This report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. In August 2017, the forced mass migration of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in Myanmar, became world news after the country's military began to drive thousands from their homes. Within months, an estimated 671,000 Rohingya had left the country, and today remain with over 200,000 previous refugees in overcrowded, underfunded camps in Bangladesh. This thesis aims to investigate the root causes of Rohingya persecution by the government and military of Myanmar, the likelihood that this population will become radicalized, and possible solutions to the crisis. It uses a mixed method approach to examine these questions, including a qualitative look at the history of the Rohingya; visual analytic techniques to evaluate the international response to the 2017 Rohingya refugee crisis; and a game theoretic approach to better understand the possibility of a nonviolence solution that focuses on citizenship and regional autonomy for the Rohingya. This thesis finds that the most recent wave of forced migration has placed the Rohingya at increased risk of radicalization and offers three recommendations for mitigating these risks: providing more international aid to sustain the refugees in Bangladesh; moving beyond simply repatriating the Rohingya; and creating incentives for Myanmar to recognize the Rohingya as citizens and give them greater autonomy in Rakhine State.
In August 2017, the mass migration of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority population in Myanmar (formerly Burma), became world news after the country's military began to forcibly displace thousands from their homes. Within weeks, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya began spilling into Bangladesh seeking safety and recounting atrocities suffered at the hands of the Myanmar military. The Myanmar government blamed the forced migration on a fringe group, the self-styled Harakah al-Yaqin (HaY), or "Faith Movement," which attacked multiple border checkpoints in the northern region of Rakhine State and killed 14 Myanmar security guards. Myanmar's severe and disproportionate response prompted U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to declare that, "the situation in northern Rakhine State constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya." Despite the media coverage and condemnation from multiple countries and the United Nations (UN), this incident of forced migration was not new; the Rohingya in Myanmar have been the subject of multiple waves of government and military-led persecution.
As of August 2018, the violence and mass migration has subsided, but over 900,000 Rohingya remain in Bangladesh and are confined to camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Bilateral talks between Bangladesh and Myanmar, aided by international organizations, have attempted to begin the repatriation process. However, short of a long-term solution to address the underlying causes of the mass migration, the cycle of violence and persecution will likely continue.
