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Rohingya Conflict upto 2020 – Part of the Internal Conflict in Myanmar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rohingya conflict is an ongoing conflict in the northern part of Myanmar’s Rakhine State (formerly known as Arakan), characterised by sectarian violence between the Rohingya Muslim and Rakhine Buddhist communities, a military crackdown on Rohingya civilians by Myanmar’s security forces, and militant attacks by Rohingya insurgents in Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung Townships, which border Bangladesh.
The conflict arises chiefly from the religious and social differentiation between the Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. During World War II in Burma (present-day Myanmar), Rohingya Muslims, who were allied with the British and promised a Muslim state in return, fought against local Rakhine Buddhists, who were allied with the Japanese. Following independence in 1948, the newly formed union government of the predominantly Buddhist country denied citizenship to the Rohingyas, subjecting them to extensive systematic discrimination in the country. This has widely been compared to apartheid by many international academics, analysts, and political figures, including Desmond Tutu, a famous South African anti-apartheid activist.
Following the independence of Myanmar, Rohingya mujahideen fought government forces in an attempt to have the mostly Rohingya populated region around the Mayu peninsula in northern Arakan (present-day Rahkine State) gain autonomy or secede, so it could be annexed by Pakistan’s East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh). By the end of the 1950s the mujahideen had lost most of its momentum and support, and by 1961 most of their fighters had surrendered to government forces.
In the 1970s Rohingya separatist movements emerged from remnants of the mujahideen, and the fighting culminated with the Burmese government launching a massive military operation named Operation Dragon King in 1978 to expel so-called ”foreigners”.In the 1990s, the well-armed Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) was the main perpetrator of attacks on Burmese authorities near the Bangladesh–Myanmar border.[58] The Burmese government responded militarily with Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation, but failed to disarm the RSO.
In October 2016, Burmese border posts along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border were attacked by a new insurgent group, Harakah al-Yaqin, resulting in the deaths of at least 40 combatants. It was the first major resurgence of the conflict since 2001.[2] Violence erupted again in November 2016, bringing the 2016 death toll to 134, and again on 25 August 2017, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (formerly Harakah al-Yaqin) launched coordinated attacks on 24 police posts and an army base that left 71 dead.
A subsequent military crackdown by Myanmar prompted the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate the matter and release a report on 11 October 2017 detailing the Burmese military’s ”systematic process” of driving hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas from Myanmar ”through repeated acts of humiliation and violence”.
The Rohingya people are an ethnic minority that live mainly in the northern region of Myanmar’s Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) and have been described as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. They describe themselves as descendants of Arab traders who settled in the region many generations ago. However, French scholar Jacques Leider has stated that ”the forefathers of the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Rakhine have migrated from Bengal to Rakhine […] their descendants and the Muslims as whole had in fact been rather uncontroversially referred to as ’Bengalis’ until the early 1990s”, and that they were also referred to as ”Chittagonians” during the British colonial period. Others such as Chris Lewa and Andrew Selth have identified the group as ethnically related to the Bengalis of southern Bangladesh while anthropologist Christina Fink uses Rohingya not as an ethnic identifier but as a political one.[e]
With the Japanese invasion and withdrawal of the British administration, tensions in Arakan before the war erupted. The war caused inter-communal conflicts between the Arakanese Muslims and Buddhists. Muslims fled from Japanese-controlled and Buddhist-majority regions to Muslim-dominated northern Arakan with many being killed. In return, a ”reverse ethnic cleansing” was carried out. The Muslim attacks caused the Buddhists to flee to southern Arakan. Attacks by Muslim villagers on Buddhists also caused reprisals. With the consolidation of their position throughout northern Arakan, the Rohingyas retaliated against Japanese collaborators, particularly Buddhists. Though unofficial, specific undertaking were made to Arakanese Muslims after World War II. V Force officers like Andrew Irwin expressed enthusiasm to award Muslims for loyalty. Rohingya leaders believed that the British had promised them a ”Muslim National Area” in present-day Maungdaw District. They were also apprehensive of a future Buddhist-dominated government. In 1946, the leaders made calls for annexation of the territory by Pakistan. Some also called for an independent state. The requests to the British government were however ignored.
