Rohingya Refugees

The Muslim Rohingya population of Burma has been consistently persecuted by the Burmese government.  In 1982, the Burmese government passed a law which effectively stripped citizenship for the Rohingya.  Further, they have very limited freedom of movement, no freedom of religion, and frequently experience land seizure, forced labor and arbitrary arrest.  The Rohingya are currently excluded from the resettlement programs for Burmese of other ethnic minorities from the Thailand-Burma border camps.  An estimated one million Rohingya have fled Burma by boat, often paying unscrupulous people smugglers, and the refugees now live in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the Middle East.