History of Rohingya Persecution

Guest: Engy Abdelkar, JD, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University  In just the last month, nearly half a million people have fled Myanmar into neighboring Bangladesh. They’re known as the Rohingya and a UN official says the way they’re being violently targeted by Myanmar’s military amounts to “ethnic cleansing.” A visit by a UN team to observe the situation was abruptly cancelled by Myanmar’s government today. While the plight of this people is new to most of us in the West, the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar goes back decades and has roots in the era of British colonial rule, when Myanmar was known as Burma.