After the colonial period, the first mass exodus from what was then East Pakistan took place towards the 1970s.[70] In the 1950s, a "political and militant movement" rose to create "an autonomous Muslim zone", and the militants used Rohingya to describe themselves, marking the "modern origins" of the term.[71] The persecution of Rohingyas in Myanmar dates back to the 1970s.[72] The term "Rohingya" has gained currency since 1990s after "the second exodus" of "a quarter-million people from Bangladesh to Rakhine" in the early 1990s.[70]