Elliott Prasse-Freeman on Putting Rohingya Voices Back into the Rohingya Crisis
In the wake of the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar, various debates have erupted: What do the Rohingya want (their own state, a safe return to Burma, relocation)? And who are they (an indigenous ethnic group, “Bengali" interlopers masquerading as Burmese autochthons, a religious minority)? Based on on-going research in refugee camps in Cox Bazaar and with members of the Rohingya diaspora, Dr. Elliott Prasse-Freeman considers Rohingya social and political identity from a number of sociopolitical contexts, presenting historical, linguistic, and political data to complicate narratives advanced by disparate sides of the debate.