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By Euan McKirdy
April 7, 2018

As tens of millions of Americans come to grips with revelations that data from Facebook may have been used to sway the 2016 presidential election, on the other side of the world, rights groups say hatemongers have taken advantage of the social network to widely disseminate inflammatory, anti-Muslim speech in Myanmar.

The rhetoric is aimed almost exclusively at the disenfranchised Rohingya Muslim minority, a group which has been the target of a sustained campaign of violence and abuse by the Myanmar military, which claims it is targeting terrorists.

Human rights activists inside the country and out tell CNN that posts range from recirculated news articles from pro-government outlets, to misrepresented or faked photos and anti-Rohingya cartoons.

A Rohingya refugee looks out from a school window at Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh's Ukhia district.

In response to the flood of hate-filled posts, a cross-Myanmar group of tech firms and NGOs has written an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lambasting what they term the "inadequate response of the Facebook team" to escalating rhetoric on the platform in Myanmar.

Citing conversations the group says it unearthed on Facebook's Messenger service, which issue calls to arms against Muslims over a fabricated "jihad" planned for September 2017, it stated that the examples show "clear examples of (Facebook) tools being used to incite real harm.

Facebook Messenger conversations, screenshotted and included with an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from Myanmar tech companies.

"Far from being stopped, they spread in an unprecedented way, reaching country-wide and causing widespread fear and at least three violent incidents in the process."

The letter cited an interview Zuckerberg did with Vox's Ezra Klein, in which he said Facebook's "systems detected" the hate speech. The letter surmised that by "systems" Zuckerberg meant the signatories of the letter -- third party vendors in Myanmar which, the letter admits, were "far from systematic" in their detection of hate speech.

Calling it "the opposite of effective moderation," the group also chided Facebook for what it called a lack of proper mechanisms for emergency escalation, a reticence to engage local stakeholders and a lack of transparency.

Zuckerberg told Vox hate speech is "a real issue, and we want to make sure that all of the tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech, inciting violence, and basically protecting the integrity of civil discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar, as well as places like the US that do get a disproportionate amount of the attention."

Young men browse Facebook on their smartphones as they sit in a street in Yangon.

Sudden surge

New research suggests Facebook played a key role as extremists sought to escalate the conflict in Myanmar.

Data analyst Raymond Serrato looked at posts from Myanmar citizens over the course of 2017, determining that there was a massive spike in hate-speech posts following an August military campaign in the country's western Rakhine state, home to the majority of the country's Rohingya.



The campaign was initially sparked when an insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, called for an uprising -- one which was easily quelled by the government.

The failed attempt led to the large-scale purge, which the UN has called "ethnic cleansing," and a subsequent refugee crisis, which has seen 700,000 Rohingya forced from their homes and across the border into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar denies the intentional killing of civilians, and insists that operations targeted terrorists.

Serrato said he was "surprised by the intensity" and frequency of the anti-Rohingya posts.

"In August, when ARSA called on the Rohingya to rise up, (we were) surprised by the speed at which (anti-Rohingya voices) weaponized social media."



Facebook has 'turned into a beast'

In March, Facebook was accused by the UN of "substantively" contributing to the "level of acrimony" against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

Marzuki Darusman, the chair of a United Nations probe into human rights in Myanmar, said "hate speech and incitement to violence on social media is rampant, particularly on Facebook" and largely "goes unchecked."

His colleague, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, added that "we know ultra-nationalist Buddhists... are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities.

"I'm afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended" to be, she said.

Instrument of 'hate and racism'

Human rights activist Zarni, who like some in the country, goes by only one name, told CNN the platform is neutral, but "what is toxic is the state. (Lee) said Facebook has turned into a beast, (but in fact) the beasts are using Facebook."

He says the main provocateurs are "operating in very powerful institutions -- the military and monastic networks; the two major pillars of Burmese society." Among the offenders, at least until his ban from the platform, was the infamous ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu.

Controversial Myanmar monk Wirathu speaking during an interview at a monastery in Myanmar's second biggest city of Mandalay.

In 2015, he told CNN that Muslims "take many wives and they have many children. And when their population grows they threaten us." "And," he concluded, "they are violent."

Thaw Parka, a spokesman for Ma Ba Tha, a Buddhist nationalist group associated with the controversial monk, says critics "cherry pick (Wirathu's) extreme words."

A Facebook spokesperson told Reuters it suspends and sometimes removes anyone that "consistently shares content promoting hate," in response to a question about Wirathu's account.

Others are not letting the social media giant off the hook. It would be "superficial" to "ignore the conflict between ethnicities," Serrato says, "but Facebook has definitely facilitated it."

Jes Kaliebe Petersen, CEO of Myanmar-based startup accelerator Phandeeyar, says while there is a lot of racist content shared on the platform, "there are also moderate voices that are doing good work not only countering this but spreading moderate narrative, but "get drowned out."

New users, new problems

Myanmar's relative callowness in engaging online is part of the reason the rhetoric has exploded, and been so influential.

The country experienced a "digital leapfrog effect," says Petersen. "Until 2014, there was less than 5% mobile phone penetration, but overnight, SIM cards were offered for (as little as) $1.50," allowing a much greater number of people to buy smartphones.

Myanmar has a "whole new generation of internet users, just coming to terms with what you can do online," he says.

Facebook's ubiquity in the country -- the UN's Darusman says, in Myanmar, "social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media" -- only serves to multiply hate speech's virality.

Activist Sein Thein says the burden of responsibility for the online rhetoric should not fall entirely on Facebook's shoulders, and that Myanmar's citizens "need to be mature" when they are online.

Facebook: We're combating hate

In order to combat the platform being used for hate speech against the Muslim minority, Facebook said it has "invested significantly in technology and local language expertise" in Myanmar following the UN accusations.

"There is no place for hate speech or content that promotes violence on Facebook, and we work hard to keep it off our platform," a spokesperson told CNN.

The spokesperson said the company has worked with experts in Myanmar for several years to produce a community standards page for Myanmar "and regular training sessions for civil society and local community groups across the country."

It is hard for Facebook to monitor the rise of hate speech in the country, Petersen says, partly due to language difficulties.

"There's an intention to enforce them but it's not being followed." Petersen says his company, Phandeeyar, helped Facebook translate its community standards into Burmese.

In response to the March UN accusations, Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay said his government and Facebook are "promoting cooperation and coordination for the Myanmar people to understand the community standards of Facebook."

On Facebook he said supporters of the Rohingya were also using social media to "spread... disinformation around the world."

The group that sent the open letter to Zuckerberg, co-signed by Phandeeyar, urged the tech mogul "to invest more into moderation -- particularly in countries, such as Myanmar, where Facebook has rapidly come to play a dominant role in how information is accessed and communicated."

Long history

Zarni says the country has a "long ideological tradition by which genocides are acceptable," which can partially be explained by support of the enemies of the then-British empire, including the Nazis, in resistance to British rule in the 1930s and 40s.

"I came from that society, I grew up with it. In the 1930s, we were quoting Hitler left and right in Burma," he said, using the colonial-era name for the country.

"What really has emboldened the Burmese public behavior in terms of their social media interactions is the military -- the military has taken up an entirely new function, it's not only the (defense of what it sees as its) territory, but defense of culture, society, religion and race."

Silence condemned

The country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been criticized for her silence in the face of the country's treatment of the minority.

"She will not do anything (to defend the Rohingya) -- she struggled more than 15 years to get this position," Rohingya rights defender Nay San Lwin says.

"She will never speak for any minority. If she (sympathizes with) the oppressed people, she will lose her position. She's never been a human rights defender, she's a politician."

Suu Kyi and her supporters meanwhile have accused the international press of exaggerating the crisis and constructing a "huge iceberg of misinformation" which is negatively affecting her ability to run the country.

However in September 2017 she acknowledged the issue, saying her administration also wanted to "find out what the real problems were," according to the Financial Times, and agreed to implement the recommendations of the UN-led Rakhine Advisory Commission.

CNN's Angus Watson and Bex Wright contributed to this report.

Pope Francis meets Rohingya Muslim refugees.

By Joshua Berlinger and Delia Gallagher
December 2, 2017

Dhaka, Bangladesh -- Pope Francis referred to the Rohingya people by name on Friday, the first time he has directly addressed Myanmar's persecuted Muslim minority in his Asia tour.

"The presence of God today is also called Rohingya," the Pope said after speaking to an interfaith audience in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.

He did not use the term in public earlier in the week in Myanmar, to the dismay of campaigners for the Rohingya, whose stories of escaping violence in the country have provoked international condemnation. Friday is the final full day of his trip.

After his speech, the Pope met a group of Rohingya refugees one by one, giving some of them blessings and listening to the stories of others.

"Your tragedy is very hard, very big. We give you space in our hearts," the Pope said. "In the name of everyone, of those who persecute you, those who hurt you, and especially of the world's indifference, I ask for your forgiveness. Forgive us."

"Many of you talked to me about the great heart of Bangladesh, which offered you refuge. Now I appeal to your heart to give us the forgiveness we are asking from you," he told the group of refugees after meeting them.

Pope Francis shakes hands with Rohingya refugees during an interreligious and ecumenical meeting for peace on Friday in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled across the border from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since a spate of violence began in August. Many say they were forced to flee atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.

Myanmar's government does not use the term Rohingya to refer to the group. It considers the Rohingya people to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though some families have lived in Myanmar for centuries. The Rohingya are not recognized as an official minority in Myanmar, effectively meaning they are denied citizenship.

During a speech Tuesday alongside Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, Pope Francis did not use the term Rohingya despite hopes he would do so.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke dismissed the idea that Francis -- who has used the Rohingya term before -- diminished his moral authority by avoiding a direct reference to the group during his visit to Myanmar, the first by a Pope to the Buddhist-majority country.

"People don't expect him to solve impossible problems," Burke said.

Activists argued that because Francis did not use the term while he was in Myanmar, he was complicit in the country's strategy to delegitimize the Rohingya plight by questioning their name and identity.

"The term Rohingya is not a racial slur. It is a dignified term for more than two million people who are living across the world," European-based Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin told CNN in an email. 

After the Pope's remarks in Bangladesh, Lwin told CNN that he and other Rohingya advocates felt like "winners."

"Unexpectedly he used the correct term. He didn't avoid when he met the Rohingyas in person," Lwin said.

The international community has been outraged by the stories of fleeing refugees.

Jafar Alam, a 24-year-old Rohingya who was due to speak with the Pope in Bangladesh, told reporters before the meeting that the army lined up 30 people in his village and killed them all.

The United Nations, the US and the UK have accused the Myanmar military of ethnic cleansing, systematically driving the minority Muslim population from their homes through murder, rape and terror.

Myanmar's military claims it is pursuing terrorists responsible for a deadly attack on security forces in August. It denies that it has systematically persecuted the Rohingya. 

During his visit to Myanmar, Francis met the country's two most important leaders: Suu Kyi and Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar's armed forces.

During a brief meeting with Pope Francis Monday, Hlaing insisted that all faiths were able to worship freely in Myanmar.

But many Myanmar watchers said Hlaing's claim is false, pointing to the Rohingya crisis. 

"The mind boggles when you're confronting such blatant falsehoods and incredibly bogus narratives that have been formulated by people covering up atrocities," said Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

Suu Kyi, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner for her nonviolent resistance to the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades, has also denied that ethnic cleansing is going on her country. 

She addressed the crisis in general terms during a speech alongside Francis Tuesday, saying her government aims "to bring out the beauty of our diversity and to make it our strength, by protecting rights, fostering tolerance, ensuring security for all." 

CNN's Rebecca Wright contributed to this report

By Ben Westcott, Kocha Olarn and Rebecca Wright
November 28, 2017

Details have been revealed of the agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh to repatriate potentially hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to their homes in Rakhine State.

At least 623,000 Muslim-majority Rohingya have fled across the border into Bangladesh since August when a new round of violence broken out in Myanmar's west.

Under the agreement, the two countries would work together to solve the huge refugee crisis and repatriate Rohingya who wanted to return to Rakhine State.



The refugees have brought stories of mass killings and destruction in their former home state at the hands of the Myanmar military, which US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson labeled "ethnic cleansing" in the past week.

But the Myanmar government has repeatedly denied attacking Rohingya civilians, saying it was waging a campaign against a militant insurgency.

In the signed memorandum of understanding, distributed to journalists by the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry, Myanmar agreed there would be no restrictions on the number of Rohingya allowed to return, contradicting previous public statements by the head of the country's military.

It also said there would be no legal consequences for refugees who voluntarily decided to return, unless they had been involved with terrorists. All refugees would only return if they wished it, both countries agreed.

News of the deal broke on Thursday when a spokesman for State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi announced that a memorandum of understanding had been signed between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Myanmar's announcement was very short on details, however.

It's unclear how many refugees actually would want to return after fleeing what the United States and United Nations have described as ethnic cleansing.

Mistrust is also a huge issue. 

Europe-based Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin told CNN his major concern about the text of the agreement was how long repatriated refugees would be kept in temporary camps. 

The agreement says "Myanmar will take all possible measures to see that the returnees will not be settled in temporary places for a long period of time and their freedom of movement in the Rakhine State will be allowed in conformity with the existing laws and regulations."

But some refugees who chose to return to Myanmar after fleeing a previous outbreak of violence in Rakhine State years ago are still in camps for internally displaced people.

"We can't trust the government and military at all. No one should go back if they have to stay in a camp, if they are not allowed to live back in their original village," he said. "Myanmar government must restore their citizenship once they are repatriated."

The memorandum also says Myanmar will verify them for return and the eventual issuing of identity cards will be based on "evidence of past residence in Myanmar." 

But Lwin said a lot of Rohingya documents were confiscated prior to August 25 or burned in their houses during the ongoing attacks in recent months. "I am not sure whether half of the refugees will be repatriated," he said.

Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told CNN Monday her organization has not been consulted about the agreement by the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh. The memorandum calls for significant involvement of the UNHCR.

CNN's Bex Wright and Ben Westcott reported and wrote from Hong Kong, while Kocha Olarn reported from Bangkok. Joshua Berlinger and Farid Ahmed contributed to this report.

Rohingya refugee Mumtaz and her seven-year-old daughter Razia

By Ben Westcott, Rebecca Wright and Kocha Olarn
November 23, 2017

Myanmar and Bangladesh have signed a memorandum of understanding on the return of possibly hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar's Rakhine state, a spokesman for Myanmar de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday.

An estimated 615,000 Rohingya refugees have fled across the border into Bangladesh since August 25 when a new outbreak of violence began between the Myanmar military and armed militants in Rakhine state.

So far, no official details have been released on the agreement, what it would entail and under what circumstances the Rohingya would return.

A statement from Suu Kyi's spokesman confirmed the agreement had been signed but only said the pact was "a win-win situation for both countries."

Ro Nay San Lwin, a European-based Rohingya activist, told CNN that Bangladesh should not send any citizens back to Myanmar "unless citizenship and basic rights are guaranteed."

"I didn't find any clear statement how these refugees will be repatriated," he said. "I'm not sure whether they will be allowed to return to their original village. I'm not sure whether they will get back their own lands."

The Rohingya who have fled Rakhine state have brought with them stories of mass murder, rape and widespread destruction. 

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Myanmar's actions against the Rohingya were clearly "ethnic cleansing." Myanmar's military has repeatedly denied it has mistreated Rohingya civilians.

There is no indication how many displaced Rohingya might want to return to Myanmar in light of what has happened.

The agreement's announcement comes less than a week before Pope Francis is set to make a three-day visit to Myanmar. The Catholic leader is expected to push for greater acceptance of the country's Muslim minority.

It is also unclear how many refugees Myanmar might be willing to accept.

On November 15, Myanmar's commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said preparations were being made to return refugees but "it is impossible to accept the number of persons proposed by Bangladesh."

"The situation must be acceptable for both local Rakhine ethnic people and Bengalis, and emphasis must be placed on (the) wish of local Rakhine ethnic people who are real Myanmar citizens," Hlaing wrote on his Facebook page.

"Only when local Rakhine ethnic people accept it, will all the people satisfy it."

Senior Myanmar authorities refuse to recognize the Rohingya as citizens, saying they are Bangladeshi or Bengali.

UK-based Rohingya activist Jamila Hanan said it's essential all Rohingya be granted citizenship in Myanmar before they're repatriated, something the country has long denied them.

"(Otherwise it) would be a deal to send the victims of genocide back into the hands of their perpetrators, where they would almost certainly be locked up in concentration camps," she said.

By Salma Abdelaziz
CNN
November 17, 2017

Bangladesh-Myanmar border -- The slash marks on Rashida Begum's neck have turned into dark, red scars.

She showed us the cuts as if to say: look, I tried to fight back, I tried within an inch of my life.

"We saw the military digging holes (for mass graves). We were five women with our babies," Rashida said, almost in a whisper. "The grabbed us, dragged us into the house, and shut the door."

The soldiers snatched Rashida's baby son from her arms and killed him.

"I just screamed, I cried but they wouldn't listen to us. They don't even understand our language," Rashida recalled.

The uniformed men showed her no mercy. They slit Rashida's throat and tore off her clothes. She was brutalized and raped alongside the four other women. As Rashida lost consciousness, the men set the house alight and left them for dead.

"I thought I was already dead, but when my skin started to burn I woke up," she said.

Rashida Begum says she was raped by multiple Myanmar soldiers before she fled to the refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Naked and disoriented, she ran out of the flames and hid in a nearby field, but she wishes she had not survived. 

"It would be good if I too died because if I died then I wouldn't have to remember all these things. My parents were killed too, lots of people were killed," Rashida said as tears streamed down her face.

The soft-spoken 25-year-old was too traumatized to speak further about the assault or the loss of her child, but answered quickly when asked if she wanted revenge.

"We will be pleased if the military who raped us and killed our parents, if they are hanged," she said.

Then Rashida went quiet, her lips quivering, her hands shaking uncontrollably. In her eyes was a distant gaze that made her seem far away.

"I constantly think about what happened," she said. "I can't get it out of my mind."

'Untold numbers' of women raped by soldiers

Rashida's story is not an uncommon one in the sprawling camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. More than more than 615,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since late August, desperate to escape the violence in Rakhine State. Myanmar's military has intensified what it calls "clearance operations" targeting "terrorists" in Rakhine State following a series of attacks on police posts by Rohingya militants that left 12 officers dead. 

"One of the military's most feared weapons is mass sexual violence, with untold numbers of women and girls brutally gang raped by government soldiers," according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday, which documents the widespread rape of Rohingya women and girls at the hands of Myanmar's security forces, often in uniform.

Myanmar's military has has denied carrying out atrocities, and this week cleared itself of any wrong-doing in an internal report, saying it was responding to attacks by militants. The country also announced it was replacing the general in charge of Rakhine State. 

The United Nations has described the situation in Myanmar as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and some observers have accused the army of overseeing genocide against the Rohingya.

Still wearing the skirts they were assaulted in

Aid workers say it's difficult to estimate just how many women have been raped, but the incidents are so prevalent that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have developed a program to provide support for victims.

Aerlyn Pfeil, an MSF midwife, has taught a group of young female leaders a song to spread the word on the social services available in the refugee camps.

"Rape can happen to anyone. After being raped there is no peace in mind. This is not my fault being raped," the song goes. "Within three days of rape you need medicine. After three days, you need to consult a doctor."

Some Rohingya women still traumatized by their assaults have confided in Pfeil. The midwife appears frayed, worn down by one too many stories of horror.

"Several of the women I spoke to -- I was the first person they shared their stories," she said.

But for the victims, catharsis is rarely an option. They must focus on survival, feeding their children, eking out a living where dignity is hard to come by. None of the victims CNN spoke to had received medical attention.

"Sure, they are worried about pregnancy, yes they are concerned about STIs [sexually-transmitted infections], but mainly they are concerned that they are still wearing the same clothes and that they have no roof over their children's heads and their shelter still hasn't been built," Pfeil said.

Dozens of women have received medical and psychological treatment for rape, and about half of them are girls under the age of 18, MSF reported earlier this month.
"The piece for me that is the most heartbreaking is that the women coming in are still wearing the same skirts. They are still wearing the same skirts that they were assaulted in," Pfeil said.

"It's just heartbreaking that three months later you are still putting on the same skirt that someone assaulted you in."

Victims demand justice: 'No one is helping us'

Several rape survivors now living in refugee camps on the border agreed to speak to CNN on camera, an act of fierce bravery given that victims are often socially ostracized.

When the military came to Aisha's village, her husband, fearful of being killed, ran away, leaving her and her five children vulnerable.

37-year-old Aisha told CNN that soldiers attacked and raped her in her home.

"They had their eyes on me," she said of her attackers. "Two of the soldiers were standing in front of my door. One came inside the house and pointed the gun at me."

"They hit my children with the butt of the gun to get them out, and I don't know where they went -- my children ran away."

The men then turned their attention to the 37-year-old, punching and beating her into submission.

"Two stood at the door, one tore my clothes off, and he raped me at gunpoint and the gun was pointed at my chest."

The Rohingya's native language is different to that of the Burmese -- Myanmar's dominant ethnic group -- but Aisha understood clearly the soldier who had her pinned to the ground.

"He said, 'I will kill you. If you move, if you scream I will kill you.' And he covered my mouth with his hand," she recalled. "I felt so bad. He was not my husband. He did it so roughly, he did it without mercy."

"When I remember what happened, tears come to my eyes," Aisha said as she started to cry. "Why did they do this to me? Why did they rape me?"

She began to answer her own question.

"They did this to so many other women in the village too. They used it as a weapon of war," she said. 

"They did it because we wouldn't leave our homes, and they think that if they do this, it forces us out."

Aisha's fear of her attackers has given way to hardened anger, not just at her perpetrators but at the world for failing to hold Myanmar's military accountable.

"Since you are shown all over the whole world, maybe something will happen for us, maybe we will be left in peace." she said. "I hope it will help to stop the violence. That's why I am talking to you, to demand justice. No one is helping us."

CNN's Clarissa Ward contributed to this report.



By Azeem Ibrahim
October 23, 2017

The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar is now widely described as ethnic cleansing. But the situation has been evolving. And now, it seems, we can no longer avoid the conclusion we have all been dreading. This is a genocide. And we, in the international community, must recognize it as such.

Article II of United Nation's 1948 Genocide Convention describes genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Though the Rohingya situation has met most of the above criteria for being described as a genocide under international law for a number of years now, the label has been resisted until now because we think of genocide as one huge act of frenzied violence, like the machete insanity in Rwanda or the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. 

But the final peak of violence is in all historical cases merely the visible tip of the iceberg. And the final outburst only occurs once it has already been rendered unavoidable by the political context.

In Rwanda, Hutu tribal propaganda ran for years on the radio and in magazines referring to the Tutsis as cockroaches and a mortal threat to the Hutus that needed to be eliminated lest the Hutus themselves would die. Kill or be killed. The frenzied killing was not something that just occurred to the Hutus one day in April 1994. It was the logical conclusion of a campaign of dehumanization and paranoia which lasted for years.

The same is true of the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide began slowly and had few distinctive outbursts of violence to delineate where one degree of crime against humanity ended and where another began.
All in all, that genocide developed and unfolded over a period of more than 10 years. Most of that period was not taken up with the killing of Jews, Gypsies and all the other "sub-humans." Rather, it was taken up with manufacturing of the category of "sub-humans" by state propaganda. Only once the problem was manufactured and sold to the wider population did the "final solution" become viable.

Pattern of genocide

In Myanmar, extremist Buddhist monks have been preaching that the Rohingya are reincarnated from snakes and insects. Killing them would not be a crime against humanity, they say -- it would be more like pest control. 

And necessary "pest control" too. Just like the Tutsi conspiracy to kill all the Hutus, or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Rohingya are supposed to be agents of a global Islamist conspiracy to take over the world and forcibly instate a global caliphate. The duty of any good Buddhist who wants to maintain the national and religious character of Myanmar is to prevent the Islamist takeover, and thus to help remove the threat posed by the "vermin."

Every modern genocide has followed this pattern. Years of concerted dehumanization campaigns are the absolutely necessary pre-condition for the mass murder at the end. Usually these campaigns are led by a repressive government, but other political forces also come into play. Such was the case in Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda. And so it is with Myanmar. 

The campaign of dehumanization against the Rohingya has been going on for decades, and events certainly took an unmistakeable turn towards genocide since at least the outbursts of communal violence in 2012. Those clashes, and the ones in the subsequent years, drove 200,000 to 300,000 Rohingya out of Myanmar. 

But somehow, at that rate of attrition, and against the backdrop of Myanmar's supposed move towards democracy with the election of Aung San Suu Kyi to power in late 2015, world leaders have allowed themselves to hope that the situation could still be turned around.

Now, the reality of an exodus of a further 600,000 people in the space of just six weeks; the incontrovertible evidence of large scale burning of villages by the Myanmar military -- which the military is calling clearance operations of terrorists -- and the reports of widespread extra-judicial killings against fleeing civilians by the country's federal security forces have made it much more difficult to avoid the conclusion: this is genocide. We no longer have just the slow-burning genocidal environment which whittles down a people until their ultimate extinction. 

Now we are also confronting the loud bang at the end. More than half of an entire population has been removed from their ancestral lands in just eight weeks!

The tragedy is that the international community will abet the situation. The UN Security Council will decline to respond to the situation with the seriousness it deserves. If a situation is defined by the Council as a "genocide," then the UN becomes legally bound to intervene, with peace-keeping missions and so on. That is why Western countries will be reluctant initiate such a move, and China, who is building one branch of its New Silk Road infrastructure right through Rakhine State to access the port of Sittwe, will likely veto any such proposal.

Just like we did in Rwanda, just like we did in the Balkans, we are once again seeing a genocide happen before our very eyes. And we will do nothing about it. We will bury our heads in the sand, and when our children will ask us why we let this happen we will plead ignorance. Once the final act of killing starts, it is usually too late. For the Rohingya, the final act is in full swing. And still we are in denial about what is happening.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy and author of "The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide" (Hurst & Oxford University Press)



COXS BAZAR, BANGLADESH - SEPTEMBER 16: Rohingya refugees are seen in an informal refugee camp on September 16, 2017 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since late August during the outbreak of violence in the Rakhine state as recent satellite images released by Amnesty International provided evidence that security forces were trying to push the minority Muslim group out of the country. Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi cancelled her trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which begins next week, while criticism on her handling of the Rohingya crisis grows and her government has been accused of ethnic cleansing. According to reports, the Rohingya crisis has left at least 1,000 people dead, including children and infants, with dozens of the Rohingya Muslims who drowned when their boat capsized while trying to escape on overloaded fishing boats ill-equipped for rough waters. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

By CNN
September 21, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The US will provide a humanitarian aid package worth nearly $32 million to Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State in recent weeks, the State Department announced Wednesday during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The funding "reflects the US commitment to help address the unprecedented magnitude of suffering and urgent humanitarian needs of the Rohingya people," said the State Department's Acting Assistant Secretary Simon Henshaw, noting that over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar, a majority Buddhist nation, for neighboring Bangladesh.

He added that the US hoped its contribution would encourage other countries to provide more funding as well.

The aid package comes a day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, also known as Burma, and "welcomed the Burmese government's commitment to end the violence in Rakhine State and to allow those displaced by the violence to return home," according to the State Department.

Tillerson "urged the Burmese government and military to facilitate humanitarian aid for displaced people in the affected areas, and to address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations."

The State Department said the aid "will help provide emergency shelter, food security, nutritional assistance, health assistance, psychosocial support, water, sanitation and hygiene, livelihoods, social inclusion, non-food items, disaster and crisis risk reduction, restoring family links, and protection to over 400,000 displaced persons."

An average of 20,000 a day

Henshaw said Wednesday's announcement brought the total of US aid to Burmese refugees, including Rohingya, to nearly $95 million in fiscal year 2017.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, many of them women and children, have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence since August 25, according to the United Nations -- an average of almost 20,000 a day. The refugees speak of indiscriminate clearance operations, huts set on fire and family members being taken away and never heard from again.

Speaking at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence called on the UN "to take strong and swift action to bring this crisis" of violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to an end.

"The United States renews our call on Burma's security forces to end their violence immediately and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution," he said. "President Trump and I also call on this security council and the United Nations to take strong and swift action to bring this crisis to an end."

Pence also spoke about how the violence in Myanmar is a perfect example of the kind of problem the United Nations should help solve.

"Keeping the peace requires more than peacekeeping -- it requires action, reform and, lastly, it also requires a willingness to call out senseless attacks on innocent people around the world. At this very moment in Southeast Asia, we see heartbreak and assaults on human rights and innocent civilians that is ultimately endangering the sovereignty and security of the entire region," Pence said. 

To date, the international response has been inadequate, said Reza Afshar, policy director of Independent Diplomat, a non-profit group that offers diplomatic advice and is working with a Rohingya group. 

That's partly a function of the pace of the crisis, which has "moved incredibly quickly," Afshan said, but it's also a matter of political dynamics in the UN's Security Council, "where the assumption is that China isn't going to allow anything substantive in the Council" to punish Myanmar. Permanent members of the 15-member Council can veto a resolution. 

A well-articulated and carefully calibrated UN resolution on the Rohingya crisis would "get the government of Myanmar to sit up and take notice," Afshan said, adding that other countries had to "test China" by putting forward some language for a resolution. "That testing needs to happen, and happen soon," he said.

Call for economic sanctions

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the second largest inter-governmental group at the UN with 57 members, met Tuesday and called for UN member states to consider cutting or curbing economic ties with Myanmar or suspending preferential trade agreements with the country. 

OIC members urged the Security Council to act immediately and their leaders spoke out against Myanmar in their General Assembly address.

The Muslim community in the Rakhine region of Myanmar is being subjected to almost an ethnic cleansing, with provocative terrorist acts used as a pretext," Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan thundered. 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged the UN to "promptly work towards a lasting solution that ends the plight of civilians and addresses the root causes of the crisis, which has become a threat to regional security and the stability of neighboring countries."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the 72nd General Assembly by calling on authorities in Myanmar to "end the military operations allow unhindered humanitarian access and recognize the right of refugees to return in safety and dignity."

Guterres recently suggested that the Rohingya are the victims of ethnic cleansing. "When one-third of the Rohingya population has got to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it," Guterres said September 13. 

Pence, speaking at the UN, called out the Burmese military for the violence. 

"In recent weeks, the people of my country and the wider world have witnessed a great tragedy unfolding in Burma with the Rohingya people," he said. "Recently, Burmese security forces responded to militant attacks on government outposts with terrible savagery, burning villages, driving the Rohingya from their homes; the images of the violence and its victims have shocked the American people and decent people all over the world."

"And now we are witnessing a historic exodus, over 400,000 Rohingya, including tens of thousands of children, have now been forced to flee from Burma to Bangladesh," Pence added.

The announcement of a US aid package comes just one day after Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally broke her silence on the Rohingya refugee crisis in a speech that drew widespread criticism.

Suu Kyi did not denounce alleged atrocities against the Rohingya community and claimed the government needed more time to investigate the exodus from Myanmar of the minority Muslim group.

Much of the speech appeared intended to frame the crisis as a complex internal issue and contrasted the violence -- which she depicted as isolated -- with the government's ongoing development agenda, specifically its efforts to deliver "peace, stability, harmony and progress" to the nation as a whole.

Henshaw said that he wouldn't characterize her remarks, but added that, "we are urging the Burmese Government to control the violence in the area, to cease attacks against civilians, and to create safe conditions so that the Rohingya that have fled feel safe to return."

Not safe for return

The US welcomes Suu Kyi's announcement that the government would be "welcoming those who fled Rakhine state back to their homes," Henshaw said. "We encourage the government to act quickly on this commitment while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of returnees."

When asked about Suu Kyi's comment that returning refugees have nothing to fear, Henshaw said that conditions aren't yet right for the refugees to return.

The Rohingya are considered to be among the world's most persecuted people. The predominantly Buddhist Myanmar considers them Bangladeshi, but Bangladesh says they're Burmese.

The government of Myanmar has blamed terrorists for starting the recent violence that has killed more than 1,000 people, according to recent a recent estimate from Yanghee Lee, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Myanmar. 

Almost 40% of all Rohingya villages in Myanmar's Rakhine State are now empty, a government spokesperson confirmed earlier this week.



By James Griffiths
September 19, 2017

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi gave a much-anticipated address Tuesday on the ongoing crisis following the exodus of than 400,000 minority Rohingya Muslims from the country. 

Speaking for over 30 minutes in English, it's the first time Suu Kyi has addressed the situation in northern Rakhine State or the growing international criticism of her and her government. 

However, many of the claims made in her speech are somewhat dubious, with some even appearing to contradict the findings of an official report commissioned by the government and compiled by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

'We want to find out why this exodus is happening' 

Suu Kyi's protestations that the government does not know the root causes of the crisis are peculiar, especially as she repeatedly referenced the Annan report, the Final Report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

The report, released in August, identified several key issues, including the lack of citizenship for stateless Rohingya Muslims as well as socio-economic challenges facing Rakhine, and police and military action in the state. 

Following attacks on border police posts in October 2016, the report said, "subsequent military and police operations led to tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing across the border to Bangladesh." 

"While Myanmar has every right to defend its own territory, a highly militarized response is unlikely to bring peace to the area," the report said. 

"Unless concerted action -- led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society -- is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalisation, which will further deepen the chronic poverty that afflicts Rakhine State," Annan said in a statement. 

UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, has said the situation in Myanmar seems like a "textbook case of ethnic cleansing," a claim which has been repeated by multiple human rights groups.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published damning reports on the causes of the exodus, including accusations the Myanmar military has deliberately burned Rohingya villages in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against the minority. 

They backed up this conclusion with satellite imagery of fires, photos and videos from the ground, and witness testimony of human rights abuses by the Myanmar authorities. 

'Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny'

Suu Kyi said she is aware of the "world's attention" focused on Myanmar presently, but said her government "does not fear international scrutiny."

"If you are interested in joining us in our endeavors, please let us know," she added. "We can arrange for you to visit these areas and to ask (those who have stayed) why they have not fled, why they have chosen to remain in their villages."

While the situation may change following Suu Kyi's speech, access to Rakhine State has been heavily restricted to media, human rights groups, and diplomats. 

A tightly government-controlled media trip to Rakhine state was organized earlier this month, but permits for journalists to visit the area independently and interview people without official interference have been next to impossible to come by. 

Amnesty International has accused the government of denying aid workers access to the state, while in January UN special rapporteur on human rights Yanghee Lee was prevented from visiting some parts of the state for "security reasons." 

Doctors Without Borders said it had been providing services to displaced people within Rakhine, "but international staff have not been granted travel authorizations to visit the health facilities since August, whilst national staff have been too afraid to go to work following remarks by Myanmar officials accusing NGOs of colluding with (militant groups)." 

In December, Kofi Annan also appeared to criticize the government's denial of access to Rakhine to aid groups and other NGOs. 

'The great majority of Rakhines in the state have not joined the exodus'

Rakhine State has a population of around 3.1 million, some one million of which are Rohingya Muslims. 

The UN estimates that over 400,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25. They joined around one million Rohingya already in the country who traveled there during previous periods of unrest. 

Earlier this month, the government said 176 out of 471, or 37.4% of all Rohingya villages were empty of people, and an additional 34 villages were "partially abandoned." During her speech, Suu Kyi said, "50% of the villages of Muslims are intact."

Suu Kyi did not use the word "Rohingya" in her speech to describe Muslims living in Rakhine, so it is difficult to ascertain whether she is referring to the state's entire population, or specifically the Rohingya population the UN and others say have been disproportionally affected by recent violence. 

"Rohingya" is a politically charged term in Myanmar and one the government has repeatedly refused to endorse.

The only time Suu Kyi said the word during her speech was when she referred to the ARSA militant group -- the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. 

"She chooses to use the word in relation to a terrorist group, that means that is the only identity that Rohingya will be attached to, from her perspective and she hopes from the international perspective," said Penny Green, a professor of law at Queen Mary University of London.

'All people (in Rakhine) have access to education and health care services'

Suu Kyi's claims Rohingya have access to the same services as their non-Muslim neighbors is contradicted by the Annan commission's report which found Muslims, in particular internally displaced persons, are "deprived of freedom of movement." 

"Movement restrictions have a wide range of detrimental effects, including reduced access to education, health and services, strengthened communal segregation, and reduced economic interaction," the report said. 

Moreover, it found that "access to health is particularly low within the Muslim community in the northern and central parts of the state. In some areas, Muslims face discriminative obstacles that prevent available lifesaving services from being accessed." 

Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy who has visited internally displaced person camps within Myanmar, told CNN the population there "don't have the same level of access at all to anything."

'No clearance operations' since September 5

In late August, Rohingya militants attacked and killed 12 security officers, according to Myanmar's state media, which kicked off the latest round of violence.

Human rights groups and other observers say those attacks were responded to with a major military and security operation that included helicopter attacks and the burning of Rohingya villages. Refugees have also told CNN non-Muslim groups were armed and encouraged to attack their Muslim neighbors. 

Government efforts to "restore the situation to normalcy" are succeeding, Suu Kyi said. "Since the fifth of September, there have been no armed clashes and there have been no clearance operations." 

However, satellite imagery examined by Amnesty International appears to show more than a dozen burned villages and fires since that date. 

Human Rights Watch said 62 villages were torched between August 25 and September 14. 

CNN's Bex Wright and Josh Berlinger contributed reporting.

By Rebecca Wright, Alexandra Field and Sugam Pokharel
CNN
September 17, 2017

Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh -- One woman and two children were killed in a stampede for unofficial handouts of clothing near a Rohingya refugee camp, aid agencies say.

The three people -- whose names and ages have not been released -- died Friday as supplies were being thrown from relief trucks on the road in the Balukhali Pan Bazar near the Kutupalong refugee camp, the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) in Bangladesh said.

The deaths are a stark reminder of the desperation in the camps near the border with Myanmar, where an estimated 409,000 refugees have arrived since August 25, more than doubling the existing Rohingya refugee population. 

"I could not bring anything. My clothes were given to me by someone here," said Rohingya refugee Romiza Begum. "I lost everything. There is nothing left in my home in Myanmar. Everything is destroyed."

The exodus began after Rohingya militants killed 12 security officials at border posts in Myanmar's Rakhine State, resulting in an intensified government "clearance operation." Amnesty International has accused Myanmar's military of deliberately torching Muslim-minority Rohingya villages near the Bangladesh border in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing." The government says it is targeting terrorists.

A dangerous distribution model

Unofficial aid distributions are often carried out by sympathetic locals in Bangladesh, who pile bags full of donations on the back of trucks and then throw them out as they drive through the camps.

CNN witnessed several of these aid drops in and around the Kutupalong refugee camp. When the trucks are spotted on the road they spark a frenzied dash as crowds of desperate Rohingya refugees race towards them, through mud and traffic, in the hope of catching some supplies.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar grab onto a bag of food from a man on a truck delivering aid in Ukhia on September 14.

"We just want to help," one man throwing out aid told CNN. 

Relief agencies appreciate the efforts of those trying to help, but say this is a hazardous way to do it.
Corinne Ambler, spokeswoman for the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) Bangladesh, said it is better for refugees to use official aid distribution points because the truck method is too dangerous.

Refugees who manage to catch tossed supplies sometimes end up in a fight to keep them. Those who fail often climb onto the truck to try to grab anything they can, but men on the back of the truck have sticks and beat them down. Children are most in danger as the truck drivers often don't see them, Ambler said.

'Wall-to-wall human suffering'

Many of the Rohingya refugees are sick, hungry and dehydrated by the time they arrive. Many have malnutrition or diarrhea, and some arrive with gunshot wounds, burns or land-mine injuries they sustained escaping Myanmar. 

"We came to Bangladesh because life back home was very dangerous. Bullets were flying around like rain," one 60-year-old Rohingya refugee told CNN. "I fell down when I was running away and hurt my knee. I can't walk or sit properly now."

The aid agencies working in the area -- including the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), the World Food Program and other UN agencies -- are forced to prioritize their limited supplies by focusing on the most vulnerable people, such as pregnant women and babies, the sick and the elderly. Ambler says the people they are serving are only "a drop in the ocean" compared to the thousands who need aid. 

"I can only describe it as wall-to-wall human suffering. I've never seen anything like it," Ambler, the IFRC spokeswoman, told CNN. "We can't cope with the numbers that are here now. I don't know how we're going to cope if more come."

Three thousand families, or about 15,000 people, lined up on Friday for an official aid distribution organized by Red Crescent volunteers from Bangladesh and the UAE. 

Alongside long queues of mostly women and elderly people waiting in the blazing sun, groups of men stood around looking hungry and desperate. Families headed by men and those with fewer children are a low priority, forcing many men to beg in the street.
"We have no food and no clothes. We are homeless," said refugee Mohammed Harun. "Everything, destroyed by the military. Now we are without food or blankets."

Aid agencies struggle to keep up

CNN cannot verify the stories of the Rohingya refugees, as access to Rakhine State is heavily restricted for journalists.

Even for the families who receive some aid, it's only just enough to keep them alive. Most aid packs include milk, juice, some semolina and some high-energy biscuits. Most of the refugees don't have any cooking equipment or electricity, so there's little point providing food that requires cooking. 

Some refugees are too weak to carry food home and have to rely on volunteers to help them.

Aid agencies are ramping up their responses as fast as they can, but with thousands more refugees arriving every day, it's a race against time just to keep people in these camps alive.

"It's a challenge for everyone to scale up quickly," Ambler said. "Finally, people are starting to realize what the situation is."


    • Rohingya Exodus