The Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, without identification or representation through a nation state, mostly professing Islam -although with minorities ascribing to Hinduism and Christianity- and residing primarily in Rakhine State, Myanmar, prior to the events of August 2017. The Rohingya proclaim that they originally hail from western Myanmar and are descended from peoples of pre-colonial and colonial Arakan (present-day Rakhine) with a legacy of more than a millennium and influence from Arabs, Mongols and Portuguese. For its part, the Myanmar government considers the Rohingya to be British colonial and post-colonial migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh and does not recognize the term “Rohingya”, preferring to refer to the community as “Bengali”. This notion is intended to emphasize the supposed Indian and Muslim, rather than Myanma and Buddhist, origin of the Rohingya population in Myanmar.

British colonial rule in Burma (present-day Myanmar) lasted from 1824 to 1948, when the country declared its independence. Intercommunal conflicts between Arakanese Muslims and Buddhists existed for decades before the creation of the present state of Myanmar, with distinct periods of ethno-religious conflicts beginning during the successive Japanese and Thai invasions of Burma and the withdrawal of the British administration (1942-1948) during World War II and the years immediately following. In this context, many Muslims fled from the Japanese-controlled and Buddhist-majority regions north of Arakan, and many others were killed, while retaliatory Muslim attacks caused the Buddhist population to flee south of Arakan.

Under the military rule of Ne Win, Burma’s prime minister from 1958, the authorities became increasingly hostile towards the Rohingya and took measures to deprive them of their citizenship rights and dissolve their social and political organizations. From 1964 onwards, various Rohingya groups were formed with the aim of creating an autonomous Muslim area for their people. The formation and existence of various insurgent groups such as the Rohingya Liberation Party (1972-1974), the Rohingya Patriotic Front (1973-1986), the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (1986-1998), the Rohingya National Army (1998-2001), the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (2013-present), the Arakan Rohingya Army (2020-present) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (1982-1998, 2021-present) has been used as an excuse by the authorities to target the Rohingya people as a whole for displacement and ethnic cleansing.

In 1978, the Myanmar military and immigration officials carried out a military operation (Operation Dragon King) with the stated purpose of registering citizens in northern Arakan and expelling so-called “foreigners” from the area prior to conducting a national census. The result was the forced eviction of Rohingya villagers through intimidation, rape and murder. Within the next three months, between approximately 200,000 and 250,000 refugees, mostly Rohingya Muslims, fled across the border into Bangladesh. The Burmese government proclaimed that the mass exodus confirmed that the Rohingyas were in fact “illegal immigrants.” The 1978 episodes marked the first case of systematic persecution and large-scale ethno-religious violence against the Rohingya by state authorities and Myanmar’s Buddhist-nationalist population.

Since 1982 and under Myanmar’s nationality law, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship. There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs. Between 1991 and 1992, another military operation by the Myanmar Armed Forces (Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation) cracked down on Rohingya communities in northern Rakhine, and the ensuing violence led to the displacement of between 200,000 and 250,000 civilians. Other major episodes took place in 2012, when police and military crackdowns on protests and riots between Buddhists and Rohingyas resulted in 168 deaths, 200,000 displaced and more than 5,100 houses burned; and in 2016, when another “cleansing” operation included arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, brutalities against civilians, burning of houses, schools, markets, stores and mosques, and looting. The death toll from the 2016 events, estimated in the hundreds, is still unknown.

In the early hours of August 25, 2017, up to 150 Muslim insurgents launched coordinated attacks on 24 police posts and the military base of the 552nd Light Infantry Battalion in Rakhine State, leaving 71 dead (12 security personnel and 59 insurgents). From that day on, the Myanmar military, together with local authorities and Buddhist civilians in Rakhine, launched massive reprisals that were officially described as anti-terrorist “mopping up operations.” Testimonies from Rohingya refugees reported that numerous civilians, including women and children, had been beaten, raped, tortured, shot, hacked to death or indiscriminately burned alive, and that entire villages had been burned down by the authorities and Buddhist paramilitary forces. International studies and agencies estimate that at least 24,000 people were killed, 18,000 women and girls were raped, 115,000 houses were burned, and more than 700,000 Rohingya fled or were forcibly displaced to Bangladesh as a result of the events after August 27, creating a severe humanitarian crisis. Today, more than one million Rohingya refugees reside in huge refugee camps in Bangladesh, and approximately 600,000 people still remain in Rakhine State, where they continue to face severe rights restrictions and the threat of further violence.

Since the events of August 25, 2017, a September 2018 report by the OHCHR-appointed Independent Fact-Finding Mission recommended that the UN Security Council refer the case to the International Criminal Court and recorded “serious human rights violations and abuses” such as mass rape, killings, torture and imprisonment. It also accused the Myanmar military of crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The mission’s report recommended that six Burmese generals be tried in an international tribunal for atrocities committed against the Rohingya. A final compilation report by the Mission in September 2019 expanded and toughened the recommendations for the Myanmar government.

On November 11, 2019, The Gambia, with the support of the 57 nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, filed a complaint against Myanmar in the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of the Rohingya, alleging that Myanmar committed genocide against the Muslim minority group. Two days later, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK) filed a federal lawsuit in Argentina under “universal jurisdiction” against senior military and civilian leaders, and on the 14th of the same month the ICC authorized an investigation into possible crimes against the Rohingya by senior military and civilian officials. On January 23, 2020, The Gambia won a sentence against Myanmar at the ICC for an interim measure of protection, as the ICC found the respondent government in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. On June 27, 2024, Argentine federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuán requested the arrest and indictment of 25 Myanmar officials, military and police officers for abhorrent “crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity” committed against the Rohingya community in that country from 2012 to 2018.