By Thu Thu Aung, Antoni Slodkowski 

Reuters

March 21, 2018

YANGON - Myanmar’s civilian president Htin Kyaw resigned due to ill health on Wednesday and is expected to be replaced by a close ally of de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a move unlikely to affect power in a country where the army remains influential.

Htin Kyaw’s office said he was retiring “in order to take rest from the current duties and responsibilities”. Win Myint, a Suu Kyi loyalist who has served as the speaker of the lower house, was likely to replace him, said NLD spokesman Aung Shin. 

Win Myint has had a tight grip on the parliament and his critics accuse him of stifling democratic debate, including from within the caucus of Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party. He resigned from that post on Wednesday. 

“He is loyal and has been a member of the NLD since the party was founded,” said Aung Shin, who lauded Win Myint’s performance as the lower house speaker and said he has “worked very well with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during the whole period”. 

Suu Kyi is known for keeping her cards close to her chest and operating only with a very narrow group of trusted acolytes. Local media, citing confidential sources, have also reported Win Myint has been tipped to become the next president. 

Analysts said the move was forced by the 71-year-old Htin Kyaw’s deteriorating health, and was unrelated to the crisis sparked by the brutal military crackdown that has pushed out hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh. 

Speculation over Htin Kyaw’s ill health mounted in recent months over his rapid and visible loss of weight.

“The discussion about the replacement has been around for a while so this was well expected,” said Liu Yun, political analyst from China-based Han Yue Consultancy. “It should have a fairly limited impact on the political equation in Myanmar.” 

He said the role of the president “isn’t that influential as Suu Kyi makes the final call, so the impact will be limited.”

INTERREGNUM 

According to the country’s constitution, the more senior of two vice presidents will stand in as president until a new leader is elected by parliament within seven working days. 

“There’s no doubt as to what the outcome of this will be,” said Richard Horsey, a former United Nations official and Yangon-based analyst. 

“The NLD has a strong bloc and a supermajority so whoever is selected as the lower-house candidate will become the next president,” Horsey said. 

In the meantime, Myint Swe, who was the military’s appointment for vice-president, will stand in as the acting president.

The president is the head of state and government in Myanmar, and under the constitution has far-reaching powers. However, Htin Kyaw’s role was more ceremonial because Suu Kyi has been Myanmar’s de facto leader since April 2016. 

A constitution drafted by the former junta bars Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi from the top office and so she hand-picked Htin Kyaw, a close ally of hers, to become president following a historic landslide victory in 2015. 

The charter also reserves for the army one quarter of the seats in parliament and several major cabinet posts, including defense, interior and border affairs, giving it an effective veto over constitutional change and control of security affairs. 

One of the key questions facing Myanmar now, according to Horsey, is, “what will the acting president Myint Swe do during the interregnum because he has the power to do many things.” 

Horsey said that while Myint Swe will be the top executive for no more than a week, “it may worry some in the NLD that you have the military vice-president in charge of the country.” 

Yangon-based diplomats say the relationship between Suu Kyi and the military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, is marked by mistrust and lack of frequent, open communication, highlighting a risk even in the smallest changes to the leadership structure. 

Myint Swe is a retired general who headed the feared military intelligence agency under former junta leader Than Shwe. When Than Shwe ordered a crackdown on anti-junta protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007, known as the Saffron Revolution, Myint Swe was the head of special operations in Yangon. 

Reporting by Thu Thu Aung and Antoni Slodkowski; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee and Simon Lewis; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Bill Tarrant

Reuters

March 16, 2018

By Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall 

Reuters

March 11, 2018

CHAKMAKUL REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh -- The Rohingya refugees who live in shacks clinging to these steep, denuded hills in southern Bangladesh pray that the sandbags fortifying the slopes will survive the upcoming monsoon. 

“They make it safer, but they won’t hold if the rain is really heavy,” said Mohammed Hares, 18. Cracks have already formed in the packed mud on which his shack is built.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since last August to escape a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar. Most now live in flimsy, bamboo-and-plastic structures perched on what were once forested hills. 

Bangladesh is lashed by typhoons, and the Rohingya camps are clustered in a part of the country that records the highest rainfall. Computer modelling by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) shows that more than 100,000 refugees will be threatened by landslides and floods in the coming monsoon. 

The rains typically begin in April and peak in July, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. 

In Kutupalong-Balukhali, the biggest of the makeshift camps, up to a third of the land could be flooded, leaving more than 85,000 refugees homeless, according to the UNHCR. Another 23,000 refugees live on slopes at risk of landslide. 

The UNHCR, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and World Food Programme are using bulldozers to level 123 acres in northern Kutupalong-Balukhali camp in an effort to make the area safer, said UNHCR spokeswoman Caroline Gluck. 

IOM is putting debris-removal equipment and work crews throughout the camps, it said, and trying to improve roads and stabilise slopes. It is also setting up emergency diarrhoea treatment centres and providing search and rescue and first aid training. 

Bangladesh Disaster Management Secretary Shah Kamal said the government was working with the UN to relocate 133,000 people living in high-risk areas. It is also launching a Rohingya-language radio station that will act as a natural disaster warning system, he said. 

Bangladesh government officials have also previously told Reuters they are pushing ahead with a controversial plan to turn an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal into a temporary home for the Rohingya and move 100,000 refugees there ahead of the monsoon. 

Flooding increases the risk of disease outbreaks. It could also threaten access to medical facilities, making them difficult to reach and restock, the modelling shows. Latrines, washrooms and tube wells may also be flooded. 

The risk of landslides has been exacerbated by refugee families needing firewood to cook. Trees were cut down to make way for the refugees, who also dug up the roots for firewood, making the slopes even weaker and prone to collapse. 

“This was a forest when I first arrived,” said Arafa Begum, 40, who lives with her three children in a shack on a barren, vertiginous slope in Chakmakul camp. She said she wanted to move before the monsoon but must await the instructions of the majhi, or block leader. 

The majhi’s name is Jahid Hussain. “I don’t know what I’ll do when the rain comes,” he told Reuters. “It depends on Allah.” 

Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall in CHAKMAKUL REFUGEE CAMP Additional reporting by Ruma Paul in DHAKA Editing by Alex Richardson

By Stephanie Nebehay

Reuters

March 9, 2018

GENEVA - The top United Nations human rights official called on Friday for the U.N. General Assembly to refer alleged atrocities committed against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also urged Myanmar’s government to allow monitors into northern Rakhine state to investigate what he called suspected “acts of genocide” against the Muslim minority. 

“We are saying there are strong suspicions that, yes, acts of genocide may have taken place. But only a court can confirm this,” Zeid told a news conference in Geneva. 

Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Tom Miles

By Stephanie Nebehay

Reuters

March 7, 2018

GENEVA -- The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that he strongly suspected that “acts of genocide” may have taken place against Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since August.

Reports of bulldozing of alleged mass graves showed a “deliberate attempt by the authorities to destroy evidence of potential international crimes, including possible crimes against humanity,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein added in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council. 

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security crackdown in August, joining 200,000 refugees from a previous exodus. 

Zeid noted that his office said on Tuesday that it believes ethnic cleansing is still underway in Rakhine.

Rohingya are still fleeing because of “systematic” if lower-intensity persecution and violence there, he said. 

“Victims have reported killings, rape, torture and abductions by the security forces and local militia, as well as apparently deliberate attempts to force the Rohingya to leave the area through starvation, with officials blocking their access to crops and food supplies,” Zeid told the Geneva forum. 

“This Council is aware that my office has strong suspicions that acts of genocide may have taken place in Rakhine State since August,” he added. 

There was no immediate comment by the Myanmar government. In the Council, its delegation is allowed to respond on Thursday. 

His office had received reports of land inhabited by Rohingya being appropriated and members of other ethnic groups replacing them. 

“A recent announcement that seven soldiers and three police officers will be brought to justice for the alleged extra-judicial killing of ten Rohingya men is grossly insufficient,” he added. 

Myanmar’s government must take steps to provide real accountability for violations and respect the rights of Rohingya, including to citizenship, Zeid said. 

A fact-finding mission set up by the Council, headed by former Indonesian Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman, is due to report on its initial findings on Monday after interviewing victims and survivors in Bangladesh and other countries. 

Pending their final report, the U.N. General Assembly should establish a new independent mechanism to expedite criminal proceedings in courts against those responsible, Zeid said. 

Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Tom Miles, William Maclean

By Ruma Paul

Reuters

March 1, 2018

DHAKA -- Bangladesh will send a protest note to Myanmar over an increased security presence near a portion of their border where thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been sheltering just inside Myanmar, a Bangladesh border guard official said on Thursday.

The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern that thousands of people staying on the strip of land, dubbed “no man’s land” because it is beyond Myanmar’s border fence but on Myanmar’s side of a creek that marks the international border, would be forcibly returned without sufficient consideration for their safety. 

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh after insurgent attacks on Aug. 25 sparked a military crackdown that the United Nations has said amounted to ethnic cleansing, with reports of arson attacks, murder and rape. 

About 5,300 people had been staying in a makeshift camp on the border line since late August, but roughly half moved to camps inside Bangladesh after the two countries met to discuss possible repatriation on Feb. 20. 

Several hundred of them have been moved back to the border line, two border guards said. 

On Thursday, Myanmar armed soldiers and police, estimated to number more than 200, came to the border fence and appeared to be moving heavy weapons including mortars to the area, said a Bangladesh army official and the two guards, all three of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Dil Mohammed, a community leader among the roughly 950 Rohingya families still staying at the border, told Reuters that Myanmar officials used loudspeakers to tell them to move from the area. 

The movement of troops so close to the border violated international norms, an official of Bangladesh’s border guard, Brigadier General Mujibur Rahman, told Reuters. 

“We are sending them a protest note. We have already asked for a flag meeting,” said Rahman, the force’s additional director general in charge of operations, referring to a meeting of border guards of both countries. 

“They have removed heavy weapons, such as machine guns and mortars, from the area after our verbal protests.” 

Myanmar military spokesman Myat Min Oo said he could not confirm there was any troop activity, and declined to comment further, citing a public holiday in Myanmar. 

A spokesman for the country’s home affairs ministry, Myo Thu Soe, said he was unaware of the troop movements. 

Myanmar’s main government spokesman, Zaw Htay, declined to comment on Thursday’s activity. 

On Wednesday, he had told Reuters that “terrorists” with links to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which had attacked 30 Myanmar police posts and an army base in August, were sheltering in the border area. 

Zaw Htay added that he believed people were staying there to put political pressure on Myanmar’s government and “create a situation where Myanmar security forces and government officials will remove them”. 

Additional reporting by Thu Thu Aung and Simon Lewis in YANGON; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

By Robin Emmott

Reuters

February 22, 2018

BRUSSELS -- The European Union will start preparing sanctions against Myanmar generals over killings of Rohingya Muslims by formally calling on the bloc’s foreign policy chief next week to draw up a list of possible names, two diplomats said.

Any new travel bans and asset freezes would be the EU’s toughest measures yet to try to hold the military accountable for the abuses, likely joining U.S. and Canadian sanctions already in place. 

“Ministers will call on (Federica) Mogherini to propose restrictive measures on senior members of the Myanmar military for systematic human rights abuses, without delay,” one diplomat said on Thursday, referring to EU sanctions. 

Foreign ministers will also ask Mogherini and the EU’s foreign service, the EEAS, on Monday to look at ways to strengthen the bloc’s 1990s-era arms embargo on the Southeast Asian country that remains in place. 

In a statement expected to be released on Monday at a regular gathering of EU foreign ministers, the bloc is also expected to reiterate its call for the release of Reuters reporters detained on Dec. 12 over accusations that they violated Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. 

The two had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men who were buried in a mass grave in Rakhine state after being hacked to death or shot by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist neighbors and soldiers. 

No names of generals to be targeted for sanctions have been yet discussed, the diplomats said, but the United States said in December it was sanctioning Major General Maung Maung Soe, who is accused of a crackdown on the Rohingya minority in Rakhine. 

EU sanctions lists are often coordinated with Washington. 

The EU’s decision to consider sanctions reflects resistance to such measures in the U.N. Security Council, where veto-wielding powers Russia and China said this month they believe the situation in Rakhine was stable and under control. 

The United States, as well as United Nations, have described the military crackdown in Myanmar as “ethnic cleansing”. About 655,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine for shelter over the border in Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. 

Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Mark Heinrich

By Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis, Antoni Slodkowski 

Reuters 

February 8, 2018

INN DIN, Myanmar -- Bound together, the 10 Rohingya Muslim captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a shallow grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by Myanmar troops, two of the gravediggers said.

“One grave for 10 people,” said Soe Chay, 55, a retired soldier from Inn Din’s Rakhine Buddhist community who said he helped dig the pit and saw the killings. The soldiers shot each man two or three times, he said. “When they were being buried, some were still making noises. Others were already dead.” 

The killings in the coastal village of Inn Din marked another bloody episode in the ethnic violence sweeping northern Rakhine state, on Myanmar’s western fringe. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh since August. None of Inn Din’s 6,000 Rohingya remained in the village as of October. 

The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings aimed at rubbing them out of existence in this mainly Buddhist nation of 53 million. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide; the United States has called the action ethnic cleansing. Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents. 

Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most Burmese consider them to be unwanted immigrants from Bangladesh; the army refers to the Rohingya as “Bengalis.” In recent years, sectarian tensions have risen and the government has confined more than 100,000 Rohingya in camps where they have limited access to food, medicine and education. 

Reuters has pieced together what happened in Inn Din in the days leading up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school students in their late teens. 

Until now, accounts of the violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been provided only by its victims. The Reuters reconstruction draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims. 

This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel themselves. Members of the paramilitary police gave Reuters insider descriptions of the operation to drive out the Rohingya from Inn Din, confirming that the military played the lead role in the campaign. 

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM A MASSACRE 

The slain men’s families, now sheltering in Bangladesh refugee camps, identified the victims through photographs shown to them by Reuters. The dead men were fishermen, shopkeepers, the two teenage students and an Islamic teacher. 

Three photographs, provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder, capture key moments in the massacre at Inn Din, from the Rohingya men’s detention by soldiers in the early evening of Sept. 1 to their execution shortly after 10 a.m. on Sept. 2. Two photos – one taken the first day, the other on the day of the killings – show the 10 captives lined up in a row, kneeling. The final photograph shows the men’s bloodied bodies piled in the shallow grave. 

The Reuters investigation of the Inn Din massacre was what prompted Myanmar police authorities to arrest two of the news agency’s reporters. The reporters, Burmese citizens Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were detained on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents relating to Rakhine. 

Then, on Jan. 10, the military issued a statement that confirmed portions of what Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo and their colleagues were preparing to report, acknowledging that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in the village. It confirmed that Buddhist villagers attacked some of the men with swords and soldiers shot the others dead. 

The statement coincided with an application to the court by prosecutors to charge Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act, which dates back to the time of colonial British rule. The charges carry a maximum 14-year prison sentence. 

But the military’s version of events is contradicted in important respects by accounts given to Reuters by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses. The military said the 10 men belonged to a group of 200 “terrorists” that attacked security forces. Soldiers decided to kill the men, the army said, because intense fighting in the area made it impossible to transfer them to police custody. The army said it would take action against those involved. 

Buddhist villagers interviewed for this article reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din. And Rohingya witnesses told Reuters that soldiers plucked the 10 from among hundreds of men, women and children who had sought safety on a nearby beach. 

Scores of interviews with Rakhine Buddhist villagers, soldiers, paramilitary police, Rohingya Muslims and local administrators further revealed: 

- The military and paramilitary police organized Buddhist residents of Inn Din and at least two other villages to torch Rohingya homes, more than a dozen Buddhist villagers said. Eleven Buddhist villagers said Buddhists committed acts of violence, including killings. The government and army have repeatedly blamed Rohingya insurgents for burning villages and homes. 

- An order to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets was passed down the command chain from the military, said three paramilitary police officers speaking on condition of anonymity and a fourth police officer at an intelligence unit in the regional capital Sittwe. Security forces wore civilian clothes to avoid detection during raids, one of the paramilitary police officers said. 

- Some members of the paramilitary police looted Rohingya property, including cows and motorcycles, in order to sell it, according to village administrator Maung Thein Chay and one of the paramilitary police officers. 

- Operations in Inn Din were led by the army’s 33rd Light Infantry Division, supported by the paramilitary 8th Security Police Battalion, according to four police officers, all of them members of the battalion. 

POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CASES 

Michael G. Karnavas, a U.S. lawyer based in The Hague who has worked on cases at international criminal tribunals, said evidence that the military had organized Buddhist civilians to commit violence against Rohingya “would be the closest thing to a smoking gun in establishing not just intent, but even specific genocidal intent, since the attacks seem designed to destroy the Rohingya or at least a significant part of them.” 

Evidence of the execution of men in government custody also could be used to build a case of crimes against humanity against military commanders, Karnavas said, if it could be shown that it was part of a “widespread or systematic” campaign targeting the Rohingya population. 

Kevin Jon Heller, a University of London law professor who served as a legal associate for convicted war criminal and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, said an order to clear villages by military command was “unequivocally the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.” 

In December, the United States imposed sanctions on the army officer who had been in charge of Western Command troops in Rakhine, Major General Maung Maung Soe. So far, however, Myanmar has not faced international sanctions over the violence. 

Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions. They had hoped the election of her National League for Democracy party in 2015 would bring democratic reform and an opening of the country. Instead, critics say, Suu Kyi is in thrall to the generals who freed her from house arrest in 2010. 

Asked about the evidence Reuters has uncovered about the massacre, government spokesman Zaw Htay said, “We are not denying the allegations about violations of human rights. And we are not giving blanket denials.” If there was “strong and reliable primary evidence” of abuses, the government would investigate, he said. “And then if we found the evidence is true and the violations are there, we will take the necessary action according to our existing law.” 

When told that paramilitary police officers had said they received orders to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets, he replied, “We have to verify. We have to ask the Ministry of Home Affairs and Myanmar police forces.” Asked about the allegations of looting by paramilitary police officers, he said the police would investigate. 

He expressed surprise when told that Buddhist villagers had confessed to burning Rohingya homes, then added, “We recognize that many, many different allegations are there, but we need to verify who did it. It is very difficult in the current situation.” 

Zaw Htay defended the military operation in Rakhine. “The international community needs to understand who did the first terrorist attacks. If that kind of terrorist attack took place in European countries, in the United States, in London, New York, Washington, what would the media say?” 

NEIGHBOR TURNS ON NEIGHBOR 

Inn Din lies between the Mayu mountain range and the Bay of Bengal, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe. The settlement is made up of a scattering of hamlets around a school, clinic and Buddhist monastery. Buddhist homes cluster in the northern part of the village. For many years there had been tensions between the Buddhists and their Muslim neighbors, who accounted for almost 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 people in the village. But the two communities had managed to co-exist, fishing the coastal waters and cultivating rice in the paddies. 

In October 2016, Rohingya militants attacked three police posts in northern Rakhine – the beginning of a new insurgency. After the attacks, Rohingya in Inn Din said many Buddhists stopped hiring them as farmhands and home help. The Buddhists said the Rohingya stopped showing up for work. 

On Aug. 25 last year, the rebels struck again, hitting 30 police posts and an army base. The closest attack was just 4 km to the north. In Inn Din, several hundred fearful Buddhists took refuge in the monastery in the center of the village, more than a dozen of their number said. Inn Din’s Buddhist night watchman San Thein, 36, said Buddhist villagers feared being “swallowed up” by their Muslim neighbors. A Buddhist elder said all Rohingya, “including children,” were part of the insurgency and therefore “terrorists.” 

On Aug. 27, about 80 troops from Myanmar’s 33rd Light Infantry Division arrived in Inn Din, nine Buddhist villagers said. Two paramilitary police officers and Soe Chay, the retired soldier, said the troops belonged to the 11th infantry regiment of this division. The army officer in charge told villagers they must cook for the soldiers and act as lookouts at night, Soe Chay said. The officer promised his troops would protect Buddhist villagers from their Rohingya neighbors. Five Buddhist villagers said the officer told them they could volunteer to join security operations. Young volunteers would need their parents’ permission to join the troops, however. 

The army found willing participants among Inn Din’s Buddhist “security group,” nine members of the organization and two other villagers said. This informal militia was formed after violence broke out in 2012 between Rakhine’s Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, sparked by reports of the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Myanmar media reported at the time that the three were sentenced to death by a district court. 

Inn Din’s security group built watch huts around the Buddhist part of the village, and its members took turns to stand guard. Its ranks included Buddhist firefighters, school teachers, students and unemployed young men. They were useful to the military because they knew the local geography, said Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay. 

Most of the group’s 80 to 100 men armed themselves with machetes and sticks. They also had a handful of guns, according to one member. Some wore green fatigue-style clothing they called “militia suits.” 

ORGANIZING THE ARSON ATTACKS 

In the days that followed the 33rd Light Infantry’s arrival, soldiers, police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said. 

Two of the paramilitary police officers, both members of the 8th Security Police Battalion, said their battalion raided Rohingya hamlets with soldiers from the newly arrived 33rd Light Infantry. One of the police officers said he received verbal orders from his commander to “go and clear” areas where Rohingya lived, which he took to mean to burn them. 

The second police officer described taking part in several raids on villages north of Inn Din. The raids involved at least 20 soldiers and between five and seven police, he said. A military captain or major led the soldiers, while a police captain oversaw the police team. The purpose of the raids was to deter the Rohingya from returning. 

“If they have a place to live, if they have food to eat, they can carry out more attacks,” he said. “That’s why we burned their houses, mainly for security reasons.” 

Soldiers and paramilitary police wore civilian shirts and shorts to blend in with the villagers, according to the second police officer and Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay. If the media identified the involvement of security personnel, the police officer explained, “we would have very big problems.” 

A police spokesman, Colonel Myo Thu Soe, said he knew of no instances of security forces torching villages or wearing civilian clothing. Nor was there any order to “go and clear” or “set fire” to villages. “This is very much impossible,” he told Reuters. “If there are things like that, it should be reported officially, and it has to be investigated officially.” 

“As you’ve told me about these matters now, we will scrutinize and check back,” he added. “What I want to say for now is that as for the security forces, there are orders and instructions and step-by-step management, and they have to follow them. So, I don’t think these things happened.” 

The army did not respond to a request for comment. 

A medical assistant at the Inn Din village clinic, Aung Myat Tun, 20, said he took part in several raids. “Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof,” he said. “The village elders put monks’ robes on the end of sticks to make the torches and soaked them with kerosene. We couldn’t bring phones. The police said they will shoot and kill us if they see any of us taking photos.”

The night watchman San Thein, a leading member of the village security group, said troops first swept through the Muslim hamlets. Then, he said, the military sent in Buddhist villagers to burn the houses. 

“We got the kerosene for free from the village market after the kalars ran away,” he said, using a Burmese slur for people from South Asia. 

A Rakhine Buddhist youth said he thought he heard the sound of a child inside one Rohingya home that was burned. A second villager said he participated in burning a Rohingya home that was occupied. 

“I STARTED HACKING HIM WITH A SWORD” 

Soe Chay, the retired soldier who was to dig the grave for the 10 Rohingya men, said he participated in one killing. He told Reuters that troops discovered three Rohingya men and a woman hiding beside a haystack in Inn Din on Aug. 28. One of the men had a smartphone that could be used to take incriminating pictures. 

The soldiers told Soe Chay to “do whatever you want to them,” he said. They pointed out the man with the phone and told him to stand up. “I started hacking him with a sword, and a soldier shot him when he fell down.” 

Similar violence was playing out across a large part of northern Rakhine, dozens of Buddhist and Rohingya residents said. 

Data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme shows scores of Rohingya villages in Rakhine state burned in an area stretching 110 km. New York-based Human Rights Watch says more than 350 villages were torched over the three months from Aug. 25, according to an analysis of satellite imagery. 

In the village of Laungdon, some 65 km north of Inn Din, Thar Nge, 38, said he was asked by police and local officials to join a Buddhist security group. “The army invited us to burn the kalar village at Hpaw Ti Kaung,” he said, adding that four villagers and nearly 20 soldiers and police were involved in the operation. “Police shot inside the village so all the villagers fled and then we set fire to it. Their village was burned because police believed the villagers supported Rohingya militants – that’s why they cleaned it with fire.” 

A Buddhist student from Ta Man Tha village, 15 km north of Laungdon, said he too participated in the burning of Rohingya homes. An army officer sought 30 volunteers to burn “kalar” villages, said the student. Nearly 50 volunteered and gathered fuel from motorbikes and from a market. 

“They separated us into several groups. We were not allowed to enter the village directly. We had to surround it and approach the village that way. The army would shoot gunfire ahead of us and then the army asked us to enter,” he said. 

After the Rohingya had fled Inn Din, Buddhist villagers took their property, including chickens and goats, Buddhist residents told Reuters. But the most valuable goods, mostly motorcycles and cattle, were collected by members of the 8th Security Police Battalion and sold, said the first police officer and Inn Din village administrator Maung Thein Chay. Maung Thein Chay said the commander of the 8th Battalion, Thant Zin Oo, struck a deal with Buddhist businessmen from other parts of Rakhine state and sold them cattle. The police officer said he had stolen four cows from Rohingya villagers, only for Thant Zin Oo to snatch them away. 

Reached by phone, Thant Zin Oo did not comment. Colonel Myo Thu Soe, the police spokesman, said the police would investigate the allegations of looting. 

THE VICTIMS ARE CHOSEN 

By Sept. 1, several hundred Rohingya from Inn Din were sheltering at a makeshift camp on a nearby beach. They erected tarpaulin shelters to shield themselves from heavy rain. 

Among this group were the 10 Rohingya men who would be killed the next morning. Reuters has identified all of the 10 by speaking to witnesses among Inn Din’s Buddhist community and Rohingya relatives and witnesses tracked down in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Five of the men, Dil Mohammed, 35, Nur Mohammed, 29, Shoket Ullah, 35, Habizu, 40, and Shaker Ahmed, 45, were fishermen or fish sellers. The wealthiest of the group, Abul Hashim, 25, ran a store selling nets and machine parts to fishermen and farmers. Abdul Majid, a 45-year-old father of eight, ran a small shop selling areca nut wrapped in betel leaves, commonly chewed like tobacco. Abulu, 17, and Rashid Ahmed, 18, were high school students. Abdul Malik, 30, was an Islamic teacher. 

According to the statement released by the army on Jan. 10, security forces had gone to a coastal area where they “were attacked by about 200 Bengalis with sticks and swords.” The statement said that “as the security forces opened fire into the sky, the Bengalis dispersed and ran away. Ten of them were arrested.” 

Three Buddhist and more than a dozen Rohingya witnesses contradict this version of events. Their accounts differ from one another in some details. The Buddhists spoke of a confrontation between a small group of Rohingya men and some soldiers near the beach. But there is unanimity on a crucial point: None said the military had come under a large-scale attack in Inn Din. 

Government spokesman Zaw Htay referred Reuters to the army’s statement of Jan. 10 and declined to elaborate further. The army did not respond to a request for comment. 

The Rohingya witnesses, who were on or near the beach, said Islamic teacher Abdul Malik had gone back to his hamlet with his sons to collect food and bamboo for shelter. When he returned, a group of at least seven soldiers and armed Buddhist villagers were following him, these witnesses said. Abdul Malik walked towards the watching Rohingya Muslims unsteadily, with blood dripping from his head. Some witnesses said they had seen one of the armed men strike the back of Abdul Malik’s head with a knife. 

Then the military beckoned with their guns to the crowd of roughly 300 Rohingya to assemble in the paddies, these witnesses said. The soldiers and the Rohingya, hailing from different parts of Myanmar, spoke different languages. Educated villagers translated for their fellow Rohingya. 

“I could not hear much, but they pointed toward my husband and some other men to get up and come forward,” said Rehana Khatun, 22, the wife of Nur Mohammed, one of the 10 who were later slain. “We heard they wanted the men for a meeting. The military asked the rest of us to return to the beach.” 

FRESH CLOTHES AND A LAST MEAL 

Soldiers held and questioned the 10 men in a building at Inn Din’s school for a night, the military said. Rashid Ahmed and Abulu had studied there alongside Rakhine Buddhist students until the attacks by Rohingya rebels in October 2016. Schools were shut temporarily, disrupting the pair’s final year. 

“I just remember him sitting there and studying, and it was always amazing to me because I am not educated,” said Rashid Ahmed’s father, farmer Abdu Shakur, 50. “I would look at him reading. He would be the first one in the family to be educated.” 

A photograph, taken on the evening the men were detained, shows the two Rohingya students and the eight older men kneeling on a path beside the village clinic, most of them shirtless. They were stripped when first detained, a dozen Rohingya witnesses said. It isn’t clear why. That evening, Buddhist villagers said, the men were “treated” to a last meal of beef. They were provided with fresh clothing. 

On Sept. 2, the men were taken to scrubland north of the village, near a graveyard for Buddhist residents, six Buddhist villagers said. The spot is backed by a hill crested with trees. There, on their knees, the 10 were photographed again and questioned by security personnel about the disappearance of a local Buddhist farmer named Maung Ni, according to a Rakhine elder who said he witnessed the interrogation. 

Reuters was not able to establish what happened to Maung Ni. According to Buddhist neighbors, the farmer went missing after leaving home early on Aug. 25 to tend his cattle. Several Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya villagers told Reuters they believed he had been killed, but they knew of no evidence connecting any of the 10 men to his disappearance. The army said in its Jan. 10 statement that “Bengali terrorists” had killed Maung Ni, but did not identify the perpetrators. 

Two of the men pictured behind the Rohingya prisoners in the photograph taken on the morning of Sept. 2 belong to the 8th Security Police Battalion. Reuters confirmed the identities of the two men from their Facebook pages and by visiting them in person. 

One of the two officers, Aung Min, a police recruit from Yangon, stands directly behind the captives. He looks at the camera as he holds a weapon. The other officer, police Captain Moe Yan Naing, is the figure on the top right. He walks with his rifle over his shoulder. 

The day after the two Reuters reporters were arrested in December, Myanmar’s government also announced that Moe Yan Naing had been arrested and was being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act. 

Aung Min, who is not facing legal action, declined to speak to Reuters. 

VENGEANCE FOR A MISSING FARMER 

Three Buddhist youths said they watched from a hut as the 10 Rohingya captives were led up a hill by soldiers towards the site of their deaths. 

One of the gravediggers, retired soldier Soe Chay, said Maung Ni’s sons were invited by the army officer in charge of the squad to strike the first blows. 

The first son beheaded the Islamic teacher, Abdul Malik, according to Soe Chay. The second son hacked another of the men in the neck. 

“After the brothers sliced them both with swords, the squad fired with guns. Two to three shots to one person,” said Soe Chay. A second gravedigger, who declined to be identified, confirmed that soldiers had shot some of the men. 

In its Jan. 10 statement, the military said the two brothers and a third villager had “cut the Bengali terrorists” with swords and then, in the chaos, four members of the security forces had shot the captives. “Action will be taken against the villagers who participated in the case and the members of security forces who broke the Rules of Engagement under the law,” the statement said. It didn’t spell out those rules. 

Tun Aye, one of the sons of Maung Ni, has been detained on murder charges, his lawyer said on Jan. 13. Contacted by Reuters on Feb. 8, the lawyer declined to comment further. Reuters was unable to reach the other brother. 

In October, Inn Din locals pointed two Reuters reporters towards an area of brush behind the hill where they said the killings took place. The reporters discovered a newly cut trail leading to soft, recently disturbed earth littered with bones. Some of the bones were entangled with scraps of clothing and string that appeared to match the cord that is seen binding the captives’ wrists in the photographs. The immediate area was marked by the smell of death. 

Reuters showed photographs of the site to three forensic experts: Homer Venters, director of programs at Physicians for Human Rights; Derrick Pounder, a pathologist who has consulted for Amnesty International and the United Nations; and Luis Fondebrider, president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, who investigated the graves of those killed under Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. All observed human remains, including the thoracic part of a spinal column, ribs, scapula, femur and tibia. Pounder said he couldn’t rule out the presence of animal bones as well.

The Rakhine Buddhist elder provided Reuters reporters with a photograph which shows the aftermath of the execution. In it, the 10 Rohingya men are wearing the same clothing as in the previous photo and are tied to each other with the same yellow cord, piled into a small hole in the earth, blood pooling around them. Abdul Malik, the Islamic teacher, appears to have been beheaded. Abulu, the student, has a gaping wound in his neck. Both injuries appear consistent with Soe Chay’s account. 

Forensic pathologist Fondebrider reviewed this picture. He said injuries visible on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp that was applied on the throat.” 

Some family members did not know for sure that the men had been killed until Reuters returned to their shelters in Bangladesh in January. 

“I can’t explain what I feel inside. My husband is dead,” said Rehana Khatun, wife of Nur Mohammed. “My husband is gone forever. I don’t want anything else, but I want justice for his death.” 

In Inn Din, the Buddhist elder explained why he chose to share evidence of the killings with Reuters. “I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in future.” 

(GRAPHIC - Burned to the ground: tmsnrt.rs/2lFeOFi) 

(GRAPHIC - Massacre in Myanmar: tmsnrt.rs/2sjHHNC) 

Reporting by Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis and Antoni Slodkowski; editing by Janet McBride, Martin Howell and Alex Richardson.

By Thu Thu Aung, Yimou Lee

Reuters

February 1, 2018

YANGON -- A court in Myanmar declined to grant bail on Thursday for two Reuters journalists accused of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act, although their defense lawyer said information in documents at the center of the case was publicly available.

Lawyer Than Zaw Aung said a police witness had accepted during court proceedings that details in documents found in the possession of the reporters when they were arrested had already been published in newspaper reports. 

Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in Rakhine state, where an army crackdown on insurgents that started on Aug. 25 has triggered the flight of nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. 

The reporters were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon. They have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some documents at a restaurant by two officers they had not met before. 

Police Major Min Thant, who said he led the team of arresting officers, on Thursday submitted what he said were secret documents seized from the two reporters to the district court in Yangon. 

Police have previously said the documents contained information on the disposition and operations of security forces in Rakhine’s Maungdaw district. 

In response, defense attorney Than Zaw Aung submitted copies of several newspaper articles that he said showed the information in the documents was already in the public domain. 

“After Aug. 25, the government explained to the media and diplomats about what happened in Maungdaw,” Than Zaw Aung said. 

(GRAPHIC: Arrested Reuters Reporters - here) 

He said afterwards that Major Min Thant had acknowledged that when cross-examined. 

“The witness admitted that the content of the documents they obtained from them is the information that the public already knew. He said the contents are same,” Than Zaw Aung told Reuters. 

CALLS FOR RELEASE 

At the end of the day’s proceedings, the court rejected the defense’s application for bail. Reading from the Official Secrets Act, Judge Ye Lwin said the alleged offense was “non-bailable”, without elaborating further. 

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community “to do whatever it can” to secure the release of two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar and ensure press freedom in the country, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday. 

Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler expressed disappointment at the decision and called for the journalists’ prompt release. 

“It has now been more than fifty days since they were arrested, and they should have the opportunity to be with their families as the hearings continue,” he said in a statement.

“We believe the court proceedings will demonstrate their innocence and Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo will be able to return to their jobs reporting on events in Myanmar.” 

Relatives of the two reporters were distraught after the decision was announced. 

“I cleaned my house with the hope that he might get bail, just in case,” Pan Ei Mon, Wa Lone’s wife, said, sobbing. “I knew that he wouldn’t get bail but still I cannot handle this.” 

Kyaw Soe Oo’s wife, Chit Su Win, held on to him in tears, kissing him as he was being taken back to prison. 

In the morning, the two journalists had been smiling and appeared in good spirits as they were brought handcuffed to the court from Yangon’s notorious Insein prison. Wa Lone gave the “thumbs up” sign and Kyaw Soe Oo hugged his young daughter.

The courtroom was packed with reporters and diplomats from the U.S., British, Canadian, Norwegian, Swedish, French and Danish embassies as well as United Nations and European Union officials. 

DIFFERENT LOCATIONS 

Under cross-examination, police witness Min Thant also said he had updated the paperwork recording Kyaw Soe Oo’s arrest and search to show he was detained outside the restaurant where the reporters say they had a meal with police officers. 

Kyaw Soe Oo had refused to sign a form stating he was arrested at an intersection in northern Yangon where police say they had a checkpoint, the officer said. 

The two journalists said afterwards that Min Thant was not among the officers who arrested them. 

“We have never seen that police officer before,” Wa Lone told reporters outside the courtroom. “We were arrested by plainclothes police.” 

In his testimony, Min Thant said he led the team that arrested the reporters and that he was in uniform at the time. 

The court hearing is to determine whether Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo will face charges under the Official Secrets Act. 

The act dates back to 1923 - when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was under British rule - and carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. 

The reporters have been accused under Section 3.1 (c), which covers entering prohibited places, and taking images or obtaining secret official documents that “might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy”. 

The next hearing will be on Feb. 6. 

Reporting by Myanmar bureau; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Alex Richardson

Rohingya refugees walk along the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, January 21, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Tom Miles

Reuters

January 29, 2018

GENEVA -- More than 100,000 Rohingya refugees huddled in squalid, muddy camps in Bangladesh will be in grave danger from landslides when the mid-year monsoon season begins, a U.N. humanitarian report said.

There are now more than 900,000 Rohingyas in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, after 688,000 fled violence in Myanmar that flared up in late August. Aid workers say the camps sheltering the new arrivals are completely inadequate. 

“Landslide and flood risk hazard mapping reveal that at least 100,000 people are in grave danger from these risks and require relocation to new areas or within the neighbourhoods that they live in,” the U.N. report said. 

“The lack of space remains the main challenge for the sector as sites are highly congested leading to extremely hard living conditions with no space for service provisions and facilities. In addition, congestion brings increased protections risks and favours disease outbreak such as the diphtheria outbreak currently escalating in most of the sites.”

Although a rapid vaccination programme appears to have staved off the risk of cholera, 4,865 have confirmed, probable or suspected diphtheria, and 35 have died. 

The World Health Organization has vaccinated over 500,000 Rohingyas against diphtheria and on Saturday health workers began giving 350,000 children a second dose. The WHO also has 2,500 doses of anti-toxin, which is in short supply globally, to treat the deadly effects of the disease.

But a new health concern has arisen - mumps. The U.N. report said there had been an increase in cases in the past few weeks, and Rohingya refugees and host communities had never been vaccinated against the highly contagious disease, which is rarely fatal but can cause complications such as meningitis. 

Most of the Rohingya refugees - almost 585,000 - are in an overcrowded area called Kutupalong-Balukhali. 

“A high percentage of the land is unsuitable for human settlement as risks of flooding and landslides are high and are further aggravated by the congestion and extensive terracing of the hills,” the U.N. report said. 

“The anticipated flooding and landslides in the upcoming monsoon season will make a bad situation much worse.” 

A recent engineering assessment said all roads in the camp would be inaccessible for trucks, and the World Food Programme is considering using porters to distribute food, minutes of a Jan. 24 meeting of aid agencies involved in logistics said. 

The Bangladeshi government allocated 2,000 acres (809 hectares) for a new camp in Ukhia, prompting an influx of people before anything was ready. 

“Humanitarian partners are now building necessary infrastructure in challenging conditions, with extremely limited space,” the U.N. report said. 

Reporting by Tom Miles Editing by Jeremy Gaunt

By Yimou Lee

Reuters

January 26, 2018

YANGON -- Veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson denied he was asked by Myanmar’s government to step down from an international advisory board on the Rohingya crisis, his spokesman said on Friday.

A statement issued by the office of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi late on Thursday had accused Richardson of pursuing “his own agenda” and said that the government decided to ask him to quit as his continued participation on the board would not be in the best interests of all concerned. 

“At no point was the Governor asked to step down, either in person or in writing by any member of the Government of Myanmar or the Chair of the Advisory Board,” Richardson’s spokesman Mickey Bergman told Reuters. 

“Quite the opposite, their National Security Advisor stopped by the night before to convince the Governor to stay as planned.” 

Richardson said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he was resigning from the board because it was conducting a “whitewash” and accused Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, of lacking “moral leadership”. 

The departure of Richardson, a former Clinton administration cabinet member, came as the 10-member advisory board was making its first visit to western Rakhine State, from where around 688,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months. 

A U.S. official, who spoke on Thursday on condition of anonymity, said the issues raised by Richardson had reinforced concerns about Myanmar’s handling of the Rohingya crisis. Still, the official said, the United States would likely stick to its ”measured” approach of applying limited pressure on Myanmar and avoiding more drastic measures that could destabilise the situation. 

‘CHEERLEADING SQUAD’ 

A separate statement from the nine remaining members of the advisory board on Thursday said they met this week “with open minds” and agreed “to speak with one voice”. 

“Therefore, any statement about the Advisory Board ‘whitewashing’ or ‘cheerleading’ for anyone lacks complete legitimacy,” the board said. 

Richardson said in the Reuters interview that he was worried the board would become “a cheerleading squad” for the government. 

Richardson’s spokesman said the reference to pursuing his own agenda would seem to refer to his addressing with Suu Kyi the issue of two imprisoned Reuters journalists.

In his interview with Reuters, Richardson said he got into a furious argument with Suu Kyi at a Monday night dinner when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters, who were arrested on Dec. 12 on suspicion of violating Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. 

Reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine. They were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon. 

“It’s important to note that he agreed to serve on the Board a month before the Reuters journalists were arrested,” said Richardson’s spokesman Bergman. 

The armed forces have been accused by Rohingya witnesses and human rights activists of carrying out killings, rapes and arson in Rakhine in a campaign senior officials in the United Nations and United States have described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects that label and has denied nearly all the allegations. 

The former New Mexico governor’s foundation, the Richardson Center, has “invested tens of thousands of dollars of its own money” in preparing for his role on the board “and were gearing up for a full year of robust programming for 2018,” Bergman said. 

Richardson led the first foreign delegation allowed to visit Suu Kyi in 1994 when she was under house arrest, Bergman said, ”and helped to get many Myanmar political prisoners out during military rule, some are currently serving in her government. 

“It is heartbreaking to see her indulging in similar practices, now that she is in power,” Bergman added. 

REPATRIATION CAMPS 

Former South African Defence Minister Roelof Petrus Meyer, one of the four remaining international members of the board, said on Thursday Richardson’s departure was “really unfortunate”. 

After touring temporary repatriation camps set up by Myanmar, Meyer said he thought the country was ready to take back the Rohingya refugees under an agreement with Bangladesh, where they are currently sheltering. 

“The security will be provided...the subject is so internationally covered so I don’t think (Rohingya) people should be scared,” he said. 

The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Myanmar last year, to advise on enacting the findings of an earlier commission headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 

Thursday’s statement from Suu Kyi’s office said the government was committed to “implementing the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State to the fullest extent possible and in the shortest timeframe, in accordance with the situation on the ground”. 

Additional reporting by Thu Thu Aung and Yimou Lee in Yangon, Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Paritosh Bansal in Davos; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Martin Howell