History of the Slow Genocide

By Maung Zarni and Natalie Brinham | Published by Middle East Institute on November 14, 2017 Sectarian-based conflicts — or at any rate, spasms of intercommunal violence characterized as such — are certainly not new. Nor is Iraq or, for that matter, the Middle East as a whole, the only locus of conflict depicted as being sectarian in nature, as the disturbing events in Burma/Myanmar, as well as in the Central African Repubic (CAR) and Nigeria clearly illustrate. With increasing frequency, media accounts of the civil war in Syria describe it in sectarian terms and report that the violence there

By Krithika Varagur | Published by The Atlantic on November 14, 2017 The sheer number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing genocide in Burma—over 10,000 per day since late August—has become too huge to ignore. It’s the reason why U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Burma on Wednesday. In his briefings on the crisis, Tillerson will likely encounter another question of numbers: the claim, voiced often by Burmese officials and hardline Buddhist monks, that Rohingya Muslim “overpopulation” threatens their country’s Buddhist majority. “The population growth of Rohingya Muslims is 10 times higher than that of the Rakhine [Buddhists],” said Win

By Alice Cowley and Maung Zarni | Published by Middle East Institute on April 20, 2017 Sectarian-based conflicts — or at any rate, spasms of intercommunal violence characterized as such — are certainly not new. Nor is Iraq or, for that matter, the Middle East as a whole, the only locus of conflict depicted as being sectarian in nature, as the disturbing events in Burma/Myanmar, as well as in the Central African Repubic (CAR) and Nigeria clearly illustrate. With increasing frequency, media accounts of the civil war in Syria describe it in sectarian terms and report that the violence there

By Katherine Southwick | Published by Policy Forum on December 2, 2016 The urgent need to prevent and protect Interethnic divisions in a young democracy cannot be downplayed or wished away, and it’s time Myanmar’s government and the international community acknowledge strong evidence that genocide is being perpetrated against the Rohingya and act to end it, Katherine Southwick writes. Violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State escalated after a 9 October attackon border guard posts, leaving nine officers dead. Humanitarian assistance and media access to the area have been cut off for weeks while the Myanmar authorities conduct a counterinsurgency operation against allegedly

By Sir Geoffrey Nice, Francis Wade | Published by Foreign Policy on November 30, 2016 The world can no longer look away from the intensifying assault on Burma’s Rohingya minority. Last fall, Burmese voters elected their first democratic government in half a century. That inspired hope that the country’s long history of violence and oppression was finally taking a turn from the better. Now, just one year later, that promise has given way to dread. In a small pocket of western Burma, a new phase has begun in what threatens to become the genocide of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.