They have been called one of the world's most persecuted people. Some argue
that they are also one of the most forgotten.
The Rohingya people of western Burma's Arakan State are forbidden from
marrying or travelling without permission and have no legal right to own
land or property.
Not only that but even though groups of them have been living in Burma for
hundreds of years, they are also denied citizenship by the country's
military government.
For decades this Muslim group of ethnic-Indo origins have been considered
the lowest of the low in this mainly Buddhist country.
In addition to their almost total lack of legal rights many have been
regularly beaten by police, forced to do slave labour and jailed for little
or no reason.
In 1992, 250,000 Rohingyas, which is a third of their population, fled over
Burma's border into Bangladesh to escape the persecution. Fourteen years
later more than 20,000 of them are still in the same refugee camps and
around 100,000 more are living illegally in the surrounding area. . . .
FULL TEXT
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Arakan Rohingya Co-operation Council
Chris Lewa, "The Plight of Burma's
Stateless, Rohingya Muslims," Asian Forum for Human Rights and
Development, June 2003
