Myanmar Emigration and Immigration

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Emigration and Immigration

Historical Background

• In the 19th century, Burmese rulers, whose country had not previously been of particular interest to European traders sought to maintain their traditional influence. Pressing them, however, was the British East India Company, which was expanding its interests eastwards. Over the next sixty years, diplomacy, raids, treaties and compromises, known collectively as the Anglo-Burmese Wars, continued until Britain proclaimed control over most of Burma.
• Throughout the colonial era, many Indians arrived as soldiers, civil servants, construction workers and traders and, along with the Anglo-Burmese community, dominated commercial and civil life in Burma.
• East Indians were the most significant Asian minority in Myanmar until World War II, when hundreds of thousands fled the Japanese invasion.
• Although many returned after the war, the Indian minority never regained its prewar proportions, because the government instituted rigid restrictions on Indian migration.
• The Indian population was substantially reduced between April 1963 and June 1965, when 100,000 were repatriated to India as part of a program to increase the wealth and holdings of Myanmar nationals.
• The government has sought to curtail both immigration and emigration, although as many as 500,000 persons may have left Myanmar during 1962–71.
• About 187,000 Muslims who fled to Bangladesh in 1978 were repatriated with the help of UN agencies by the end of 1981. they had left Myanmar because of alleged atrocities by its soldiers in Arakan State.
• In 1992, 250,000 Muslim refugees from Myanmar's Northern Rakhine state began arriving in Bangladesh claiming human rights abuses in Myanmar. Between 1994 and 1997, some 230,000 of these refugees returned home to Northern Rakhine state.