Burma's Brutal Campaign Against the Rohingya

The Rohingya, a stateless Muslim people living in the Rakhine state, of Burma, are frequently described as the world's most persecuted minority. Denied citizenship in Burma and treated as unwanted, illegal immigrants, their modern history has been a continuous deprivation of basic human rights, punctuated with episodes of extreme violence. The latest of these is ongoing. On August 25, 2017, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, ARSA, a Rohingya militant group, launched a coordinated attack on a security outpost in Burma's Rakhine state, killing approximately a dozen personnel. In the weeks that have followed, the Burmese military has carried out a brutal retaliatory crackdown against the Rohingya population as a whole, characterized by sickening crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watch released a report documenting widespread and systematic attacks on the Rohingya civilians; deportations and forced population transfers; murders, including the murder of women and children; sexual violence; the razing of villages; and the deployment of landmines along paths used by the refugees. The reporting is corroborated by eyewitness accounts on the ground and satellite images. The military's violence has sparked a massive refugee outflow into neighboring Bangladesh, which the Economist reports is the most intense since the Rwanda genocide. In this latest crisis alone, about 436,000 Rohingya have crossed the border, overwhelming the aid organizations there and bringing the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to near 1 million.