In present-day Myanmar (which is the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma), the Rohingya Muslims have been the victims of a coordinated government ethnic cleansing campaign under the watchful eye of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has done virtually nothing to stop the erasure of Muslims from her country. The Economist magazine once called the Muslim Rohingya “the most persecuted people in the world.” There is good reason for that. In a predominantly Buddhist country, the Rohingya are a small, though indigenous, ethnic group who have lived for centuries in the Rakhine province of Myanmar. And until recent years, they had found ways to coexist with the rest of that country’s population. Although the Myanmar government disingenuously characterizes Rohingya Muslims as immigrants from neighboring countries like Bangladesh, the Rohingya have been living in Myanmar since time immemorial, and virtually all external observers agree they should be considered native to Myanmar.

QUESTION: The grim irony of a Nobel Peace laureate overseeing ethnic cleansing deserves deeper investigation into how domestic politics constrained or enabled Suu Kyi.

QUESTION: The claim that Rohingya are indigenous and lived there 'since time immemorial' is contested by the Myanmar government; worth verifying historical depth of Rohingya presence in Rakhine. XREF: Connects to broader coverage of Aung San Suu Kyi's contested Nobel legacy and the 2017 genocidal crackdown documented by UN investigators.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 131