“Rohingya” in Myanmar is a Muslim minority oppressed and deprived of nationality

Arakan News Agency
The situation of the oppressed and deprived minority Rohingya Muslim in Myanmar will be at the heart of an unprecedented visit by Pope Francis in late November to the Buddhist country.
Rohingya has been living for decades in western Myanmar, where new clashes have killed more than 3000 people in recent days.
Some 1 million Rohingya live in Myanmar, some of them in IDP camps, mainly in Arakan (northwest).
The Myanmar regime refuses to grant them citizenship.
The Myanmar Citizenship Law of 1982 states that only ethnic groups that exist on Myanmar territory before 1823 (before the first Anglo-Burmese war that led to colonialism) can acquire Myanmar nationality. Therefore, the Rohingya are forbade by law to citizenship.
But the Rohingya representatives confirm that they were in Myanmar much earlier.
Thousands of them have fled Myanmar in recent years by sea to Malaysia and Indonesia. Others chose to flee to Bangladesh, where most of them live in camps.
Members of the Rohingya minority are foreigners in Myanmar and are victims of various forms of discrimination, such as forced labor, extortion, restrictions on freedom of movement, unjust marriage rules and the confiscation of their lands.
They are also restricted in the field of study and other general social services.
Since 2011, with the dissolution of Myanmar’s military junta, which has ruled for nearly half a century, tensions between the country’s religious communities have increased.
The movement of national Buddhist monks in recent years has fueled hatred, considering that the Rohingya Muslims pose a threat to Myanmar Buddhist country by 90 percent.
In 2012, major violence broke out in the country between Buddhists and the Muslim minority, which killed nearly 200 people, most of them Rohingya.
And renewed clashes in recent days signed around 3000 dead.
A committee led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently called on the Myanmar authorities to grant Rohingya more rights, especially in the area of ​​freedom of movement, in order to prevent them from being “stressed”.