WORLD POLITICS ON ROHINGYA CRISIS

Book excerpt: The Rohingya are an ethnic, linguistic and Muslim minority group in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state. Although they have been living in Myanmar for centuries, the Myanmar government does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens of Myanmar. The Myanmar government believes the Rohingya are "illegal immigrants" or "Bengalis" who have recently entered the region. As a result, the Rohingya have not been recognized as an official ethnic minority in Myanmar since the 1982 Citizenship Amendment Act. Nowadays these people are stumbling around in different countries as stateless citizens. No country is ready to accept them as its citizens. The Rohingya have a long history of living in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Rakhine state, formerly known as Arakan state, was inhabited by members of the Rohingya Muslim and Buddhist communities. However, within the last two centuries, Arakan Kingdom was conquered by the Burmese in 1784 and then Myanmar, like India, was ruled by the Britishers for a long time. From 1824 to 1948, Myanmar was a slave of the British. The British made Myanmar a colonial state and to work there, the Britishers brought laborers from Bangladesh and different regions of India which had a large number of poor Muslims. Thus, the number of people in this region increased and these people settled permanently in the Rakhine region. After Myanmar gained independence, immigrants were not accepted by the indigenous