Ethnic tensions between the Rohingya Muslims and Myanmar Buddhists have been rising for years, and it’s finally reached a tipping point last month. Myanmar’s government justification for obvious ethnic cleansing is that the Rohingya living in the Rhakine state are creating terrorist organizations and that the rest are illegal immigrants. The Rohingya Muslims are the biggest stateless ethnic group in the world, with just under a million living in Rhakine state. The Rohingya Muslims just want to be recognized and be granted citizenship in a country that they’ve been living in for generations, however, the government refuses to even recognize them as real people, referring to them in law books as the “R-Word”. And this lack of recognition is not just in Myanmar but in surrounding countries as well, Bangladesh and India both refuse to recognize the Rohingya, leaving them nowhere else to go. This violence is not only caused by the ethnicity of Rohingya’s but also their religion. Buddhist extremists have been stirring up hatred for the Rohingya Muslims by saying that if they don’t get rid of them now, the Muslims will take over the Buddhists, and once the Muslims take over, they will take away their right to practice Buddhism. The very notion of this is ridiculous because the Muslims are in fact the minority and only want citizenship. These extremist ideas have been supported by top officials in the government with Aung san suu kyi being the main culprit. She refuses to condemn the violence of the Myanmar military who are burning down villages and killing Rohingya women and children. Astonishingly, she is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and campaigned on non-violence. If she can get over her stubborn racist views, and condemn the military, she has the power to stop the violence. However, this is very unlikely, because of her and the countries fear of the Rohingya gaining citizenship.
