International news coverage of the plight of the stateless Rohingya Muslims has focused on those displaced by sectarian violence and living in sprawling, squalid camps outside the Rakhine state capital Sittwe. However, a majority of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya live in northern Rakhine state in apartheid-like conditions.
Access to Northern Rakhine state along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border is tightly restricted. Only a handful of foreign journalists have been there, and getting in requires passing through numerous checkpoints and showing official documents to prove that the government has granted permission to visit.
It is one of the poorest, most remote and most densely populated parts of the country and suffers high levels of malnutrition.
Although the Rohingya have been living in Myanmar for generations, the government denies them citizenship and calls them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, which also does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens. The United Nations has called them “virtually friendless”.
Reuters and Thomson Reuters Foundation were granted access to the region in early June and reached Maungdaw, the westernmost town in Myanmar, after a six-hour public boat ride from Sittwe and another hour’s drive on winding roads.
The bucolic setting of northern Rakhine state – its roads winding along stunning coastline and inland through sleepy farming villages – belies the harsh reality of life for the Rohingya.
Many of them cannot travel, get married or even seek medical treatment without official permission, which is costly and difficult to obtain.