The Rohingya people (; ; ) are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar.UNHCR news briefing, 20 October 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/10/5f8d7c004/unhcr-calls-solidarity-support-solutions-rohingya-refugees-ahead-urgent.html. Retrieved 20 December 2020 One of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures.Ibrahim, Azeem (fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, and 2009 Yale World Fellow),"War of Words: What's in the Name 'Rohingya'?", 16 June 2016, Yale Online, Yale University, 21 September 2017 "Aung San Suu Kyi's Ultimate Test" , Sullivan, Dan, 19 January 2017, Harvard International Review, Harvard University. Retrieved 21 September 2017 The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 prompted the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice to hear a case alleging genocide.ICC "Bangladesh/Myanmar Investigation", https://www.icc-cpi.int/bangladesh-myanmar ; ICJ Order 23 January 2020 https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/178/178-20200123-ORD-01-00-EN.pdf, both accessed 20 December 2020
The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals, and Portuguese. The community claims descent from Indic and Muslim populations in both precolonial Arakan and colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom situated between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is recognised as Kaman, and that the Rohingya conflate their history with the history of Arakan Muslims in general to advance a separatist agenda. In addition, Myanmar's government does not recognise the term "Rohingya" and prefers to refer to the community as "Bengali".Twitter rage from Myanmar 11 June 2012 www.pri.org. Retrieved 10 June 2020 Rohingya campaign groups and human rights organisations demand the right to "self-determination within Myanmar".
Various armed insurrections by the Rohingya have taken place since the 1940s and the population as a whole has faced military crackdowns in 1978, 1991–1992, 2012, 2015, and particularly in 2016–2018, when most of the Rohingya population of Myanmar was driven out of the country, into neighbouring Bangladesh. By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017. UN officials and Human Rights Watch have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing. The UN human rights envoy to Myanmar reported "the long history of discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya community... could amount to crimes against humanity","UN expert alarmed at worsening human rights situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state" , 7 April 2014, United Nations News Centre. Retrieved 18 September 2017 and there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide. Probes by the UN have found evidence of increasing incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by "ultra-nationalist Buddhists" against Rohingyas while the Myanmar security forces have been conducting "summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and forced labour" against the community.
Before the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis and the military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was close to 1.4 million, chiefly in the northern Rakhine townships, which were 80–98% Rohingya. Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to south-eastern Bangladesh alone, and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.
Nomenclature The modern term Rohingya emerged from colonial and pre-colonial terms Rooinga and Rwangya. The Rohingya refer to themselves as Ruáingga . In Burmese they are known as rui hang gya (following the MLC Transcription System) ( ) while in Bengali they are called Rohingga ( ). The term "Rohingya" may come from Rakhanga or Roshanga, the words for the state of Arakan. The word Rohingya would then mean "inhabitant of Rohang", which was the early Muslim name for Arakan.
The usage of the term Rohingya has been historically documented prior to the British Raj. In 1799, Francis Buchanan wrote an article called "A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire", which was found and republished by Michael Charney in the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research in 2003. Among the native groups of Arakan, he wrote, are the "Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan." The Classical Journal of 1811 identified "Rooinga" as one of the languages spoken in the "Burmah Empire". In 1815, Johann Severin Vater listed "Ruinga" as an ethnic group with a distinct language in a compendium of languages published in German.
In 1936, when Burma was still under British rule, the "Rohingya Jam'iyyat al Ulama" was founded in Arakan.
According to Jacques Leider, the Rohingya were referred to as "Chittagonians" during the British colonial period, and it was not controversial to refer to them as "Bengalis" until the 1990s. Leider also states that "there is no international consensus" on the use of the term Rohingya, as they are often called "Rohingya Muslims", "Muslim Arakanese" and "Burmese Muslims".Leider 2013: 218See (Leider 2013) for a comprehensive survey of the academic opinion on the historical usage of the term: Leider 2013: 216 citing Christina Fink: "small armed group of Muslims generally known as Rohingya". Leider 2013: 215–216: Lewa in 2002 wrote that "the Rohingya Muslims are ethnically and religiously related to the Chittagonians of southern Bangladesh." Selth in 2003: "These are Bengali Muslims who live in Arakan State ... Most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries." Others, such as anthropologist Christina Fink, use Rohingya not as an ethnic identifier but as a political one. Leider believes the Rohingya is a political movement that started in the 1950s to create "an autonomous Muslim zone" in Rakhine.Leider 2013: 208
The government of Prime Minister U Nu, when Burma was a democracy from 1948 to 1962, used the term "Rohingya" in radio addresses as a part of peace-building effort in Mayu Frontier Region. The term was broadcast on Burmese radio and was used in the speeches of Burmese rulers. A UNHCR report on refugees caused by Operation King Dragon referred to the victims as "Bengali Muslims (called Rohingyas)".Leider 2013: 212–213 Nevertheless, the term Rohingya wasn't widely used until the 1990s.Leider 2013: 216
Today the use of the name "Rohingya" is polarised. The government of Myanmar refuses to use the name. In the 2014 census, the Myanmar government forced the Rohingya to identify themselves as "Bengali". Many Rohingya see the denial of their name similar to denying their basic rights,Leider 2013: 211 and the UK Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar has agreed. According to journalist Shafiur Rahman, the name "Bengali" is used to brand the Rohingya as recent interlopers by erasing their historic ties to the region. Jacques Leider writes that many Muslims in Rakhine simply prefer to call themselves "Muslim Arakanese" or "Muslims coming from Rakhine" instead of "Rohingya". The United States embassy in Yangon continues to use the name "Rohingya".
History
Early history The Rohingya population is concentrated in the historical region of Arakan, an old coastal state in borders of South and Southeast Asia. By the 4th century, Arakan became one of the earliest Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The first Arakanese state flourished in Dhanyawadi. Power then shifted to the city of Waithali. Sanskrit inscriptions in the region indicate that the founders of the first Arakanese states were Indian. Arakan was ruled by the Chandra dynasty. The British historian Daniel George Edward Hall stated that "The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly as late as the tenth century CE. Hence earlier dynasties are thought to have been Indian, ruling over a population similar to that of Bengal. All the capitals known to history have been in the north near modern Akyab".D. G. E Hall, A History of South East Asia, New York, 1968, P. 389.
Arrival of Islam Due to its coastline on the Bay of Bengal, Arakan was a key centre of maritime trade and cultural exchange between Burma and the outside world, since the time of the Indian Maurya Empire. According to Syed Islam, a political science scholar, Arab merchants had been in contact with Arakan since the third century, using the Bay of Bengal to reach Arakan. A southern branch of the Silk Road connected India, Burma, and China since the Neolithic period. Arab traders are recorded in the coastal areas of southeast Bengal, bordering Arakan, since the 9th century. The Rohingya population trace their history to this period.
According to Syed Islam, the earliest Muslim settlements in the Arakan region began in the 7th century. The Arab traders were also missionaries and they began converting the local Buddhist population to Islam by about 788 CE, states Syed Islam. Besides these locals converting to Islam, Arab merchants married local women and later settled in Arakan. As a result of intermarriage and conversion, the Muslim population in Arakan grew. This claim by Sayed Islam saying that, by 788 CE, locals in Arakan were converting to Islam clearly contradicts historian Moshe Yegar's findings which say, even in 1203, Bengal is the easternmost point of Islamic expansion, not to say further into Arakan.
The alternate view contests that Islam arrived in the Arakan region in the 1st-millennium. According to this view, this Rohingya history is not based on any evidence, rather is based on "fictitious stories, myths and legends". According to Southeast Asian Buddhism history scholar and an ordained Buddhist monk Ashon Nyanuttara, there is scant historical data and archaeological evidence about the early political and religious history of the Arakan people and the Rakhaing region. The limited evidence available suggests that Buddhism, possibly the Mahayana tradition, was well established by the 4th century in the region under the Candra Buddhist dynasty. Muslim community's expansion and the growth of Islam into the region came much later with Bengali Muslims from the region that is now a part of Bangladesh. Further, the term "Rohingya" does not appear in any regional text of this period and much later. That term was adopted by "a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals who were direct descendants of immigrants from Chittagong district [Bengal]" in the 20th-century, states historian Aye Chan.
Kingdom of Mrauk U
Early evidence of Bengali Muslim settlements in Arakan date back to the time of Min Saw Mon (1430–34) of the Kingdom of Mrauk U. After 24 years of exile in Bengal, he regained control of the Arakanese throne in 1430 with military assistance from the Bengal Sultanate. The Bengalis who came with him formed their own settlements in the region. The Santikan Mosque built in the 1430s, features a court which "measures from north to south and from east to west; the shrine is a rectangular structure measuring ."