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Ma Ba Tha Buddhists protest the use of the word 'Rohingya' as a Rakhine donation ship from Malaysia arrives on Feb. 9 in Yangon, Burma. The Rohingya aid ship, Nautical Aliya, landed at Thilawa port near Yangon while making its way to the Rohingya refugee camps in Myanmar and Bangladesh, bearing 2,300 tonnes of food, clothes and medical supplies for the Rohingyas in the two countries. Below, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar has spoken with Pope Francis on alleviating the suffering of this Muslim minority. (Lauren DeCicca and Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

By Simon Roughneen 
February 11, 2017

Pope Francis and Myanmar’s Cardinal Bo have again highlighted the plight of the Southeast Asian country’s oppressed Muslim minority.

YANGON, Myanmar — Numbering around 1 million people living in western Myanmar, along with several hundred thousand refugees and migrants in neighboring countries, there are few peoples in the world as marooned as the Muslim Rohingya.

Most are stateless, denied citizenship by Myanmar due to a 1982 law dictated while the country, then known as Burma, was run by the army. But the end of dictatorship in 2011 and the rise to power of an elected government last year — headed by one of the world’s best-known former political prisoners Aung San Suu Kyi — has done little to help the Rohingya.

“They have been suffering, they are being tortured and killed, simply because they uphold their Muslim faith,” said Pope Francis in his latest weekly audience Feb. 8.

Over the decades, several hundred thousand have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh, where they stay in squalid border camps. Tens of thousands more made it to Malaysia and Thailand in recent years, where many are refugees and cannot officially work. And those roughly 1 million Rohingya left inside Myanmar have faced several bouts of violence at the hands of Buddhist mobs since 2012, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from towns in Rakhine state in the west of the country. 

Accounts given by refugees in Bangladesh fleeing a recent “clearance operation” by the Myanmar army suggested that around half the women had been sexually assaulted, some after seeing male family members executed.

In a report released Feb. 3, the U.N. contends that it is “very likely” that crimes against humanity have been taking place in Myanmar since October, when the Myanmar army retaliated against the killing of nine border police by militants claiming to be fighting back after decades of oppression.

The U.N. report makes for grim reading. One account cites “An 11-year-old girl from Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son” who said: “After entering our house, the army apprehended us. They pushed my mother on the ground. They removed her clothes, and four officers raped her. They also slaughtered my father, a prayer leader, just before raping my mother. After a few minutes, they burnt the house with a rocket, with my mother inside. All this happened before my eyes.”

Regarded as Foreigners

Most of Myanmar’s population is hostile to the Rohingya, inasmuch as can be gauged in a country that lacks opinion surveys but where social media commentary is something of a yardstick — including it seems many in Myanmar’s small Christian population. 

Aye Maung, leader of the biggest party in Rakhine, the western region where most of the Rohingya live, said in an interview that “Myanmar people do not accept the term Rohingya” — effectively denying the existence of a Rohingya ethnic group. The mostly Buddhist politicians in Myanmar call the Rohingya “Bengali,” implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh, which in turn does not want the Rohingya, not only confining refugees to camps but demanding that Myanmar take them back, and suggesting that more recent refugee arrivals would be taken to an island vulnerable to flooding at high tide. 

One notable exception in Myanmar has been Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, who has consistently spoken up for the Rohingya when few others in Myanmar public life would do so. On Feb. 6, two days before the Pope’s comments, Cardinal Bo described the latest accounts of army brutality as “heart-breaking and very profoundly disturbing” and called for “an end to the military offensive against civilians in Rakhine State.”

Cardinal Bo is Myanmar’s first cardinal, receiving his red hat from Francis in 2015, and leads the country’s roughly 800,000 Catholics — out of a total population of 51 million. 

And while Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto head of government, does not control the army, she refuses to acknowledge the Rohingya’s plight and ministries under her control have been pumping out propaganda questioning refugee accounts of army brutality and telling outsiders not to interfere. 

Before Suu Kyi took office, bureaucrats in the religious affairs ministry asked Cardinal Bo not to use the term “Rohingya” in his correspondence with Pope Francis. It appears the attempt at censorship did not work. In his latest weekly address, the Pope urged prayers “for our Rohingya brothers and sisters who are being chased from Myanmar and are fleeing from one place to another because no one wants them.” 

The History of the Rohingya

The Rohingya can trace their presence in Myanmar to “more than a century ago,” Cardinal Bo said, when this correspondent asked him in 2013 and again in 2015 whether or not he thought the Rohingya should be recognized in Myanmar. Myanmar was part of the British Indian Empire from the 19th century until just after World War II, and during that time millions of Hindus and Muslims migrated from what are now Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to what is now Myanmar, but there are traces of a Muslim presence in Rohingya populated parts of Myanmar going back to the 14th century, while a Scottish doctor traveling the region in the late 18th century noted the presence of a people he called the “Rooinga.”

“Nobody can deny us to call ourselves by our name, that is our right,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K.

Last week’s remarks were not the Holy Father’s first comments on the Rohingya, but they were his most pointed. In August 2015, after thousands of Rohingya were found adrift at sea on rickety boats and rafts, hoping to get ashore in neighboring Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — all of which were reluctant to assist — the Pope spoke up.

“They were chased from one country and from another and from another,” Francis said of the situation. “When they arrived at a port or a beach, they gave them a bit of water or a bit to eat and were there chased out to the sea.”

Sufia Begum, a Rohingya who crossed over to Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state in November. AP

By Robbie Gamer 
February 8, 2017

It's a United Nations report that its officials themselves call revolting and unbearable. Myanmar's security forces killed, gang-raped, and tortured hundreds of Rohingya Muslims in a wave of unprecedented violence, according to a new UN report earlier released this month. Victims included children and babies as young as 8 months.

In recent months, Myanmar security forces stepped up their efforts to clear the ethnic group from the country's borders – in a campaign of "area clearance operations" – to historic levels in terms of scale and brutality.​

"The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths and have led to an estimated 66,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh and 22,000 being internally displaced," the new UN report says.

A UN human rights research team wrote the report after interviewing hundreds of Rohingya who Myanmar security forces drove to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Rohingya in the Kutapalong refugee camp in Bangladesh in January. More than 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since October last year, after the Burmese army launched a campaign it calls "clearance operations".Allison Joyce

The UN human rights office called the accounts "revolting". Of the 101 women interviewed, over half told the UN team they had been sexually assaulted, raped, or gang-raped. One gang-rape victim was 11 years old. Another was nine months pregnant. The UN also received reports of Myanmar security forces killing children aged 6 and younger with knives.

"The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement. "What kind of 'clearance operation' is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?" he added. In December, John McKissick, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees, labelled the operations, which first started in October, "ethnic cleansing."

Military backed

The Rohingya, numbering 1.1 million people in the country's western Rakhine state, are loathed by the rest of the population and live in apartheid conditions. They've been called "the most persecuted minority in the world".

Despite its brutality, the military's campaign against the Rohingya is widely popular in Myanmar. The military claims it is fighting a Rohingya rebel insurgency, which restored the military's popularity in the public's eye.


A Rohingya woman feeds her one-month-old baby at an internal displacement camp in Sittwe, Myanmar. Getty Images

Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a recipient of the Nobel peace prize, is facing increasing international criticism for ignoring the plight of Myanmar's Muslim population – though it's unclear how much authority she has over the military.

She refused UN requests to gain full access to its Rakhine state, where most of the violence reportedly took place. After the report's release last Friday, Ms Suu Kyi vowed to launch an investigation into the crimes and "take all necessary action" against abusers.

On Sunday, one of the country's top legal advisers and a prominent member of Myanmar's minority Muslim community, Ko Ni, was shot dead after speaking out about atrocities against the Rohingya. At the time he was shot, Ko Ni was holding his grandson.

UNHCR: "The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable." AP

Robbie Gamer is associate director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Brent Scowcroft Centre on International Security

Sufia Begum, a Rohingya who crossed over to Bangladesh in December 2016, describes her experiences of fleeing her home in Rakhine State. AP/A.M. Ahad


By Sally Kantar 
January 23, 2017

As military operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine State enter their fourth month, Sally Kantar reports on the accelerated displacement of the Muslim Rohingya minority.

AMID A MILITARY campaign in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the long-persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority are fleeing for their lives.

Myanmar’s state security forces say they are hunting for suspected militants in the northern part of Rakhine, while human rights groups and refugees say troops are conducting extrajudicial killings and committing rape and arson.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that 65,000 displaced Rohingya have fled across the border to Bangladesh since the military campaign began in October.

The number of people internally displaced in Rakhine State is unknown, as aid agencies and journalists have been denied access to the area. But the U.N. estimates at least 130,000 vulnerable people are now stranded without support in the impoverished region, where many were already dependent on international food aid.

“Without access, we simply don’t know how many people are left in those areas,” Pierre Peron, information officer for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Refugees Deeply. “You have very vulnerable communities which are even more vulnerable now,” he said.

Using satellite imagery analysis, Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirmed“widespread destruction” of Rohingya villages since last October, identifying 1,500 burned buildings. The Myanmar army’s chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, denied state responsibility, suggesting that Rohingya residents had set fire to their own homes “in the hope of getting a new home” built by the army.

But rights groups say the villages appear to have been burned systematically. The affected communities lie near a main road heading westward, in line with the route of military advancement over the past months.

Government Denials

Following international criticism of the campaign, Myanmar’s government – headed by the popularly elected National League for Democracy (NLD) – formed the Rakhine State Investigation Commission in December to probe allegations of abuse. Leading the commission is military-appointed Vice President Myint Swe, himself an ex-general.

The commission published its findings in early January. It said it found no evidence of widespread malnutrition, in contrast to previous government health reports saying northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw Township had the highest malnutrition rates in the country. Instead, the commission highlighted “favorable fishing and farming conditions” in the area which they claimed continued despite the conflict.

Yet, OCHA’s Peron pointed out that more than 3,000 children living in the conflict zone were suffering from malnutrition even before security operations began.

A burned-out village of Rohingya Muslims in the western Myanmar in December 2016. In response to the criticism over persecution of the minority group, the Myanmar government allowed some news organizations to visit the conflict zone. (Kyodo)

The commission also rejected growing accusations – including from U.N.officials – of government-perpetrated crimes against the Rohingya population. John McKissick, head of the U.N. refugee agency in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – a country home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees – said as early as last November that he believed Myanmar’s government was carrying out “ethnic cleansing.”

The commission argued that the presence of mosques and clerics in Rakhine State served as “proof that there were no cases of genocide and religious persecution in the region.”
‘Collective Punishment’

The current operations in Rakhine State appear strategically similar to the infamous “Four Cuts” campaign, carried out by Myanmar’s army against many of the country’s armed groups and ethnic communities, beginning in the 1960s and continuing for decades. Government troops restricted groups’ access to food, funds, intelligence and new recruits by forcibly relocating villages, burning rice stores, using sexual violence and suppressing ethnic identities.

The U.N.’s McKissick believes that the military campaign is “collective punishment” of the Rohingya for the October 9 attacks on three border guard posts in northern Rakhine State that killed nine policemen.

The government said the perpetrators of the October attacks were armed with sticks and machetes. It also alleged they belonged to an international terrorist network.

The International Crisis Group warned in December that the group that reportedly claimed responsibility for the October attacks – Harakah al-Yaqin – is a “well-funded” Rohingya armed organization earning “widespread support” from Muslims in the region. But little is currently known about Harakah al-Yaqin and its capacity, other than an interviewpublished by the Dhaka Tribune, in which the leadership claims to have “25-30 members trained in modern guerrilla tactics.”

In 2015, researchers at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy noted that narratives linking the Rohingya Solidarity Organization to international terrorism had been a “convenient myth” that the state could use to garner Western backing for counterterrorism initiatives.

Yet the situation is very different today, says the Institute’s Elliot Brennan, noting that the 2015 paper warned that a continuation of government policies would only further marginalize the Rohingya and could lead to radicalization.

Some Rohingya activists expressed frustration that more attention was being paid to an apparently small militant group than the persecution of the community.

“Why do they only mention religion when talking about the Rohingya?” said Nay San Lwin, a Europe-based Rohingya activist, referring to discussions about militant groups in Myanmar. “There are predominantly Christian and Buddhist insurgencies [in Myanmar], and when [others] talk about them, religion isn’t mentioned,” he said, referring to various ethnic armed groups in eastern and northern parts of the country, some of which have thousands of troops.

Local residents walk past burned houses in Maungdaw in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, which has a large Muslim Rohingya population. They claim soldiers from the country’s armed forces burned a village in October. A number of Rohingya women there also claim to have been raped. (Kyodo)

Call for International Help

Myanmar’s estimated 1.1 million Rohingya have long faced persecution. The government – and much of the country’s Buddhist majority – refer to them as “Bengali,” implying that they are migrants from Bangladesh. A 1982 citizenship law contributed to the Rohingyas’ statelessness by excluding the group from the 135 classified “national races.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also refrained from using the term “Rohingya.” In a December interview, she warned the international community against “drumming up calls for bigger fires of resentment” by “exaggerating” the current crisis.

Maung Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., said the situation of the Rohingya has “gotten worse under the NLDgovernment,” referencing the ongoing military operations. The Rohingya have no one to turn to among the authorities in Myanmar to stop the atrocities, he said. “There is no way to ask for protection domestically [in Myanmar] at all,” he told Refugees Deeply.

The Rohingya are “friendless and hopeless” within Myanmar and need international action to help them, says Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin. “There have been many concerned statements from the U.N. officials, yet we are not seeing real action,” he said.

Advocacy groups such as Fortify Rights and Burma Campaign U.K. have called for an independent U.N. inquiry into abuses in Rakhine State, a movesupported by Rohingya activists. “We would like an acknowledgment of crimes against humanity. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry is the only way to bring [the Myanmar army] to justice,” Maung Tun Khin said. On January 18, more than 40 Myanmar civil society groups also joined the call for an independent investigation into the situation in Rakhine State, in order to provide the government with ”clear recommendations” on which to act.

In December, while military operations continued in Rakhine State and Rohingya poured across the border, the White House quietly eased restrictions on aid to Myanmar’s government, citing “substantial progress in improving human rights.” This U.S. policy shift, according to Nay San Lwin, “allowed the Myanmar government to continue crimes against minorities.”

He fears that the patterns of persecution against the Rohingya will intensify in coming years, leading to more widespread and permanent displacement. “[The military] are allowed to do [this], by the international community and the U.N., in their failure to act,” he said.

(Photo: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) 

By Michael G. Karnavas
International Criminal Law Blog
January 12, 2017

As a responsible Government, you don’t just go around hollering ‘genocide.’ You say that acts of genocide may have occurred and they need to be investigated.

David Rawson, United States Ambassador to Rwanda 1

The Rohingya in Myanmar have by all accounts – save for those of the Myanmar government and military – been on the receiving end since at least 2012 of consistent, widespread, presumably organized, and arguably sanctioned acts of violence amounting to crimes against humanity. Take your pick of alleged crimes: persecution, rape, murder, forcible transfer, deportation, extermination, arbitrary detention and imprisonment, and arguably, apartheid. The full treatment.

Ethnic cleansing with tinges of genocidal acts seems to be the obvious goal, or more ominously put, the desired solution: to expel and, if necessary, eradicate the Rohingya Muslims from the Rakhine state of Myanmar. Meanwhile, the international community and those most expected to speak loudly and repeatedly contently wait, naively or apathetically, for the criminal acts against the Rohingya to dissipate, for their plight to be resolved. Wishful thinking based in part on willful blindness.

Current events show that the Myanmar government and military not only lack the political and moral will to act responsibly, but that they are also comfortable with accepting the commission of purported “acts of genocide” against the Rohingya. Appallingly, the storm of intolerance and indifference that has already stripped the Rohingya of their human dignity, the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, their property, their places of worship, their freedom, and, in far too unacceptable numbers, their lives, is brewing and picking up steam. Time is against the Rohingya. Time to face the ugly and inconvenient facts.

Before I discuss the ongoing events, a few words about the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Northern Rakhine state (the name commonly given to the townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung) is located in the west of Myanmar, bordering Bangladesh. It is populated mainly by the Rohingya, but also by other ethnic minorities such as the Rakhine Buddhist. The Rohingya have faced decades of repression and discrimination. The Myanmar government does not recognize them as one of the ethnic groups of the country. Instead, the Rohingya are regarded as mere refugees from Bangladesh.2  The 1982 Citizenship Law effectively denies the Rohingya the possibility of acquiring Myanmar nationality.3 Being stateless, they lack legal protection by the government, which results in severe restrictions on their movement, impacting their ability to access healthcare, education, and livelihood opportunities.4

In 2012, religious and ethnic tensions between the Rohingya Muslims and the Rakhine Buddhists escalated into widespread rioting. Since then, ongoing conflicts have forced the Rohingya to flee, though they are often rejected (equally unwanted) by neighboring Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand.5

The situation in northern Rakhine state has deteriorated significantly since 9 October 2016 when unknown assailants attacked three police outposts in northern Rakhine state, killing nine Border Guard police officers and seizing weapons and ammunition. The authorities responded by initiating a major security operation, conducting sweeps of the area to find the perpetrators.6

The United Nations (“UN”) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that since early November 2016 almost 27,000 people have fled across the border from northern Rakhine state into Bangladesh.7 Government officials in Myanmar have repeatedly denied reports of human rights violations by security forces. Conversely, journalists and NGOs describe the actions of the state forces in the region as ethnic cleansing and genocide, and have reported murders, mass rape and beatings, burning villages, and other human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity.8

Shockingly, our Buddhist brothers and sisters in Burma have lost the virtue of Buddhism. 9

Most recently, a video surfaced showing officers beating members of the Muslim Rohingya during a security operation. This appears to have gotten the attention of the international community. The selfie-style video showed the brutality of officers kicking and beating civilians and the impunity they feel. And as the saying goes, the evidence never lies. Finally, the government had to confront what it has known and neglected, if not outright encouraged. The government’s past failures to acknowledge, condemn, and act against this cycle of violence has nurtured a culture of impunity.

In the recent Interim Report of the Investigation Commission on Maungtaw, the Investigation Commission established by the government to investigate the attacks on 9 October 2016 dismissed the allegations of genocide: “[T]he increasing population of Mawlawi, mosques and religious edifices are proof that there were no cases of genocide and religious persecution in the region.”10

Characterizing crimes as genocide is often over the top, hyperbolic. Whenever there are large-scale atrocities, the knee-jerk reaction is to claim that genocide is occurring. And then there is the reverse action by some governments: best not to come out and claim that genocide is occurring – even when rather obvious – for fear that action (boots on the ground) may need to be taken to halt it. We saw this in the case of Rwanda. Better to punt and claim that only “acts of genocide” are taking place, a policy articulated by the Bill Clinton administration.11 Message to those who were perishing or about to: help will be on its way if the situation intensifies to genocide. Comforting. Years later Clinton would get teary-eyed as he admitted his failure to act in the face of overwhelming evidence of what was happening in Rwanda.12

What are acts of genocide? It is like saying that a woman is a little pregnant. It may make for clever diplomatic speak, but it is just a vacuous phrase. Look beyond the phrase. Where a group (Rohingya Muslims) is being targeted as such, and the intent – as deduced from the actions taken – is at a minimum to maim, permanently expel from Myanmar, and kill them, because of who they are as members of that group (Rohingya Muslims), are there not sufficient hallmarks of genocide (or at the very least traces of extermination) present to merit immediate condemnation and action at the national and international level?13

The Lady speaketh not

What of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?14 Silence.

Should not the residents of Myanmar, the Rohingya, and the international community, expect more than her purposeful silence, her occasional drab demur, or her belated request for an international commission? As the de facto head of state,15 and having promoted herself as the doyenne of human rights activists in Myanmar,16 one would think that she would be front and center in condemning these cruel, inhumane, and, yes, genocidal acts.

Is Aung San Suu Kyi’s position so tenuous that she would suffer politically were she to speak out against this systematic violence against the Rohingya? Is she afraid of any backlash from the military, the police, and those who support, incite, and carry out the physical acts of violence? Is she just being pragmatic – as any politician of her position should be?

Aung San Suu Kyi’s deafening silence and lame rationalizations give aid and comfort to the perpetrators. Some argue that she needs a bit more time and space. Take, for instance, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s most recent statement. Selected to the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, he made the following remarks: “I think there are tensions, there has been fighting, but I wouldn’t put it the way some have done…. [The international community should give Aung San Suu Kyi’s government] a bit of time, space and patience.”17 Tensions? Is Annan serious?

How much more time and how much more space does Aung San Suu Kyi need? If she can use the bully pulpit to garner votes for her party to win the elections, she can certainly use the bully pulpit to condemn these ongoing acts of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya.

But is it really a matter of having more time and space, or is it about clinging to and coveting more power? Aung San Suu Kyi may wish to recall and reflect upon her own thoughts on power and the fear of losing it – which seems to be the case with The Lady.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. 18

Footnotes:

1. As quoted in Douglas Jehl, Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, NEW YORK TIMES, 10 June 1994.

2. For more on the 2012 Rakhine state riots and the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis, see Report Documents ‘Rohingya Persecution’, Al Jazeera, 23 April 2013; Human Rights Watch Report, “All You Can Do is Pray”: Crimes against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arkan State, 2013; Jared Genser, Democracy on a Leash, US News, 12 November 2015; Rohingya Boat People: Myanmar’s Shame, The Economist, 23 May 2015.

3. Burma Citizenship Law, 15 October 1982, Chapter 2, para. 3: “Nationals such as the Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine or Shan and ethnic groups as have settled in any of the territories included within the State as their permanent home from a period anterior to 1185 B.E., 1823 A.D. are Burma citizens.” Even for those Rohingya whose families settled in the region before 1823, the onerous burden of proof has made it nearly impossible to provide evidence of their lineage or history of residence, making them ineligible for any class of citizenship. For more on this law, see Human Rights Watch, Discrimination in Arakan, available at https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-02.htm.

4. Rohingya Boat People: Myanmar’s Shame, The Economist, 23 May 2015; Report Documents ‘Rohingya Persecution’, Al Jazeera, 23 April 2013.


6. President’s Office website, Brief description of the violent attacks commenced on 9th October in Maungdaw district, Rakhine State, 17 December 2016; Interim Report of the Investigation Commission in Maungtaw, 3 January 2017. See also Mike Ives, Myanmar Holds Officers After Video Purports to Show Police Beating Rohingya, The New York Times, 3 January 2017; Myanmar says ‘No Evidence’ of Rohingya Genocide, BBC News, 3 January 2017.

7. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA Update – Humanitarian Situation in the Northern Part of Rakhine State, Myanmar, 13 December 2016, available here.


9. Kyaw Win, the Executive Director of the Burma Human Rights Network, as quoted by Mike Ives, Myanmar Holds Officers After Video Purports to Show Police Beating Rohingya, New York Times, 3 January 2017.

10. The Interim Report of the Investigation Commission on Maungtaw, 3 January 2017, published in the Global New Light of Myanmar, Vol. 3 (263), 4 January 2017, p. 2, para. 10.

11. See Douglas Jehl, Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, New York Times, 10 June 1994; Rory Corroll, US Chose to Ignore Rwandan Genocide: Classified Papers show Clinton was aware of ‘Final Solution’ to Eliminate Tutsis, The Guardian, 31 March 2004, noting that “the State Department and the National Security Council have drafted guidance instructing spokesmen to say merely that ‘acts of genocide may have occurred.’”

12. See Bill Clinton: we could have saved 300,000 lives in Rwanda, CNBC, 13 March 2013, where Clinton is quoted saying that “If we’d gone in sooner, I believe we could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost…it had an enduring impact on me.” See also Dana Hughes, Bill Clinton Regrets Rwanda Now (Not So Much In 1994), ABC News, 28 February 2014.

13. Article II of Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide provides: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Statutes of the international courts and tribunals incorporate Article II of the Genocide Convention. See Article 4 of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Article 2 of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Article 4 of the Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers, and Article 6 of the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court.

14. Daw, literally meaning “aunt”, is not part of her name but is a honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to “Madame” or “Lady”.

15. The post of State Counsellor of Myanmar was specially created for Aung San Suu Kyi because under the Myanmar Constitution, she could not become the President as her late husband and two children are of British nationality. For more, see Euan McKirdy, New Government Role Created for Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, CNN, 7 April 2016.

16. Aung San Suu Kyi spent much time between 1989 and 2010 under house arrest because of her efforts to bring democracy to then military-ruled Myanmar, which her an international symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression. For more, see Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi, BBC News, 5 December 2016.

17. Kofi Annan Downplays Claims of Myanmar Genocide, BBC News, 6 December 2016.

18. Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear (Penguin Books 1991).




In this photograph taken on November 26, 2016, Myanmar Rohingya refugees look on in a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's BazarAt least 21,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Banfladesh following violence in Myanmar, the International Organisation for Migration has said. / AFP / MUNIR UZ ZAMAN (Photo credit should read MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images)


By Olivia Enos
December 31, 2016

A recent report from Amnesty International highlights heightened persecution against Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in Burma. The report claims that activities carried out by Burmese security forces against Rohingya may amount to crimes against humanity. As violence continues, the international community should carefully examine whether the attacks rise to the level of genocide.

Burma, a majority Buddhist country, discriminates against Rohingya primarily on the basis of religion, but recent persecution is also political. Many Rohingya have roots in Burma tracing as far back as the 19th century, when their ancestors emigrated from Bangladesh. Yet the Burmese government does not consider Rohingya to be citizens. Instead, they are stateless – denied the right to vote and limited in educational opportunities and access to food and medical care. Today, nearly 140,000 Rohingya are corralled in 40 internment camps established by the Burmese authorities in the Rakhine state where most Rohingya reside. Conditions in the camps are deplorable with limited access to food, water, and medical care.

The situation facing Rohingya worsened in 2015 after the government revoked their temporary identification cards and excluded them from voting in the historic election that brought to power the National League for Democracy (NLD) party led by Nobel-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Despite Burma’s transition to relative democracy, the situation facing Rohingya continues to deteriorate. Suu Kyi has been unusually quiet on their plight. Her leadership on this issue, however, is critical to it gaining political traction and legitimacy in Burma.

The Genocide Convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Among these “acts” are killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, attempting to destroy an entire group, and transferring children from one group to another.

A U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) report sounded the alarm in 2015, indicating that there were already early warning signs of genocide in Burma. The report listed physical violence against Rohingya, segregation, blockages of humanitarian assistance, and denial of citizenship as just a few of the early indicators of genocide – all of which continue today.

Rohingya have unquestionably experienced extrajudicial killings and bodily or mental harm targeting them specifically because of their ethnicity and religion. According to Matt Smith, a Burma watcher and founder and CEO of Fortify Rights, extrajudicial killings and mass rape of Rohingya women and girls is occurring today. And satellite imagery from Human Rights Watch provides evidence of government forces torching as many as 1,500 homes in Rakhine State.

John McKissick, a representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), recently said that UNHCR believes that a campaign of ethnic cleansing is underway. However, Suu Kyi herself recently filed a complaint against the UN for this statement and asked the international community to stop “drumming up cause for bigger fires of resentment.”

The U.S. government has done little to address the crisis. In March 2016 the State Department said that it believed that Burma is persecuting Rohingya, but that it did not constitute genocide. Now, the U.S. is calling for a “credible and independent investigation” into the situation facing Rohingya.

But the U.S. can and should do more. Beyond investigating the situation facing Rohingya, Washington should also strongly encourage the Burmese government to recognize Rohingya as citizens. Until Rohingya are recognized as citizens, they will continue to suffer the same abysmal treatment they have endured in recent years.

Speculation about crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide is bad enough, but a U.S. or international legal body should make an official determination on the scale of rights abuse occurring in Burma and take the requisite action to ensure the rights of Rohingya are protected.

By Anders Corr
December 30, 2016

As I detail in a prior article, Myanmar’s Buddhist government is systematically and repeatedly terrorizing the minority-Muslim Rohingya population into flight. Such attempts at what a senior U.N. official calls “ethnic cleansing” are clearly illegal, as is Myanmar’s related denial of residency rights to the Rohingya. But a 1978 “Repatriation Agreement” with Bangladesh marked “Secret” and published by Princeton University in 2014 constitutes evidence that in 1978, Myanmar acknowledged that the Rohingya had legal residence in the country.

Rohingya Muslim refugees along with Indian supporters shout slogans against human rights violations in Myanmar, during a march to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New Delhi on December 19, 2016. Myanmar faces growing pressure from its neighbors over claims its army has carried out a bloody campaign of abuse against its Rohingya minority as ministers held emergency talks on the crisis. More than 27,000 from the Muslim ethnic group have fled northwestern Myanmar for Bangladesh since the start of November to escape a heavy-handed military counterinsurgency campaign. PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

Myanmar justifies its persecution of the Rohingya by publicly claiming that the Rohingya have no legal residence in the country, and should therefore move to Bangladesh, from which they ostensibly originate. The Myanmar government has even asked the international community to stop using the term “Rohingya” in an attempt to erase the Rohingya’s historical ties to Rakhine state that date to the 8th Century A.D. But the secret repatriation agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh in 1978 constitutes evidence that Myanmar recognized the Rohingyas’ legal residence in the country. An Asian diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous confirmed to me that this secret document is authentic. 

After 1962, Myanmar (which was then called Burma) renewed repression of Rohingya political and social associations. In 1977, Burma began registering citizens and screened out ‘foreigners,’ primarily to target the Rohingya. The Rohingya alleged that the Burmese military used forced evictions and widespread rapes and murders against the Rohingya. By May 1978, approximately 200,000 Rohingya refugees had entered Bangladesh and settled into 13 U.N. refugee camps near the border. The Burmese authorities publicly claimed that the fleeing refugees showed the Rohingya’s illegal residence in Burma. But Bangladesh urged Burma to accept the refugees back, and the U.N. used economic carrots and sticks to encourage Burma to agree.

The secret 1978 “Repatriation Agreement” that resulted states, “THE LEADERS OF DELEGATIONS, duly authorised by and on behalf of the Government of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma and the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, following their talks held in Dacca on 7th - 9th July 1978 HAVE AGREED as follows,” and continues, “The Government of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma agrees to the repatriation at the earliest of the lawful residents of Burma [italics mine] who are now sheltered in the camps in Bangladesh on the presentation of Burmese National Registration Cards along with the members of their families …” This constitutes evidence that in 1978, Burma agreed that the Rohingya refugees, most of whose families at one time had national registration cards or other documents, were by and large “lawful residents of Burma.”

Between 1991 and 1992, additional rapes, forced labor, and religious persecution caused another 250,000 Rohingya refugees to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh. A 1992 agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh similarly acknowledged the lawful residence of the Rohingya in Burma. Titled “Joint statement by the foreign ministers of Bangladesh & Myanmar issued at the conclusion of the official visit of the Myanmar Foreign Minister to Bangladesh 23 - 28 April 1992,” the agreement called the fleeing Rohingya “Myanmar residents” and “members of Myanmar society.”

A poster hanging in the New York headquarters of Human Rights Watch. Photo: Phil Robertson / Twitter

By Coconuts Yangon
December 26, 2016

Former human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi is leading the Myanmar government’s campaign to make sure that nothing is done to protect women from sexual assault by the military in Rakhine State.

Two of her cabinet portfolios – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Counsellor’s Office – have been more vocal than any other government offices in denying allegations of rape of Rohingya women at the hands of government security forces.

On Friday, the Myanmar State Counsellor’s Office publicly accused Rohingya women of fabricating stories of rape by government security forces, calling the phenomenon “fake rape”.



On December 13, the same office tried to debunk the Guardian’s profile of a Rohingya rape victim on the basis that people from the same village had “only heard of such cases in the form of rumours”.

On Saturday, the Information Committee appointed by the State Counsellor’s Office once again denied rape allegations on the basis of villagers saying they had not heard of any rape incidents, even after two Rohingya women told reporters on December 21 that they had been raped by security forces.

Though numerous reports of rape perpetrated by Tatmadaw soldiers against Rohingya women since October 9 have been corroborated by interviews with victims and witnesses in Bangladesh and in Rakhine State, the military continues to block formal investigations, allowing government spokespeople to control the narrative.

Aye Aye Soe, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIN: “Most of them are made-up stories, blown out of proportion. The things they are accusing us of didn’t happen at all.”

Beyond her own offices, the Ministry of Information, whose minister was hand-picked by Suu Kyi, published a piece of ‘analysis’ on November 3 claiming that “accusations of international media of violations of human rights of local residents during Maungtaw area clearance operations were intentionally fabricated in collusion with terrorist groups”.

All of this sends a message to Myanmar soldiers that there is no consequence for rape, and it is happening on Aung San Suu Kyi’s watch.

Before she started campaigning for votes in Myanmar’s 2015 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi seemed like an ideal champion for women’s rights. She already had a Nobel Peace Prize under her belt, and she was eager to criticize the forces in Myanmar society that bolstered patriarchy – including the military.

In 2011, she told Nobel Women’s Initiative: “Rape is used in my country as a weapon against those who only want to live in peace, who only want to assert their basic human rights. Especially in the areas of ethnic nationalities, rape is rife. It is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country.”


But the person who said those words is gone. Or, just as likely, she never existed at all.

Suu Kyi’s opposition to rape softened almost as soon as she had something to lose. In December 2014, after she was elected to parliament and less than a year before the NLD would be swept into power, she was asked if she was concerned about the impunity the Myanmar military enjoys after using rape as a weapon of war, which had been documented in a report by the Women’s League of Burma a few weeks earlier.

Instead of reiterating the well-documented truths in her 2011 statement, she defended the Tatmadaw by saying the ethnic armed groups rape, too.

“This has to do with rule of law. And that has to do with politics, and the position of the army as it is in a particular political structure. I think you are well aware of the fact that military armed groups which are not official armies also engage in sexual violence in conditions of conflict,” she said at a press conference in Yangon.

By not calling for rape allegations to be investigated and refusing to condemn wartime rape, which once she said herself is “rife” in the country, Aung San Suu Kyi is making rape easier to commit and easier to get away with.

Some political calculus in Suu Kyi’s mind led her to denounce rape committed by the military in 2011, to distract us from it in 2014 and then to all but guarantee impunity for it in 2016. Her political pragmatism endangers the lives of women and their families and stunts development in Myanmar.

“Every case of rape divides our country between…the armed forces and ordinary citizens,” Suu Kyi told the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2011.

Today, we know what side of that divide Aung San Suu Kyi is on.

Rohingya Muslims, fled from violence over Muslims in Myanmar take shelter at Leda unregistered Rohingya camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh on December 05, 2016. (Photo: ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES)

By Nick Robins-Early
December 15, 2016

Satellite images show at least 1,500 buildings burned, amid allegations of violent attacks and sexual assault.

Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims have faced a new wave of violence in recent months, adding to the minority group’s status as one of the world’s most persecuted peoples. Newly released satellite images show that at least 1,500 buildings in Rohingya villages have been burned since early October, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday.

The rights group’s report places the blame for the arson attacks with Myanmar’s army, which for decades has carried out alleged human rights abuses against the Rohingya under the pretense of fighting Islamist insurgents. Along with regime attacks, Myanmar’s more than 1 million Rohingya are the subject of widespread discrimination from much of the country’s Buddhist population that refuses to view them as a distinct ethnic group. 

The Rohingya are also at the center of an enormous refugee crisis, with an estimated 200,000 living in camps in neighboring Bangladesh: Thousands more are attempting to seek safety in countries across the region. A surge in violence in 2012 in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state destroyed numerous Rohingya homes. At least 100,000 Rohingya were relocated to internment camps where their movements are restricted and they often lack access to basic necessities and health services.



The latest spate of attacks against the Rohingya come after police in Myanmar say nine of their officers were killed in an attack in Rakhine on Oct. 9, which they blame on Rohingya militancy. In response, Myanmar’s army has carried out what rights groups allege is a systematic and indiscriminate campaign against Rohingya villages in the state.

Rohingya villagers told rights groups that the army has used helicopter gunships to fire on civilians. They also say soldiers have set fire to their homes. Multiple Rohingya women also reported to Reuters in late October that soldiers raped or sexually assaulted dozens of villagers at gunpoint during the military advance. Thousands of Rohingya who attempted to flee to Bangladesh in recent months have been turned back, according to Amnesty International.

Rohingya Muslims cry as Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) catch them in a check post in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, November 21, 2016. (Photo: MOHAMMAD PONIR HOSSAIN/REUTERS)

Police and officials in Rakhine have dismissed the allegations of army abuses against the Rohingya. One member of parliament from the state told the BBC that Rohingya women were too “dirty” for soldiers to rape, and blamed the arson attacks on Rohingya militants burning down their own community’s homes. The army blocks media access into Rakhine state, making it extremely difficult for journalists and rights groups to get reports from the ground.

The leader of Myanmar’s government, nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has remained largely silent on the army’s attacks. Although she is the de facto head of government after the country ended decades of military rule earlier this year, the army still retains considerable power. Aung San Suu Kyi’s reticence to place blame on the military or condemn the attacks on Rohingya has led to widespread criticism from rights groups and observers who hoped that she would address the country’s longstanding human rights violations.



By Nancy Hudson-Rodd
December 14, 2016

Recent violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has led to an increase in the persecution of the Rohingya people, but the international community continues to turn a blind eye, Nancy Hudson-Rodd writes.

In 1992, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights assigned a Special Rapporteur to monitor the situation of human rights in Myanmar. This intervention by the United Nations (UN) was motivated by the need to respond to grave and systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the country’s military regime against civilians, especially the persecution of the Rohingya. More than a decade later, at the 2005 World UN Summit, all member states endorsed the Responsibility to Protect, a global norm “aimed at preventing and halting Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes against Humanity.” Still, genocide of the Rohingya continues.

Following a recent outbreak of violence on 9 October in which nine police officers were killed, the Myanmar military has declared the Maungdaw area an ‘operational zone’ and reportedly conducted lethal ‘clearance operations’ to hunt down Rohingya ‘militants’ accused of the attacks on three border posts, despite the assailants’ identities being unknown. Local ethnic Buddhist Rakhines have been recruited to supplement other forces, and are armed to protect Buddhist residents from Muslim militants “who never follow the laws and are trying to seize our land and extend their territory”, according to Colonel Sein Lwin, Rakhine State Police Officer. The new recruits will serve 18 months with border police then be deployed to police stations in their hometowns. Rohingya have little chance of escape.

Top officials, like State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, refused to use the word Rohingya in their responses to the 9 October attacks, while the UNDP Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar urged that the rule of law be fully respected and that civilians be protected.

The Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Myanmar praised the authorities’ “good organization and discipline in averting any major outbreak of violence between the communities in Rakhine. At this delicate juncture, the local communities must refuse to be provoked by these incidents and their leaders must work actively to prevent incitement of animosity or mutual hatred between Buddhist and Muslim communities.”

But this is not a religious or ethnic struggle between equal “communities”. The Rohingya are not equal parties in the conflict. What is unfolding in Rakhine state is a well-executed military assault to remove the Rohingya from Myanmar.

Credible reports of arbitrary arrests, rape, torture, and extrajudicial killings of Rohingya followed these “clearance” operations. Human Rights Watch said satellite images reveal the vast extent of burnt homes, villages, crops, animals, mosques and religious property. Whole villages have been cleared and more than 10,000 Rohingya forcibly removed from their homes. Villagers reported that their empty properties were looted by state security forces and Buddhist residents.

On 16 November, the Office of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi denied all allegations of damage inflicted on Rohingya but accused the “armed attackers” of burning their own villages, in order to get media attention and to receive aid from international organisations.

Adama Dieng, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide called for conditions to be put in place that would support peaceful coexistence among the different communities in Rakhine State.

If peaceful coexistence is, in fact, the goal, the terms of peace become nearly irrelevant. Such an approach ensures that governments move far away from justice.

In its 15 November bulletin (page 9), the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect reported that “Mass atrocity crimes are occurring and urgent action is needed” in Myanmar, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan. The report states that “Stateless Rohingya in Burma/Myanmar face systematic persecution that poses an existential threat to their community.”

Recent violence and ongoing human rights violations against Rohingya amount to possible crimes against humanity.

“Genocide is taking place in Myanmar” and there is a “serious and present danger of annihilation of the Rohingya population,” concluded International State Crime Initiative Director, Professor Penny Green, in the organisation’s 2015 report Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar.

The international community has a responsibility to protect the Rohingya, to respond to crimes of genocide, and to ensure human rights violations do not continue. As the third pillar of the Responsibility to Protect says: “If a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take collective action to protect populations, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”

Any global assessment of recent developments reveals a disturbing pattern of disingenuousness, an expedient reaching for the lowest common denominator for international agreement and a profound moral failure to value Rohingya lives. The State is responsible for decades of deadly indiscriminate attacks on civilian Rohingya conducted by the military, forcing Rohingya to abandon their homes and villages, while denying them food, water, shelter, and medical care, or locking them in camps secured by armed guards. The perpetrators’ racially motivated statements are used to increase hate and resentment of Rohingya, as is a media campaign to establish ethnic solidarity on the basis of an enemy ‘other’ which is to be both feared and hated.

Decades of urgent appeals have been made to the Myanmar government to halt the violence, but few foreign governments want to take action forcing Myanmar to deal with the issue. The focus has been on the humanitarian crisis, rather than on the political, legal or military action needed to address the violence. The gesture politics, hesitation, compromises, and wishful thinking about Myanmar’s ‘transition to democracy’ upon which Western policy is based, are having real consequences for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.

Relentlessly dark news continues to emerge from Rakhine State. Are there no circumstances that will compel an international intervention that is adequate to protect the vulnerable Rohingya and bring the perpetrators to justice?

Justice for Rohingya and the prevention of genocide means devoting major diplomatic attention and likely military forces to intervene in Myanmar to protect this persecuted people.

Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd, a human geographer, is a research Associate with the Asia Institute and the School of Land and Food, at the University of Tasmania. She has conducted research for over a decade on military confiscation of land, human rights abuses and the Rohingya in Burma.


    • Rohingya Exodus