Roots Torn: The Rohingya's Struggle Between Land, Identity, and Survival

Abstract

The Rohingya community of Myanmar is considered the most persecuted community in the entire world, which is not only denied citizenship and Indigenous rights but also exiled from their ancestral home by their own government and military. One of the main reasons behind this is the religious minority of the Rohingya community. However, the geopolitical conditions of the Rakhine State and the Myanmar government’s constant greed to take over the natural resources of that state so that they can continue state-led development in their ancestral lands are another important mechanism that is responsible for conducting inhuman violence against the Rohingya people. As a result, Rohingya persecution, which has been viewed as an issue of Political or human rights violation, is also an issue of ecofeminism and environmental justice, and it has remained unnoticed in academia for a long period. Against this backdrop, this paper wishes to explore how the Myanmar government, with its patriarchal, reductionist, and colonial mindset, has exploited both the ecosystem and the Rohingya community’s marginalized identity so that it can diminish the social, political, cultural, and spiritual identity of the Rohingya community while extracting their land, livelihood, and identity. Using theories from Discard studies, ecofeminism, and environmental justice, this paper argues that the Myanmar government has historically set a narrative against the Rohingya community as waste, unwanted, or inhuman, so that they can grab and control their lands and identity. At the same time, this paper will critically examine how the Myanmar government has commodified land for state-led development agendas.