15 Facts About Rohingyas

Professor Andrew Selth of Griffith University writes that although a few Rohingya trace their ancestry to Muslims who lived in Arakan in the 15th and 16h centuries, most Rohingyas arrived with the British colonialists in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Several Rohingyas were elected to Burmese native seats in the Legislative Council of Burma and Legislature of Burma.

Aye Chan, a historian at Kanda University in Japan, has written that as a consequence of acquiring arms from the British during World War II, Rohingyas tried to destroy the Arakanese villages instead of resisting the Japanese.

In 2015, the Simon-Skjodt Centre of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stated in a press statement the Rohingyas are "at grave risk of additional mass atrocities and even genocide".

In 2015, to escape violence and persecution, thousands of Rohingyas migrated from Myanmar and Bangladesh, collectively dubbed as 'boat people' by international media, to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.

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The military crackdown on Rohingyas drew criticism from various quarters including the United Nations, human rights group Amnesty International, the US Department of State, and the government of Malaysia.

In January 2016, the government of Bangladesh initiated a plan to relocate tens of thousands of forcibly displaced Rohingyas, who had fled to the country following persecution in Myanmar.

The clothing worn by most Rohingyas is indistinguishable from those worn by other groups in Myanmar.

Lucifica is a type of flat bread regularly eaten by Rohingyas, while bola fica is a popular traditional snack made of rice noodles.

Rohingyas do not speak Burmese, the lingua franca of Myanmar, and face problems in integration.

Citizens possessed red identity cards; Rohingyas were given white identity cards which essentially classified them as foreigners who were living in Burma.

For example, Rohingyas cannot enlist in the army or participate in the government, and they are potentially faced with the issue of illegal immigration.

In 2015,140,000 Rohingyas were still living in IDP camps, three years after fleeing communal riots in 2012.

In 2009, the government of Bangladesh announced that it would repatriate around 9,000 Rohingyas who were living in refugee camps inside the country back to Myanmar, after a meeting with Burmese diplomats.

In September 2020, U N High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has warned that the killing and abductions of Rohingyas have not stopped, despite the International Court of Justice ordering Myanmar's leadership to prevent genocide and stop the killings in December 2019.