♤ Myanmar state, which was ruled by the military junta until 2011, has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine by the United Nations.

♤ It deported thousands of Rohingya to Bangladesh in the seventies and the citizenship law was also enacted by the junta.

♤ Things changed little for the Rohingya even after the political reforms in 2011 that eventually led to the first general elections in 2015, as the democratically-elected government-headed by President Htin Kyaw has been unwilling to grant citizenship.

♤ Sectarian violence between Rohingyas and Rakhine’s Buddhist natives began flaring up in June 2012, following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman in a Rohingya-dominated locality

♤ Another round of riots broke out in October, due to which the government moved around a million Rohingyas to refugee camps. Thousands of Rohingyas fled their homes and sought refugee in neighbouring Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation. Some of them sought asylum in South East Asian nations of Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia and Malaysia