The Rohingyas are being wiped out in slow motion

On a vacant patch of land in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state along the western flank of Myanmar, grass grows long under the hot sun. A house once stood on this plot, though all trace of it is long gone. Mohammed, a 36-year-old Rohingya man, grew up in that house and lived there until 2012, when he and his family were forced to flee by a band of ethnic Rakhines wielding sticks and torches. That summer mobs of Rakhine villagers and Burmese soldiers razed Rohingya villages and killed hundreds of people belonging to the long-persecuted Muslim minority group. Some 140,000 Rohingyas were displaced in the melee and herded into camps, where they have remained ever since.