The Rohingya Migrant Crisis

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Eleanor Albert

Tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, many taking to the sea to try to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The latest surge in refugees was prompted by a long-building crisis: the discriminatory policies of the Myanmar government in Rakhine state, which have caused hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee since the late 1970s. Their plight has been compounded by the responses of many of Myanmar’s neighbors, which have been slow to take in refugees for fear of a migrant influx they feel incapable of handling.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group living primarily in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state; they practice a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam. The estimated one million Rohingya in Myanmar account for nearly a third of Rakhine’s population. The Rohingya differ from Myanmar’s dominant Buddhist groups ethnically, linguistically, and religiously.

The Rohingya trace their origins in the region to the fifteenth century when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Bengal and the Rakhine territory were governed by colonial rule as part of British India. Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya’s historical claims and denied the group recognition as one of the country’s 135 ethnic groups. The Rohingya are largely identified as illegal Bengali immigrants, despite the fact that many Rohingya have resided in Myanmar for centuries.

Both the Myanmar government and the Rakhine state’s dominant ethnic Buddhist group, known as the Rakhine, reject the use of the label "Rohingya," a self-identifying term (PDF) that surfaced in the 1950s and that experts say provides the group with a collective, political identity. Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the most widely accepted origin is that "Rohang" is a derivation of the word "Arakan" in the Rohingya dialect and the "ga" or "gya" means "from." By identifying as Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group asserts its ties to land that was once under the control of the Arakan Kingdom, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Thailand-based advocacy group.

What is the legal status of the Rohingya?

The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship status, and as a result the vast majority of the group’s members have no legal documentation, effectively making them stateless. Though Myanmar’s 1948 citizenship law was already exclusionary, the military junta introduced a citizenship law in 1982 whose strict provisions stripped the Rohingya of access to full citizenship. Until recently, the Rohingya have been able to register as temporary residents with identification cards, known as "white cards," which Myanmar’s regime began issuing to many Muslims (both Rohingya and non-Rohingya) in the 1990s. The white cards conferred (PDF) some limited rights but were not recognized as proof of citizenship. Although the temporary cards held no legal value, Lewa says that the IDs did represent some minimal recognition of temporary stay for the Rohingya in Myanmar.

In 2014 the government held a UN-backed national census—its first in thirty years. The Muslim minority group was initially permitted to self-identify as "Rohingya," but after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census, the government decided the Rohingya could only register if they identified as Bengali.

Similarly, under pressure from Buddhist nationalists protesting the Rohingya’s right to vote in a 2015 constitutional referendum, then-President Thein Sein cancelled the temporary ID cards in February 2015, effectively revoking their newly gained right to vote—white card holders had been allowed to vote in Myanmar’s 2008 constitutional referendum and 2010 general elections. In the 2015 elections, which were widely touted as being free and fair by international monitors, no parliamentary candidate was of the Muslim faith. "Country-wide anti-Muslim sentiment (PDF) makes it politically difficult for the [central] government to take steps seen as supportive of Muslim rights," writes the International Crisis Group.

Despite the documentation by rights groups and researchers of systematic disenfranchisement, violence, and instances of anti-Muslim campaigns (PDF), Muslim minorities continue to "consolidate under one Rohingya identity" says Lewa.

Why are the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar?

Government policies, including restrictions (PDF) on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement have institutionalized systemic discrimination against the ethnic group. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Parliamentarians for Human Rights wrote in April 2015 that "the longstanding persecution of Rohingya has led to the highest outflow of asylum seekers by sea [in the region] since the U.S. war in Vietnam."

Rakhine state is also Myanmar’s least developed state, with more than 78 percent of households living below the poverty threshold, according to World Bank estimates. Widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities exacerbate the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya. This tension is deepened by religious differences that have at times erupted into conflict.

A woman walks among debris after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016. (Photo: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Violence broke out in 2012, when a group of Rohingya men were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist woman. Groups of Buddhist nationalists burned Rohingya homes and killed more than 280 people, displacing tens of thousands of people. Human Rights Watch described the anti-Rohingya violence as amounting to crimes against humanity (PDF) carried out as part of a "campaign of ethnic cleansing." Since 2012, the region’s displaced population has been forced to take shelter in squalid refugee camps. More than 120,000 Muslims, predominantly Rohingya, are still housed in more than forty internment camps, according to regional rights organization Fortify Rights.

Many Rohingya have turned to smugglers, choosing to pay for transport out of Myanmar to escape persecution. "The fact that thousands of Rohingya prefer a dangerous boat journey they may not survive to staying in Myanmar speaks volumes about the conditions they face there," says Amnesty International’s Kate Schuetze. Fleeing repression and extreme poverty, more than eighty-eight thousand migrants took to sea from the Bay of Bengal between January 2014 and May 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

A series of attacks on security posts along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border in October 2016 revived ethnic violence in Rakhine state. Local government and authorities blamed Rohingya militants for the attacks, prompting an inflow of military and police forces to support a manhunt for those responsible and to tighten security. Dozens of people were killed in raids and more than thirty thousand displaced internally. "There's historical precedent for the authorities using lethal force against Rohingya in the area and we're concerned a crackdown is unfolding," says Matthew Smith, chief executive of Fortify Rights, a Southeast Asia-based advocacy group.

Human Rights Watch released satellite imagery showing the fresh destruction of hundreds of Rohingya homes in October and November 2016, the most deadly spate of violence since 2012. Reports in November indicated that the security lockdown was also preventing the entry of much-needed food and medical care from international agencies into villages. Later that month, John McKissick, head of the UN refugee agency, said the Myanmar government was carrying out "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya people. Malaysia’s foreign minister described the Myanmar government’s actions as ethnic cleansing and called on stopping the practice. Separately, protestors gathered in cities in Thailand, Indonesia, and Bangladesh to condemn the killing and persecution of Rohingya. Meanwhile, the Myanmar government has focused its messaging on its efforts to "maintain peace and stability" in the country.

"An international response that consists primarily of assigning blame for this humanitarian tragedy is no longer tenable. It is time for the international community to organize a realistic, workable solution."— Priscilla Clapp, senior advisor at the United States Institute of Peace and former U.S. mission chief in Myanmar.

Where are they migrating?

Bangladesh: Many Rohingya have sought refuge in nearby Bangladesh, which hosts (PDF) more than thirty-two thousand registered refugees; more than two hundred thousand additional unregistered Rohingya refugees are believed to live in the country, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates. However, conditions in most of the country’s refugee camps are dire (PDF), driving many to risk a perilous voyage across the Bay of Bengal.

Malaysia: As of June 2016, more than 90 percent of Malaysia's 150,700 registered refugees are from Myanmar, including tens of thousands of Rohingya, according the UN. Rohingya who have arrived safely in Malaysia have no legal status and are unable to work, leaving their families cut off from access to education and healthcare.

Thailand: Thailand is a hub for regional human smuggling and trafficking activities and serves as a common transit point for Rohingya. Migrants often arrive by boat from Bangladesh or Myanmar before moving on foot to Malaysia or continuing by boat to Indonesia or Malaysia. A 2013 Reuters report found that some Thai authorities were colluding with smuggling and trafficking networks in the exploitation of detained Rohingya. In its 2016 Trafficking in Persons report (PDF), the U.S. State Department upgraded Thailand to Tier 2 Watch List, from the bottom Tier 3 ranking, after having been identified as a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children who are subject to trafficking. (In 2016, Indonesia ranked as Tier 2, Malaysia as Tier 2 Watch List, and Myanmar was downgraded to Tier 3.) Since taking power in 2014, the military-led government in Bangkok has prioritized a crackdown on smuggling and trafficking rings after the discovery of mass graves in alleged detention camps. But some experts say that new punitive measures directed at traffickers were responsible for the uptick in abandoned vessels at sea—a development that worsened the humanitarian crisis.

Indonesia: The Rohingya have also sought refuge in Indonesia, although the number of refugees there remains relatively modest. During the spring 2015 migration surge, Indonesia’s military chief expressed concerns that easing immigration restrictions would spark an influx of people. Amid international pressure, Indonesia admitted one thousand Rohingya and provided them with emergency assistance and protection.

At the height of the migration crisis in May 2015, international pressure peaked and Indonesia and Malaysia offered temporary shelter to thousands of migrants, Malaysia launched search-and-rescue missions for stranded migrant boats stranded, and Thailand agreed to halt push backs. Myanmar’s navy also conducted initial rescue missions at the end of the month. Joe Lowry, the Asia spokesman for the IOM, characterized the ad hoc regional response to the crisis as, "a game of maritime ping-pong."