Four hundred thousand Rohingya have fled from their homes in Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh in the face of what the Secretary-General of the UN calls “a vicious cycle of persecution, discrimination, radicalization and violent repression” by Myanmar's military. A humanitarian crisis has resulted; the world watches images of Rohingya villages burned to the ground. Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's State Counselor (equivalent to a Prime Minister), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former political prisoner, has received much criticism for what some are calling ethnic cleansing.
By way of context: Myanmar, once known as Burma, gained its independence from Britain in 1948. A military coup in 1962 inaugurated decades of direct or indirect military rule. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for fifteen of those years. Even today, the civilian government has little control over the military state within a state.
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