Rohingya: The Identity Crisis

Topic: 

citizenship, colonialism, crisis, identity, Myanmar, Rohingya.

Description: 

"The people who call themselves Rohingya are the Muslims of Mayu Frontier area, present-day Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships of Arakan (Rakhine) State, an isolated province in the western part of Myanmar across Naaf River as boundary from Bangladesh (Chan, 2005). For the past three decades, the Rohingya have been seeking to restore their unrecognised ethnic identity, for any ethnic group has the right to identify itself or decide what name it should be called. Rohingya identity crisis began when they were divested from their cultural, national and ethnic identity in 1982, while Cheesman (2017) argues that 1982 citizenship law did not affect the Rohingya though he mentioned in the abstract that ‘people who reside in Myanmar but are collectively denied citizenship – like anyone identifying or identified as Rohingya – pursue claims to be taingyintha so as to rejoin the community.’ Recently, almost all news channels and agencies, social and human right activists, journalists etc. have addressed and tackled the Rohingya crisis. Much of the focus was on the ongoing violence and systematic ethnic cleansing committed by some fanatic Buddhists and military forces. Thus, this 21st century most outrageous tragedy has nearly prevailed all social media, depicting the worst discrimination and bloodiest atrocities ever..."

Creator/author: 

Najeeb Washaly

Source/publisher: 

"Academia.edu" (USA)

Date of Publication: 

2018-05-31

Date of entry: 

2019-09-22

Grouping: 

  • Individual Documents

Category: 

Countries: 

Myanmar, Bangladesh

Administrative areas of Burma/Myanmar: 

Rakhine State

Language: 

English

Local URL: 

Format: 

pdf

Size: 

188.62 KB

Resource Type: 

text

Text quality: 

    • Good