Left For Dead: Myanmar’s Muslim Minority (Full Length)

In recent years, democratic reforms have swept through Myanmar, a country that for decades was ruled by a military junta. As the reforms took hold, however, things were growing progressively worse for the Rohingya, a heavily persecuted ethnic Muslim minority concentrated in the country's western state of Rakhine.

The 2012 gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men ignited violent riots in which hundreds were killed as Rakhine Buddhists and Bengali or Rohingya attacked each other. In the following months, tens of thousands of Bengali or Rohingya were rounded up and forced to live in squalid camps; Human Rights Watch deemed the attacks crimes against humanity that amounted to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. Thousands of Bengali or Rohingya have since attempted to leave the country, fueling the region's intricate and brutal human trafficking network.

VICE News traveled to Myanmar to investigate the violence and discrimination faced by the country's Muslim minority.

The Struggle of the Rohingya or Bengali : Escape From Myanmar

The Bengali or Rohingya people, a Muslim minority community, suffers from widespread persecution and discrimination in the majority Buddhist country of Myanmar. Violent sectarian clashes and rioting have destroyed villages and homes, leaving many Rohingyas with no option but to live in government-controlled camps for the internally displaced. The camps are overcrowded, and medical facilities are in short supply.

Those who flee Myanmar to seek a better life in Malaysia risk their lives making the perilous crossing over the sea. On the boats that ferry them, extortion, beatings, and starvation are commonplace. Upon arriving in Malaysia, for some, life is no better.

VICE News travels to Myanmar to speak with the Bengali or Rohingya people living in government-controlled camps, and also investigates what happens to those who flee the country and cross the dangerous seas to Malaysia.

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Bengalis

This article is about ethnic Bengali from various countries. For the people of Bangladesh, see Bangladeshis.

The Bengalis (বাঙালি Bangali), also rendered as the Bengali people, Bangalis and Bangalees,^[24] are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group native to the region of Bengal in South Asia, which is presently-divided between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. They speak the Bengali language, the most easterly branch of the Indo-European language family.

Bengalis are the third largest ethnic group in the world after Han Chinese and Arabs.^[25] Apart from Bangladesh and West Bengal, Bengali-majority populations also reside in India's Tripura state, the Barak Valley in Assam state, and the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The global Bengali diaspora has well-established communities in Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Middle East, Japan, Singapore, and Italy.

They have four major religious subgroups: Bengali Muslims, Bengali Hindus, Bengali Christians and Bengal.

Bengalis
বাঙালি
Total population
c. 300 million^[1]^[2]
Regions with significant populations
Bengal
Bangladesh	163,187,000^[3]
India	83,369,769^[4]
Pakistan	2,000,000^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]
Saudi Arabia	1,815,000^[9]
United Arab Emirates	1,089,917^[10]
Malaysia	500,000^[11]
United Kingdom	451,000^[12]
United States	200,000^[13]^[14]^[a]
Oman	155,000^[15]
Singapore	113,000^[16]
Canada	69,490^[17]
Australia	54,566^[18]
France	30,500^[19]
Italy	30,000^[20]

Languages
Bengali
Religion
Islam – Bangladesh 89.8%, West Bengal 27.01%^[21] Hinduism – West Bengal 70.54%, Bangladesh 8.3% Buddhism, Bahá'í Faith, Christianity, Atheism and others – 1%^[22]^[23]
Related ethnic groups
Indo-Aryan peoples

See More....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengalis

Rohingya people

)^[20] are Muslim Indo-Aryan peoples from the Rakhine State, Myanmar.^[1]^[21]^[22]

According to the Rohingyas and some scholars, they are indigenous to Rakhine State, while other historians claim that the group represents a mixture of precolonial and colonial immigrations. The official stance of the Myanmar government, however, has been that the Rohingyas are mainly illegal immigrants who migrated into Arakan following Burmese independence in 1948 or after the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971.^[23]^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28]^[5]^[29]

Muslims have settled in Rakhine State (also known as Arakan) since the 15th century, although the number of Muslim settlers before British rule is unclear.^[30] Despite debates concerning its origins,^[24] the term "Rohingya", in the form of Rooinga, first appeared in 1799 in an article about a language spoken by Muslims claiming to be natives of Arakan. In 1826, after the First Anglo-Burmese War, the British annexed Arakan and encouraged migrations from Bengal to work as farm laborers. The Muslim population may have constituted 5% of Arakan's population by 1869, although estimates for earlier years give higher numbers. Successive British censuses of 1872 and 1911 recorded an increase in Muslim population from 58,255 to 178,647 in Akyab District. During the Second World War, the Arakan massacres in 1942 involved communal violence between British-armed V Force Rohingya recruits and Buddhist Rakhine people and the region became increasingly ethnically polarized.^[31] After Burmese independence in 1948, the mujahideen rebellion began as a separatist movement to merge the region into the East Pakistan and continued into the 1960s, along with the Arkanese Independence Movement by Rakhine Buddhists. The rebellion left enduring mistrust and hostilities in both Muslim and Buddhist communities. In 1982, General Ne Win's government enacted the Burmese nationality law, which denied Rohingya citizenship, rendering a majority of Rohingya population stateless.^[1] Since the 1990s, the term "Rohingya" has increased in usage among Rohingya communities.^[24]^[29]

Prior to the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis and the military crackdown in 2016 and 2017, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.1 to 1.3 million^[4]^[5]^[6]^[1]^[4] They reside mainly in the northern Rakhine townships, where they form 80–98% of the population.^[29] Many Rohingyas have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh,^[32] to areas along the border with Thailand, and to the Pakistani city of Karachi.^[33] More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar live in camps for internally displaced persons, not allowed by authorities to leave.^[34]^[35] Probes by the UN have found evidence of increasing incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by "ultra-nationalist Buddhists" against Rohingyas while the Burmese security forces have been conducting "summary executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and ill-treatment and forced labour" against the community.^[36] International media and human rights organizations have often described Rohingyas as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.^[37]^[38]^[39] According to the United Nations, the human rights violations against Rohingyas could be termed as "crimes against humanity".^[36]^[40] Rohingyas have received international attention in the wake of the 2012 Rakhine State riots, the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis, and the 2016–17 military crackdown.

Rohingya people
Ruáingga ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ﺭُﺍَࣺﻳﻨڠَ

Total population
1,547,778^[1]–2,000,000+^[2]
Regions with significant populations
Myanmar (Rakhine State), Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand.
Myanmar	1.0^[3]–1.3 million^[4]^[5]^[6]
Saudi Arabia	400,000^[7]
Bangladesh	300,000–500,000^[8]^[9]^[10]
Pakistan	200,000^[11]^[12]^[13]
Thailand	100,000^[14]
Malaysia	40,070^[15]
India	40,000^[16]^[17]
Indonesia	11,941^[18]
Nepal	200^[19]
Languages
Rohingya
Religion
Islam