COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong> Rakhine men fishing off the coast near Thandwe 26
2. BACKGROUND 2. BACKGROUND Rakhine state Rakhine state extends some 560km along the northernmost part of Myanmar’s coastline and borders Bangladesh to the north-west. It is separated from Myanmar’s central, low-lying landmass by the Yoma mountain range. The population of Rakhine state is around 3.2 million 33 with Rakhine Buddhists comprising an estimated 2.1 million and Rohingya Muslims just over a million. 34 The exact number of Rohingya is impossible to verify as they were excluded from participating in the 2014 census unless they registered as ‘Bengali’, which very few did. The Rakhine, also known as Arakanese, are an ethnic minority themselves in Myanmar, making up around 6 per cent of the national population. Most Rohingya live in the townships 35 of Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Rakhine state, where they form a large majority population. Rakhine state is also home to a small number of Chin, Kaman, Mro, Khami, Dainet and Maramagyi ethnic minorities. Competing histories surround the origins and existence of the Rohingya ethnicity in Myanmar. Carlos Sardina Galache explains: Burmese and Rakhine nationalists often accuse the Rohingya of falsifying their history in order to advance their claims for ethnicity… Rohingya historians tend to minimize or ignore altogether the importance of the migration of labourers to Arakan from Bengal during colonial times. 36 33 Total population of Rakhine state is 3,188,963 (2,098,963 enumerated, 1,090,000 not enumerated (i.e. estimated)). Figures taken from the April 2014 census, which excluded the Rohingya. See: Republic of the Union of Myanmar, ‘The Population and Housing Census of Myanmar, 2014: Summary of the Provisional Results’, Department of Population, Milistry of Immigration and Population, August 2014: http://countryoffice.unfpa.org/myanmar/drive/SummmaryoftheProvisionalResults.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2015. 34 According to the estimate of uncounted persons in the 2014 census, the total number of Rohingya in Rakhine state is estimated at over 1 million. See: Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Government Plan Would Segregate Rohingya: Forced Resettlement, Discriminatory Citizenship Creates Dangers’, 3 October 2014: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/03/ burma-government-plan-would-segregate-rohingya. Accessed 10 October 2015. 35 A Township is an administrative subdivision of a district and incorporates a number of villages. 36 Galache, C S, ‘Rohingya and national identities in Burma’, AsiaPacific, New Mandala, 22 September 2014: http://asiapacific. anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/09/22/the-rohingya-and-national-identities-in-burma/. Accessed 10 October 2015 . 27