in Bangladesh and Myanmar in November 2019, focusing on crimes including deportation, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The investigation is ongoing.

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission: The UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission concluded in 2018 that Myanmar's military commanders should be investigated and prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The mission's report documented the patterns of violence in detail using survivor testimony, satellite imagery, and documentary evidence.

The Muslim World's Response

The Muslim world's response to the Rohingya crisis has been a mixture of genuine solidarity and structural limitation. The OIC condemned the persecution and sponsored the Gambia's ICJ case. Muslim-majority countries hosted fundraising drives; Islamic charities provided humanitarian assistance. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Turkish President Erdogan were among the most vocal international voices calling for accountability.

The practical limitations were significant: Myanmar is not subject to significant economic pressure from Muslim-majority states; China, which has major economic and strategic interests in Myanmar, repeatedly blocked stronger UN Security Council action; and the Muslim world's own political divisions prevented coordinated pressure.

The inability of the global Muslim community — despite its numerical size and the wealth of some Muslim states — to protect the Rohingya from genocide highlights structural challenges that recur across Muslim minority crises: the absence of a unified political voice, the limitations of inter-state organization when member states' bilateral interests diverge, and the dominance of great-power politics in international institutions.

The Hadith on Muslim Brotherhood

The Prophet ﷺ said: "The parable of the believers in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body: when any part of it aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever." (Bukhari and Muslim)

He ﷺ also said: "A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim — he does not wrong him, does not abandon him, and does not look down on him." (Muslim)

The suffering of the Rohingya is a test of whether these words remain operative principles for the global Muslim community or have become merely liturgical expressions disconnected from action. The obligation to bear witness, to provide material assistance, to pursue legal accountability, and to advocate — with whatever means are available — for the rights of persecuted Muslims is a collective Islamic duty that cannot be discharged by sentiment alone.

Sources:

• UN Human Rights Council. Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar. September 2018. UN Doc A/HRC/39/64.
• Zarni, Maung, and Cowley, Alice. "The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar's Rohingya." Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 23, no. 3 (2014): 681-752.
• Ibrahim, Azeem. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide. Hurst, 2016.
• International Court of Justice. The Gambia v. Myanmar (Application of the Genocide Convention). Provisional Measures Order, January 23, 2020.
• Human Rights Watch. Massacre by the River: Burmese Army Crimes against Humanity in Tula Toli. 2017.
• Minority Rights Group International. Peoples Under Threat. Various annual reports.
• UNHCR. Rohingya Emergency. UNHCR operational data, 2017-2024.