"The first of three poetry readings over the summer and into the fall in Yangon, the events created space for Rohingya and Myanmar communities to share and exchange ideas in an otherwise deeply polarized society: Nearly two years earlier, the Myanmar military waged a brutal campaign against the Rohingya in Myanmar that drove over 740,000 of the persecuted Muslim minority into neighboring Bangladesh. Those who remain in Myanmar live in "urban ghettoes," a UN official said this summer. That campaign was the culmination of deep social and political tensions that have existed for decades in Myanmar, where the predominantly Buddhist country has long denied citizenship to the Rohingya along with education, healthcare, freedom of movement and other human rights. The word Rohingya itself is taboo in Myanmar, where citizens pejoratively refer to Rohingya as “Bengalis,” implying their status as immigrants from Bangladesh..."