There is a history of persecution of Muslims in Myanmar that continues to the present day. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country, with significant Christian and Muslim minorities. While Muslims served in the government of Prime Minister U Nu (1948–1963), the situation changed with the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. While a few continued to serve, most Christians and Muslims were excluded from positions in the government and army. In 1982, the government introduced regulations that denied citizenship to anyone who could not prove Burmese ancestry from before 1823. This disenfranchised many Muslims in Myanmar, even though they had lived in Myanmar for several generations.
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In this Dossier
Persecution of Muslims in Myanmar in the context of Rohingya people in Pakistan
Rohingya people in Pakistan (Urdu: پاکستانی برمی) are a community based in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. They are Rohingya Muslims (Urdu: روہنگیا مسلمان), an ethnic group native to Rakhine State, Myanmar (also known as Arakan, Burma), who have fled their homeland because of the persecution of Muslims by the Burmese government and Buddhist majority. According to varied Pakistani government sources and the Arakan Historical Society, there are some 200,000 Rohingya refugees residing in Pakistan. All of them have made a perilous journey across Bangladesh and India and have settled in Karachi. A report on human trafficking stated that Burmese people make up fourteen per cent of Karachi's undocumented immigrants. Large scale Rohingya migration to Karachi made Karachi one of the largest population centres of Rohingyas in the world after Myanmar. In the recent years, scores of Burmese women seeking employment have entered the country. Different resources cite the number of these women to be in the thousands.
Persecution of Muslims in Myanmar in the context of Kutupalong refugee camp
Kutupalong refugee camp (Bengali: কুতুপালং শরণার্থী শিবির) is the world's largest refugee camp. It is located in Ukhia, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, and is inhabited mostly by Rohingya refugees who fled from ethnic and religious persecution in neighboring Myanmar. It is one of two government-run refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, the other being the Nayapara refugee camp.
A cross-sectional study that was conducted back in 2013 among 148 Rohingya refugees from the Kutupalong and Nayapara camps suggested the likelihood of a high prevalence of mental health disorders like depression and PTSD.