Word: rohingya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sorry,' I was told, 'but there are no Rohingya here.' I was mystified. From everything that I had heard about this persecuted Muslim minority, the Rohingya come from western Burma's isolated Arakan State. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, who speak a dialect similar to that of Bengalis from neighboring Bangladesh, have fled the brutality of Burma's military regime by escaping their Buddhist-majority homeland for lives as illegal immigrants. The ruling junta has denied the Rohingya some of the most basic human rights - no citizenship, no freedom of movement, no marriage without permission. In January, their plight made...
...that I'd made the long trip to Arakan, there was a strange lack of information on the Rohingya. Many locals denied their very existence. (The Burmese government, in a curious feat of logic, denies having mistreated the Rohingya, since there is, according to Foreign Minister Nyan Win, no such a minority group in Burma.) Then, a break: a Buddhist Arakan local confided that there were some ethnic Bengalis who lived in a nearby village. He guessed that they'd come from Bangladesh to Burma 10 or 20 years ago and were living in Arakan illegally. Would I like...
...they attend university in Arakan's capital, Sittwe, where communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims flared eight years ago. The villagers' tone when describing their plight was matter-of-fact, as if they were complaining of a rainstorm or a bad case of influenza. To marry, some Rohingya must sign a document promising not to bear more than two children - a regulation that presumably ensures the number of Muslim inhabitants of Arakan doesn't mushroom faster than the Buddhist population. Burmese prejudice against the Rohingya is as casual as it is cruel. When international indignation over the junta's treatment...
...Toward the end of my visit to Nazi, I sat in the privacy of a bamboo-floored stilted house, where locals felt more comfortable talking. I asked the villagers if they considered themselves Rohingya. The room full of around 20 people erupted into argument. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but it was clear that there was significant disagreement. Finally, one man spoke. "Some people call us Rohingya," he said cautiously. I realized they were afraid to be identified as Rohingya because the very word carried with it the likelihood of so much discrimination. The man's name...
...mountains near the India-Burma border. An armed wing of the Chin National Front, which was founded in 1988, is one of the few remaining forces waging an insurgency against the ruling junta, but it has been accused by human-rights groups of mistreating its own people. Like the Rohingya, the Chin claim the junta persecutes them in part because of their religious beliefs. Most Chin are American Baptists, having been converted by missionaries in the 19th century. Although tens of thousands of Chin are believed to have sought refuge in India since the junta came to power...