Connor Norton- Rohingya Muslims Being Wiped off Myanmar's Map

The ethnic Rohingya minority of Myanmar, or Burma, has lived in the country for centuries. However, in what has been described as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing", the Muslim group has been violently purged from the mostly Buddhist country. Stories have emerged as recently as this week of the military burning Rohingya villages and slaughtering the fleeing residents; of families forced to leave their young and old behind to die because being slowed for even a moment would mean death at the hands of the government; of groups of Rohingya shouting for loved ones they had lost from across the Bangladeshi border. The situation is horrifying, bordering upon genocidal, and has resulted in a mass exodus of the surviving Muslims to border countries such as aforementioned Bangladesh. Nobel Peace-prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, holding high social standing in Burma, has denied the direness and importance of the situation, claiming violence on both sides and downplaying crimes by the military; however satellite images from the UN and reporting from Amnesty International have proved the opposite to be true, leading to calls for her prize to be rescinded.

This act of ethnic cleansing in Burma relates to the American era described by author and historian James W Loewen as the Nadir of American Race Relations, the time immediately following Reconstruction. This era was marked by the rise of violent groups such as the KKK and the relentless murder and persecution of black Americans and former slaves by the white majority; similar to in this example of ethnic cleansing, many black people fled to safer states and regions after finding racist law enforcement complicit in hate crimes including arson and murder, and similar to in Burma many public officials denied the severity of the situation. Violent persecution of blacks based on race arguably continues to this day, even after the sweeping reform of the Civil Rights Movement, so lets hope it takes Myanmar less time to resolve racial conflicts than it took us in America, because if if it doesn't then we'll have plenty of news reports in the coming decades of violence against the innocent Rohingya minority.