The Rohingya crisis: A health situation analysis of refugee camps in Bangladesh

The Rohingyas are a minority Muslim community who have lived in the Rakhine State of Myanmar for centuries. In recent years, they have become a brutally oppressed, “stateless” community as the state of Myanmar continues to deny them citizenship under the country’s nationality law of 1982. [4] That law, alongside other discriminatory policies set by the old junta—which ruled Myanmar from 1962 to the holding of general elections in 2010—have curtailed the Rohingyas’ basic rights, such as education, health and employment. Moreover, the state and central governments of Myanmar continuously provoke apathy and violence against the “illegal Bengalis.” [5] Large-scale displacement and killings have been reported since the 1970s, which intensified after the communal violence of 2012 after a group of Rohingyas were charged with raping and killing a Buddhist woman. The Rohingyas were evicted from their homes, their land confiscated, and their villages and houses attacked by Myanmar’s military. [6] In August 2017, a massive crackdown in Myanmar killed thousands of Rohingyas and triggered the mass exodus of around three-quarters of a million of them to Bangladesh. [7]