Who are the Muslim Rohingyas? And what are they fleeing from?

The Rohingyas have been the stateless nomads of South Asia for centuries and have been described as the most persecuted race in the world. If the Jews once claimed title to that dubious accolade, its time they took a back seat.

For, unlike the once similarly persecuted Jews whose biblical status as the chosen seed served in the end to make them outcasts but whose accumulated wealth, earned through trading skills, brought them power and ultimately won them a state of their own, the Rohingyas had none to boast of except their badge of poverty, which made them the most forgotten people of the world: and, in turn the most persecuted.

And if they did not happen to make the news after Myanmar’s military state turned its guns on them and made them flee the persecution, they would have remained so in the eyes of the world. But a state sponsored campaign of terror, which has raised allegations of ethnic cleansing, has placed their plight firmly in the international spotlight.

Since 1970 a mass exodus of Rohingyas has been taking place with hundreds of thousands fleeing discrimination and sporadic violence to neighbouring countries mainly to Bangladesh. In 2012, from the debris of the Rohingya people’s fate, there arose from their midst a terror organization, The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or known as Harakah al-Yaqin , the Faith Movement.

Their resort to terror as their weapon to win their rights had resulted in the backlash. Here is a brief litany of their actions as reported by Britain’s BBC: The first and most deadly incident began in June 2012 when widespread rioting and clashes between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims, largely thought to be Rohingya Muslims, left 200 dead and displaced thousands. It was the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman which sparked off that deadly chain of events In March 2013 an argument in a gold shop in Meiktila in central Myanmar led to violence between Buddhists and Muslims which left more than 40 people dead and entire neighbourhoods razed In August 2013 rioters burnt Muslim-owned houses and shops in the central town of Kanbalu after police refused to hand over a Muslim man accused of raping a Buddhist woman In January 2014, the UN said that more than 40 Rohingya men, women and children were killed in Rakhine state in violence that flared after accusations that Rohingyas killed a Rakhine police- turn Buddhist and become Dharmasoka after seeing the tranquil countenance of a young Buddhist monk. That serene sight so moved him to renounce his title as King of Violence and seek re –coronation as Emperor of Peace.

If the sight of that young monk, garbed in the same sparse robe the Buddha had worn two hundred years before, moved so ruthless a king to renounce his ambitions of further conquests and to sheath his conquering sword forever; and, instead, to repose in his remorseful heart the sublime perfumed fragrance of the Buddha’s doctrine of non violence to any living being on earth - for whatever reason – if the sight of the saffron robe the Buddha wore had moved Emperor Asoka to send