How did the Rohingya refugee tide happen?

Recently, the wave of Rohingya refugees in Myanmar has once again attracted the attention of the international community. Due to the lack of food and drinking water, many refugees have died on board, and even there has been a tragedy of killing each other for food.

In the face of this refugee tide, the Myanmar government has suffered tremendous pressure from the international community. Human rights organizations criticized the human rights situation in Myanmar, and the United Nations called on Myanmar to grant Rohingya citizenship. However, as always, the Myanmar government rejected these requests, and even demonstrations took place on the streets of Yangon to protest the pressure exerted by international organizations such as the United Nations on the Rohingya refugee tide.

So, what happened to the Rohingyas?

2065438+0165438 In 2003 10, Rakhine State, where the conflict between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar was the fiercest, tried to understand the true thoughts of Burmese people and their views on Rohingya people, and also tried to find out why Burmese people were so different from Rohingya people in the eyes of Chinese and Western media.

Rakhine State in western Myanmar was once a powerful and wealthy independent kingdom, which was called "Arakan Kingdom" in ancient times, and was conquered and annexed by Myanmar in the late18th century. The kingdom of Arakan was founded by Buddhism since ancient times. During its prosperous period, its territory was called "crossing the two rivers", covering a vast area from the Ganges River estuary delta to the Irrawaddy River delta, including a large part of Bangladesh in the west and near Yangon in the east. Although Yangon does not belong to Rakhine State now, Rakhine people will proudly tell you that the name "Yangon" comes from Rakhine language.

Map of Myanmar and its surrounding areas. Rakhine State in western Myanmar is the most violent conflict between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar.

Arakan Kingdom is adjacent to India and Bangladesh in the west, and the two sides have lived in harmony for a long time. In Mrauk U, the ancient capital of Arakan Kingdom, there is still a mosque hundreds of years ago. However, the number of Muslims who settled in Arakan at that time was limited, and most of them were vendors.

1826, Arakan was ceded to British India after the first British-Burmese war. The British then implemented the coastal agricultural development policy, and at the same time brought a group of Bangladeshi Muslims to Arakan, and rented the land to them for 99 years. With the large-scale development of farmland, more and more field laborers are needed. However, these Bangladeshis who rented land did not hire local Arakan, but drove them out of their homes and hired a large number of Bangladeshi farmers. When the lease term expires, the number of Bangladeshis in Arakan has increased from 30,000 in 1826 to 220,000 in 1925, and most of them are Muslims.

R. B. Smart, a British immigration lawsuit in Arakan at that time, recorded: "Arakan people are being driven out of their original residence by immigrants from Chittagong in the west (now a port city in Bangladesh near Myanmar) and have to move to the east."

During World War II, in order to prevent the Japanese army from advancing to India through Arakan, the British army formed a force composed entirely of Bangladeshi Muslims-Bangladesh V detachment. However, when the British army retreated to India, the main energy of this armed force was not to fight against the Japanese army, but to become a weapon to drive away the Buddhists in Arakan. According to Burmese and British records, hundreds of villages were burned by V- detachments, and more than 654.38 million Buddhists were killed. The border town of Mengdu alone killed more than 30,000 Buddhists. Speaking of the blood debt owed by Team V, Rakhine people even used the word "ethnic cleansing".

After the end of World War II, the British returned to Myanmar, demanding that Team V return the captured land to the Arakan people. However, instead of returning the land to its original owners, these Bangladeshi Muslims formed the Muslim Liberation Organization (MLO, later renamed Mujahid) and contacted Indian Muslim leader Jinnah (the father of Pakistan) in an attempt to "carry" Pakistan, which is about to leave British India. This attempt was opposed by the British colonial government. Arakan, the chief executive of the colonial government, persuaded Muslim leaders to join other ethnic groups in Myanmar, such as Burmese, Shan and Kachin, to form the Union of Myanmar.

Poor women and children, old people. I hope people can live in peace.