The United Nations says they are among the most persecuted people in the world.
Brown-skinned with Bengali features, the Rohingya complain they have been persecuted for decades despite centuries-old roots in the region, owing to ethnic, religious and cultural differences with the mainstream Tibeto-Burman people.
Experts say that the key to understanding the conflict lies in the unique history of Arakan, a medieval kingdom located at the edge of south Asia which became a province of Burma only after the Burmese invasion in 1784.
While the Arakan Yoma mountain range creates a formidable barrier with the rest of Burma, Arakan is separated from the Chittagong region of Bangladesh only by the Naf river.
“People have been moving in both directions across the Naf throughout history,” said Pamela Gutman, an academic at the University of Sydney, who is the author of several books on ancient Arakan.
Although Islam came to the region with 8th century Arab traders, and the presence of Muslims in medieval Arakan is well documented, there is some evidence that Brahmanic people from Bengal may have established an ancient kingdom named Vaishali in north Arakan long before then.
The Rohingya say they have inhabited the area of western Burma for centuries, pointing to the etymological link of Rohingya-Rakhine-Arakan.
But in 1982, Burma passed a controversial law that stripped them of citizenship, in effect turning them into the “Roma of Asia”.
About a quarter of them 200,000 people have crossed into Bangladesh in recent years to escape repression in Burma where the army has been accused of carrying out persecution since 1978.
Perhaps the most graphic example of regional indifference to their plight was the incident four years ago in which the Thai military was accused of intercepting boatloads of migrants in the Andaman Sea, only to leave hundreds of them to perish on the water.
