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Rohingya people

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Ethnic group
Rohingya people
Regions with significant populations
Burma (Arakan), Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, India
 Burma735,000–800,000
 Saudi Arabia400,000
 Bangladesh300,000–500,000
 Pakistan200,000
 Thailand100,000
 Malaysia40,070
Languages
Rohingya
Religion
Islam
Related ethnic groups
Bengalis
Burmese Indians
Islam by country
World percentage of Muslims by country
Africa
Asia
Americas
Europe
Oceania
Islam portal

The Rohingya people (Ruáingga /ɾuájŋɡa/, Template:Lang-my rui hang ja /ɹòhɪ̀ɴd͡ʑà/, Template:Lang-bn Rohingga /ɹohiŋɡa/) are Indo-Aryan peoples from the Rakhine State, Burma, who speak the Rohingya language. According to Rohingyas and some scholars, they are indigenous to Rakhine State, while other historians claim that they migrated to Burma from Bengal primarily during the period of British rule in Burma, and to a lesser extent, after the Burmese independence in 1948 and Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.

Muslims have settled in Arakan since the 16th century, although the number of Muslim settlers before the British rule is unclear. After the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1826, British annexed Arakan and encouraged migrations from Bengal to work as farm laborers. The Muslim population may have constituted 5% of Arakan's population by 1869, although estimates for earlier years give higher numbers. Successive British censuses of 1872 and 1911 recorded an increase in Muslim population from 58,255 to 178,647 in Akyab District. During World War II, the Rakhine State massacre in 1942 involved communal violence between the British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and Buddhist Rakhine people and the region became increasingly ethnically polarized.

In 1982, General Ne Win's government enacted the Burmese nationality law, which denied Rohingya citizenship. Since the 1990s, the term "Rohingya" has increased in usage among Rohingya communities.

As of 2013, about 735,000 Rohingyas live in Burma. They reside mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they form 80–98% of the population. International media and human rights organizations have described Rohingyas as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

Many Rohingyas have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh and to areas along the border with Thailand. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Burma continue to live in camps for internally displaced persons, not allowed by authorities to leave. Rohingyas have received international attention in the wake of 2012 Rakhine State riots, and more recently due to their attempted migration throughout Southeast Asia in the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis.

Etymology

Jacques P. Leider states that in precolonial sources, the term Rohingya, in the form of Rooinga appears only once in a text written by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton. In his 1799 article “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire,” Hamilton stated: "I shall now add three dialects, spoken in the Burma Empire, but evidently derived from the language of the Hindu nation. The first is that spoken by the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan."

After riots in 2012, academic authors used the term Rohingya to refer to the Muslim community in northern Rakhine. Professor Andrew Selth of Griffith University for example, uses "Rohingya" but states "These are Bengali Muslims who live in Arakan State...most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries." Among the overseas Rohingya community, the term has been gaining popularity since the 1990s, though a considerable portion of Muslims in northern Rakhine are unfamiliar with the term and prefer to use alternatives.

Rohinja history is non they come from Bangladash according to their population.

Demographics

Those who identify as Rohingyas typically reside in the northernmost townships of Arakan bordering Bangladesh where they form 80–98% of the population. A typical Rohingya family has four or five surviving children but the numbers up to twenty eight have been recorded in rare cases. According to David Price of Harvard University, Rohingyas have 37% more children between 0 and 9 years old than Burma's national average. As of 2014, about 800,000 Rohingyas live in Burma and an estimated 1 million overseas. They form 21% of Rakhine State's population or 60% if overseas population is included.

Language

they speak bangali The Rohingya language is part of the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the greater Indo-European language family and is related to the Chittagonian language spoken in the southernmost part of Bangladesh bordering Burma. While both Rohingya and Chittagonian are related to Bengali, they are not mutually intelligible with the latter. Rohingyas do not speak Burmese, the lingua franca of Burma, and face problems in integration. Rohingya scholars have successfully written the Rohingya language in various scripts including the Arabic, Hanifi, Urdu, Roman, and Burmese alphabets, where Hanifi is a newly developed alphabet derived from Arabic with the addition of four characters from Latin and Burmese.

More recently, a Latin alphabet has been developed using all 26 English letters A to Z and two additional Latin letters Ç (for retroflex R) and Ñ (for nasal sound). To accurately represent Rohingya phonology, it also uses five accented vowels (áéíóú). It has been recognised by ISO with ISO 639-3 "rhg" code.

Religion

Further information: Islam in Burma

The Rohingya people practice Sunni Islam with elements of Sufism. The government restricts educational opportunities for them, many pursue fundamental Islamic studies as their only educational option. Mosques and madrasas are present in most villages. Traditionally, men pray in congregations and women pray at home.

Human rights and refugee status

See also: Persecution of Muslims in Burma

The Rohingyas’ freedom of movement is severely restricted and the vast majority of them have effectively been denied Burmese citizenship. They are also subjected to various forms of extortion and arbitrary taxation; land confiscation; forced eviction and house destruction; and financial restrictions on marriage.

—Amnesty International in 2004

The Rohingya people have been described as “among the world’s least wanted” and “one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.” They have been denied Burmese citizenship since the Burmese nationality law was enacted. They are not allowed to travel without official permission and were previously required to sign a commitment not to have more than two children, though the law was not strictly enforced. They are subjected to routine forced labour, typically a Rohingya man will have to give up one day a week to work on military or government projects, and one night for sentry duty. The Rohingya have also lost a lot of arable land, which has been confiscated by the military to give to Buddhist settlers from elsewhere in Burma.

According to Amnesty International, the Rohingya have suffered from human rights violations under the military dictatorship since 1978, and many have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh as a result. In 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had assisted with the repatriation of Rohingyas from Bangladesh, but allegations of human rights abuses in the refugee camps threatened this effort. In 2015, 140,000 Rohingyas remain in IDP camps after communal riots in 2012.

Despite earlier efforts by the UN, the vast majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are unable to return due to the 2012 communal violence and fear of persecution. Bangladeshi government has reduced the amount of support for Rohingyas to prevent an outflow of refugees to Bangladesh. In February 2009, many Rohingya refugees were rescued by Acehnese sailors in the Strait of Malacca, after 21 days at sea.

The Rakhine community as a whole has tended to be cast internationally as violent extremists – ignoring the diversity of opinions that exist, the fact that the Rakhine themselves are a long-oppressed minority, and rarely attempting to understand their perspective and concerns. This is counterproductive: it promotes a siege mentality on the part of the Rakhine, and obscures complex realities that must be understood if a sustainable way forward is to be found.

—The International Crisis Group, The Politics of Rakhine State, 22 October 2014

Over the years, thousands of Rohingyas have also fled to Thailand. There have been charges that Rohingyas were shipped and towed out to open sea from Thailand. In February 2009 there was evidence of the Thai army towing a boatload of 190 Rohingya refugees out to sea. A group of refugees rescued in February 2009 by Indonesian authorities told that they were captured and beaten by the Thai military, and then abandoned at sea.

Steps to repatriate Rohingya refugees began in 2005. In 2009 the government of Bangladesh announced that it will repatriate around 9,000 Rohingyas living in refugee camps inside the country back to Burma, after a meeting with Burmese diplomats. On 16 October 2011, the new government of Burma agreed to take back registered Rohingya refugees. However, Rakhine State riots in 2012 hampered the repatriation efforts.

On 29 March 2014, the Burmese government banned the word "Rohingya" and asked for registration of the minority as "Bengalis" in the 2014 Burma Census, the first in three decades. On 7 May 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed the United States House resolution on persecution of the Rohingya people in Burma that called on the government of Burma to end the discrimination and persecution.

See also

Notes

References

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  22. Leider 2013, p. 14.
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  24. ^ Crisis Group 2014, p. i.
  25. MclaughLin, Tim (8 July 2013). "Origin of 'most persecuted minority' statement unclear". Retrieved 17 February 2015.
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