There are people who become targets of state persecution. Generally speaking, there are on of two reasons why certain peoples are selected to be targets of state persecution. The “state” needs a low status, high bias target to blame for problems and set out for an angry populace on which to vent its rage, OR they are on top of (or in the way of) a desirable resource. First, they must be easily distinguishable from the general population. Second, there must be something that makes (or can be made up to seem like it makes) them culturally significant. Third, the must have little to no political power. Propaganda seeps in and with a whiff of mob psychology we have a scapegoat. Whether it was the Jews in Germany (and other countries – including the U.S.) in the 1930s and 40s, or the Roma (aka Romina or Gypsies), or Hispanic immigrants, or innumerable indigenous peoples, or the Rohingya, they have been targeted – often genocidally targeted.

The Rohingya of Burma/Myanmar are both culturally distinct, and their home in the Rakhine state of Burma is also the route for the variously named Sino-Myanmar pipelines, or Yunan pipelines. More specifically is a 479 mile (770 km) pipeline running from the Kyaukpyu port on the Bay of Bengal, to the landlocked state of Yunan, China:

The US$1.5 billion pipelines, which started construction in 2009, are designed to shift natural gas from Myanmar and crude oil from the Middle East and Africa through the Bay of Bengal to terminals in Myanmar. The pipelines then transfer the resources to Yunnan to feed refineries for the world’s second-biggest oil consumer, eliminating the 5,000-km shipping lanes of the pirate-infested Strait of Malacca and across the South China Sea.

The pipelines inside Myanmar, owned and built by Beijing under the One Belt, One Road policy, are designed to transfer 22 million tonnes of crude oil annually (around 442,000 bbl/day) and carry nearly 6 percent of China’s 2016 total energy imports. Today China is demanding up to 85 percent ownership of the strategic Kyaukpyu port at the western terminus. (Asia Sentinel)

While the Rohingya have been the victims of waves of persecution since 1948, I believe this most recent genocidal purge is tied directly to the pipeline on which construction began in 2009 (India Times). I would argue that this almost certainly explains why so many other nations refuse to even use the name Rohingya.