952 K. MULAJ it has become known since 1989 when Burmese military junta changed its name – is a region of a multi-ethnic and multi-faith character, historically populated by Rohingya Muslims and Burmese Buddhists and also other ethnicities such as Arabs, Armenians, Dutch, Persians, Portuguese, and people who are known in contemporary Myanmar as Chin (Zarni and Cowley 2014, 685–686, 692–697). Since 1962 when the anti-Muslim military took control of the country and embarked on a policy of systematic destruction of the Rohingya, they have suffered long-term repression from consecutive regimes, encountering several waves of expulsions from the late 1970s onwards (Amnesty International 2004, 2019; Human Rights Watch 2013; UNHRC 2018). Since the 2017 expulsion campaign led by Myanmar’s military – known as Tatmadaw – more than 725,000 Rohingya (UNHRC 2018, para. 33) have been forced to leave their homes and take refuge in the surrounding region. More than a million Rohingya live in destitution in camps in an area of Bangladesh known as Kutupalong which constitutes the largest refugee settlement in the world (ICG 2023, i, 9; International Crisis Group 2025, 11). About 400,000 Rohingya still reside in northern Rakhine (which following fighting with Myanmar military in 2024 is controlled by the Arakan Army whose support base are the Rakhine Buddhists) (International Crisis Group 2025, 5-6). The Rohingya have been subjected cosnsistently - to oppression, persecution and exclusion (Uddin 2020, 2022). Upon examining their systematic and prolonged suffering, several analysts have concluded that the Rohingya have been subjected to genocide (Blinken 2022; Green, et al. 2015; O’Brien and Hoffstaedter 2020; Smith 2018; Zarni and Cowley 2014).2 According to Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, genocide consists in ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such’ (United Nations 1948). In reference to the immense magnitude of suffering incurred by the victims, genocide is considered the worst of all crimes. What differentiates genocide from other heinous crimes is the ‘intent to destroy’ in whole or in part a targeted community for who they are, not for what they have done. In the case of the Rohingya, these two aspects – the intent to destroy and the magnitude of the crimes against them – do indeed go hand in hand as they are concomitantly defining features of this genocide. The gravity of offences and the accompanying destructive intent of genocide meet the condemnation enshrined in the Genocide Convention.3 It should be noted at the outset that the Rohingya are not the only religious Other in Myanmar: there are other Muslim populations, as well as Christian Others who have suffered at the hands of the state, with conflicts festering in Kachin, Shan, Chin, Kayan and Kayah states, too (Farrelly 2014, 262; UNHRC 2018, para. 27). The focus on the Rohingya in this paper is due to the fact that they are the largest Muslim minority (Zarni and Cowley 2014, 670) numbering 1.3 million in the early 2010s (The Guardian 2014) and the most discriminated-against minority in Myanmar, who have suffered disproportionately at the hands of the state military and security forces. Rohingya are the only ethnic group whose very existence is denied by the state.4 They were not even counted in the last (2014) state-sponsored census (The Guardian 2014). Whilst other minorities have been subjected to state oppression, the Rohingya have been repressed most. Indeed, they have suffered disproportionally more abuse and severe maltreatment than other ethnic minorities and have been the primary victims of state legislation and institutionalised discrimination for over six decades, rendering them ‘one of the world’s most persecuted communities’ (International Crisis Group 2023, 29; see also UNHRC 2018, para. 17–52).