Today (25) is the Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day. It is a Day to honour the memory of the victims of Myanmar’s military led violence in 2017, a call for justice, and to ensure support and protection for Rohingyas who survived the genocide.
The Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic and religious minority from Myanmar’s Arakan (Rakhine) State, are among Myanmar’s indigenous peoples. Myanmar law excludes them from the list of recognised national races, and since the 1982 Citizenship Law, they have been denied citizenship. Without full citizenship rights, the Rohingya have endured entrenched discrimination, the arbitrary confiscation of property, and severe restrictions on movement, education, healthcare, and employment. The genocidal “clearance operations” of 2017 by Myanmar’s military marked the most recent and devastating wave of violence against the Rohingya, the effects of which persist. Today, the Rohingya continue to face persecution and are denied basic rights, protection, and recognition of citizenship.
A United Nations Human Rights (UNHR) Council mandated fact-finding mission said in 2018 that it had reasonable grounds to conclude that serious crimes under international law, including genocide, had been committed.
In November 2019, Gambia filed a case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Myanmar of breaching the Genocide Convention through acts allegedly committed during so-called “clearance operations” carried out by the Myanmar military. In January 2020, the Court unanimously ordered provisional measures, directing Myanmar to take all steps within its power to prevent genocidal acts against the Rohingya, preserve evidence, and report regularly to the Court on its compliance. Public hearings on the case concluded in January and the Court’s decision will be delivered at a public sitting in due course.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognises the Rohingya as “stateless”. The UNHCR figures as of December of last year (2025) indicates 519,647 Rohingya as displaced within Myanmar and 1,329,000 living as refugees across the world, with Bangladesh hosting more than 1.1 million.
Rohingya in SL
Sri Lanka has been hosting a few hundred Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers for a number of years. The vast majority of Rohingya refugees who came to Sri Lanka before 2024 have left Sri Lanka after being offered permanent resettlement in other countries. Today, there are about 240 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in Sri Lanka. About 120 are those rescued by the Navy from a boat in distress off the seas of Jaffna in December 2022. They are living in Panadura in the Kalutara District.
About 120 Rohingya, including about 57 children, are detained in an Immigration Detention Centre located inside an Air Force camp in the Mullaitheevu District after having arrived near the shores of Mullivaikkal by boat in December 2024. This group had been at sea for about 16 days. They had faced storms and two of the three boats had sunk and six persons had died with their bodies thrown to the sea. Their testimonies after landing in Sri Lanka include the killing of family members, aerial strikes, bombings, the burning of houses, the lack of freedom of movement, the lack of communication, large scale displacement, the lack of access to the UN and other aid agencies. These testimonies indicate that they are asylum seekers fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution rather than those being trafficked or engaged in illegal migration.
Mullivaikkal and the Rohingya
Mullivaikkal is a predominantly Tamil coastal Village. It is near the shores of Mullivaikkal that a boat with Rohingya asylum seekers fleeing persecution from Myanmar had turned up on 19 December 2024. They had understood them to be people fleeing persecution and seeking protection.
Challenges and the ways forward
The Mullivaikkal people’s sensitivity, kindness and willingness to welcome and help strangers who have come to their shoes after feeling persecution could be an example for Government politicians, State officials and all citizens to follow.
The writer is an activist
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication