5 Years Later, The Rohingya Remain "Stateless"

For years, Myanmar has been a hotbed of antidemocratic governance, human rights violations, and other crimes against humanity. A group who knows this all to well is the Rohingya people. For decades, the Rohingya have been the target of violence and brutality under Myanmar's military controlled regime.

Though tension and resentment already existed between the region's Rohingya Muslims and other ethnic groups, in 1982, the Burmese, military-controlled government enacted the Burmese Citizenship Act which defined a total of 135 recognized "national races." Though many Rohingya have claimed ancestral ties to Myanmar for centuries, they are not recognized under this doctrine. Because of this, military and government persecution have cascaded, and the Rohingya people have been treated as if they are "illegal immigrants" or "stateless" in a country in which many of them were born. 

There have been a number of concerted efforts to rid the country of the Rohingya through campaigns of unspeakable violence. Human Rights Watch, along with other human rights organizations and watchdogs, report that these campaigns of terror have included mass killings, gang rapes, and relentless torture at the hands of the Burmese security forces.

In the 2017 attacks, at least 25,000 people were killed and over 730,000 Rohingya were driven into refugee camps in Bangladesh. In March, after decades of bloodshed, escalation, and persecution, the US State Department and other international entities "formally" determined this situation as a genocide.

The International Court of Justice has brought a case against Myanmar, but for the Rohingya who have suffered the loss of their homes, livelihoods and loved ones, it is too little, too late. 

August 2022 marked the fifth year of this ongoing genocide which has displaced nearly 800,000 Rohingya people and created one of the biggest iterations of today's global refugee crisis. 

To better understand the history and current conditions of the plight of the Rohingya, we spoke with Raïss Tinmaung, founder of the Rohingya Human Rights Network and Canada Coordinator for the Free Rohingya Coalition. His parents fled persecution in Myanmar when he was born in 1978. To mark five years since this crisis began and what it will take to end this veiled genocide, we also spoke with Shayna Bauchner. She's a researcher at Human Rights Watch in the Myanmar division.