The Rohingya people (/roʊˈhɪndʒə, -ɪŋjə/; Rohingya: 𐴌𐴗𐴥𐴝𐴙𐴚𐴒𐴙𐴝, romanized: ruáingga; IPA: [rʊˈɜi̯ɲ.ɟə]) are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated of 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. One of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist. The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 prompted the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice to hear a case alleging genocide.
The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals, and Portuguese. The community claims descent from populations in both precolonial Arakan and colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom situated between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is recognised as Kaman, and that the Rohingya conflate their history with the history of Arakan Muslims in general to advance a separatist agenda. In addition, Myanmar's government does not recognise the term "Rohingya" and prefers to refer to the community as "Bengali". Rohingya campaign groups and human rights organisations demand the right to "self-determination within Myanmar".
