The Rohingyas are one of the many ethnic minorities in Myanmar mostly based in the Rakhaine state. Being the largest Muslim community in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, they are said to be the descendants of the Arab traders in the subcontinent having their own language and culture. But referring to them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, the government of Myanmar has been denying their citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law and excluded them from the population census in 20142. The Rohingyas have been facing systematic discrimination, forceful eviction and widespread barbarity by the Myanmar Army (Tatmadaw) leading them to flee their homeland for over decades. With the earliest arrivals to Bangladesh recorded in 1948, the first big influx of 200,000 Rohingyas reporting brutality, expulsion, rape and murder by the Burmese Army happened in May 1978. Earlier, the government of Burma under the Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) started repression of the social and political organizations since they came in power in 1962. In 1977, with Operation Nagamine the government initiated a national screening to identify the Rohingyas as foreigners and exclude them from the National Census.
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