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British Rule ended in Burma, which brought on new authority and attention to the Rohingya people. The government began to claim that Myanmar residents would have to justify that their religion was Buddhism in order to claim their nationalism. Rohingyas, who were mostly Muslim, began to lose their identity and were classified as “foreigners” by the state.
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New citizenship law passed identifying 135 national ethnic groups. The Rohingya aren't one of them, effectively rendering them stateless.
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Religious violence leaves more than 200 dead and close to 150,000 homeless in Rakhine (predominantly Rohingya.) Violence flares again in October. Between 2012 and 2015, more than 112,000 Rohingya flee, largely by boat to Malaysia.
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Large numbers of the ethnic group began fleeing to neighboring countries to escape the violence. Tensions reached the point that Rohingya were not even allowed to live in Myanmar unless they had proof their ancestors lived in the country prior. Even with the new laws in place, before 2015, there were still approximately 1-1.3 million Rohingya living in Myanmar.
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Thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh. Some 3,000 Rohingya cross the Naf border river, and more than 2,600 houses are razed in Rohingya-majority areas of northwest Myanmar.
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The U.N. human rights high commissioner calls the military operation in Rakhine “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, citing satellite imagery and accounts of extrajudicial killings.
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Muslim insurgents calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, launch an assault on 30 Myanmar police posts and an army base in the north of Rakhine State, in which nearly 80 insurgents and 12 members of the security forces are killed.
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More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees arrived in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar on August 25.
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The United States imposes sanctions on 13 “serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors” including the general who oversaw the crackdown against the Rohingya Muslims.
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Myanmar has bulldozed at least 55 Rohingya villages that were emptied during last year’s violence, Human Rights Watch says, citing a review of satellite imagery. Then Myanmar’s military started building bases where some Rohingya homes and mosques once stood.
