On one side in Sittwe, capital of Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, people lead a common life: They're free to go wherever they please, marry whomever they want, and to attend religious ceremonies in their Buddhist temple of choice.
Behind barbed wire on the other side, nearly 150,000 people are crowded into a dozen or so camps for internally displaced people. They are the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group not recognised among the 134 official ethnicities of the country, and considered by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
They can't leave the camps, they can't marry without permission, most are unemployed and have no source of income, and they rely on the rations given by the World Food Programme to survive. A law passed in 1982 denies them citizenship and makes them stateless because they are considered immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, who came along with British imperial troops in the 1800s.
"It's just plain apartheid and genocide," Aung Win, a prominent Rohingya leader in the camps, told Al Jazeera.
The so-called Rohingya are just illegal immigrants. We allowed them to settle down here because we are generous people and we thought they would just stay a while.
- U Shwe Mg, Rakhine Nationalities Development Party
The only way to get out is to bribe policemen who demand large amounts of money. The rest try to escape in rudimentary fishing boats such as the one that sank in the Indian Ocean on November 3, 2013, killing at least 70 people. Many of those who do manage to make their way into Thailand or Malaysia end up trafficked as slave labour by the mafias in those countries.
"Still, many think that it's worth taking the risk," Aung Win said.
The reason for the segregation of these two groups that have coexisted in relative peace for centuries lies in the unrest sparked on May 28, 2012 by the alleged rape and killing of a young Buddhist woman by Rohingya men.
Six days later, 10 Muslims travelling on a bus were beaten to death by angry Buddhists, and long dormant ethnic hatred exploded. Thousands of houses were burnt down and, since then, close to 300 people - mostly Rohingya - have died in a conflict that has spread to other parts of the country, and is currently threatening social stability and the ongoing democratisation process.