Five years ago, a violent campaign by security forces in Myanmar sparked a mass exodus of about 730,000 Rohingya, who – carrying their belongings on their backs and sometimes crowding onto makeshift bamboo and jerry-can rafts – fled in search of safety. Most headed to neighbouring Bangladesh.
The violence – which included reports of gang rape, mass killings, and forced expulsion – brought renewed international attention to decades of documented persecution against the mostly Muslim Rohingya, who are largely stateless after years of what rights monitors have called systematic marginalisation by Myanmar’s government.
