Welcome to Who Has it Rough?: Asia Edition!
Vying for this week’s prize, we have groups in Burma, China, and Iraq, who are currently facing oppression because of their ethnic identity. Let’s meet the contenders.
First up, we have the Rohingya: ethnic and religious minorities within Burma. Their living conditions are “apartheid-like” and fraught with violence.
Recently, the Burmese government offered the Rohingya citizenship for the first time.
Unfortunately, the offer comes with the condition that they self-identify as “Bengali”: in other words, not actually Burmese.
If they refuse, they may be exiled to temporary refugee camps.
Next on our watch list are western China’s Uighur. Like the Rohingya, they are a primarily Muslim ethnic group.
Uighurs report economic inequality and religious and cultural repression within larger Chinese society.
Their situation intensified last month, when Chinese government sentenced a peaceful Uighur dissident, Ilham Tohti, to life in prison.
Finally, the Yazidi people in Iraq may be in the worst position of all. The Yazidi follow their own religion and inhabit areas near the border of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.
Currently, the dreaded ISIS has besieged as many as fifty thousand Yazidis in a mountainous area without access to food and water. The situation is so dire that the UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights has stated:
Nobody wins this game.
