Myanmar's Rohingya People

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Introduction: The Rohingya people are denied citizenship in Myanmar, forced into manual labor on government projects and forbidden to marry without official permission. Burma's Rohingya Muslims are said to be one of the world's most persecuted people, and now they have turned to dangerous methods to change their fate. In harrowing attempts to migrate to nearby countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, many Rohingya ended up stuck on overcrowded boats at sea, with no country willing to grant them safe landing. Hundreds of others have died when such migrant boats capsized. (CBC News)
Why are they leaving Myanmar? In Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims are not looked at as citizens of Myanmar. Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Act does not recognize them as one …show more content…

Carrying one child in her arm, a second on her back and holding the hand of a third, Hasinah Izhar was moving waist-deep through a swamp towards the Bay of Bengal, toward a fishing boat bobbing in the dusk. “Troops are coming, troops are coming,” the smuggler said. “Get on the boat quickly.” If she was thinking of changing her mind, she would need to it right now. Ms. Izhar, who was 33, had reached the muddy shore after sneaking down paths and the fish pools of western Myanmar, where she and around one million other members of the Rohingya minority. She had signed up for passage to Malaysia, but knew that the trip would be dangerous, that even if she survived, the smugglers could demand ransom before letting her and her children go, and that they may beat, torture or sell them into slavery for those if they were no able to pay. She had left behind her oldest child, a 13-year-old boy named Jubair. Ms. Izhar knew that it was going to cost close to $2,000 just to get her three youngest to Malaysia. Taking the son that she left behind would increase the smugglers’ price and she only had around $500 from selling their house, a bamboo and mud-daub hut in the village of Thayet Oak. Buddhist militants were enraged by rumors that Rohingya Muslims had raped a Buddhist woman, had attacked villages like Thayet Oak across Rakhine State, the coastal region home to most of Myanmar’s Rohingya. The armed forces and police services just stood by and watched. Worried that he would be arrested and beaten like some of his friends, Ms. Izhar’s husband, Dil Muhammad Rahman, had gone into hiding but made short visits home in the dead of night. Then in late 2012, he had disappeared and did not call to tell her that he went to Malaysia until three months after he got there. “How can I stay here?” she asked. “The old, the young, everyone has to keep watch on the village every night to protect the women. All the

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