Asia’s more than one million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on Earth. Most live in an anachronistic purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.

The Burmese government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even though many of their families have lived in Burma for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently. “In Burma they’re told they’re illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they’re told they’re Burmese who should go back home,” Lewa said. “Unfortunately, they’re just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it’s only getting worse.”

That was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the violence in Burma’s Arakan State. The clashes between Rohingyas and ethnic Arakanese Buddhists have taken a roughly equal toll on both communities, though each blames the other for the violence.

The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh defied international calls to accept them, saying the impoverished country’s resources are already too strained.The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Burma has roots in a complex web of issues—the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.

Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians—not the government—are more tolerant. But even there, Rohingyas are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.

Burma’s government has the largest Rohingya population in the world—800,000 according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around the world, primarily the Middle East. Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas face discriminated routinely. In Burma, they are subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Arakanese in the same area, Lewa said.

Rohingyas must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and to marry. Apparently concerned about population growth, authorities have barred Rohingyas from having more than two children.

2012.06.15 Irrawaddy - arakan-conflict