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Rohingya are an oppressed ethnic group. Photo/Reuters
YANGON – The Rakhine Rohingya group currently considers itself to be the most persecuted and oppressed minority group in the world. They often seek refuge in several countries in Asia, including Indonesia.
Their presence in neighboring countries certainly causes various symptoms and internal conflicts, so that every country they visit always rejects them. They continue to travel to every country to look for a place to stop.
What happened to the Rohingya group made a number of netizens wonder why they did something like that. To find out more about the Rohingya, see the following complete review.
Getting to know the Rakhine Rohingya
The Rakhine Rohingya are an ethnic group whose majority are Muslim and live in the state of Rakhine, Myanmar. Rakhine, formerly called Arakan, is a region that borders the Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh.
Rakhine has a long and complex history as a trading center and kingdom that dates back to the 4th century AD. According to the 2014 Myanmar census, Rakhine has a population of around 3.2 million people, consisting of 63.1 percent ethnic Rakhine, 28.3 percent ethnic Rohingya, and 8.6 percent other ethnicities.
However, this census is not recognized by many parties, including the Myanmar government itself, because it is considered inaccurate and does not reflect the reality on the ground. Quoted from Al Jazeera, the Rohingya ethnic group itself is not recognized as one of the 135 official ethnic groups in Myanmar.
The Rohingya speak the Rohingya or Ruaingga language, which is an Indo-Aryan dialect that is different from the Burmese language which comes from the Sino-Tibetan family. The majority of Rohingya adhere to Sunni Islam, although there are also a small number who adhere to Hinduism.
The Rohingya ethnic group experiences systematic discrimination and persecution in Myanmar, which has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and mass displacement. Since 1982, the Rohingya ethnic group has not been granted citizenship by the Myanmar government, so they do not have civil and political rights.
The conflict between the Rohingya ethnic group and the Rakhine ethnic group, who are predominantly Buddhist, has escalated since 2012, when communal riots occurred that killed hundreds of people and displaced more than 100,000 people.
The situation worsened in 2016 and 2017, when the Myanmar military carried out brutal military operations against the Rohingya, who were considered rebels and terrorists. These operations led to killings, rape, torture and burning of Rohingya villages.