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April 11, 2018

Buthidaung, Arakan -- U Maung Kyaw Tha, a administrator of the village tract, Kagyat Phat Kan Pyin, Buthidaung Township, beat local Rohingya women from Tet Yar hamlet and also tried to rape them.

The village administrator, who is a Rakhine Buddhist, beat and harassed 'Rabiya Khatoon' by trespassing into her home along with his 2 henchmen for three consecutive nights between 4th and 6th of April. They called her 2 young single daughters out of their house at midnight [during the curfew time under the act 144] under the pretext of interrogation and attempted to rape them, RB News has been told.

Villagers say, that U Maung Kyaw Tha, the village admin, along with his two henchmen, carried out the sexual assaults on the women's dignity. He further threatened 'Rabiya Khatoon' that he would make her get arrested by the BGP (Border Guard Police) and torture her beating every night in the future had she failed to oblige to fulfill his desire.

Similarly, U Maung Kyaw Tha forcibly entered the bed room of Hussein Banu, another Rohingya woman, from Tet Yar hamlet and kept attempting to rape her from 8pm 6th April to 1am 7th April. It has been reported that, though Hussein Banu, a married woman, managed to avoid getting raped by U Maung Kyaw Tha by taking cover behind behind her children, she got beaten and kicked inhumanely as his attempt to rape her didn't succeed.

Furthermore, on that day 6th April evening, U Maung Kyaw Tha accompanied by his two henchmen, trespassing into Amina Khatoon's home, looked for her son Mohamed Shaker to arrest under accusation of having sexual relationship with his neighbour, Hussein Banu. When Mohamed Shaker was not found, they threatened the other members in the family who were present and destroyed furnitures in the house.

According to the villagers who witnessed the incident, U Maung Kyaw Tha then beat the family members and threatened to kill them if they they continued to live in their village without fleeing to Bangladesh.

Translated into English by Hein Min Maung.




Evidence of official acknowledgement of Rohingyas being settled in Mayu district in northern Arakan as late as 1964. COURTESY: AUTHOR

By CR Abrar
April 10, 2018

Only durable solution to Burma's Rohingya Genocide

Last week, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her dismay at the stalemate on the repatriation of the Rohingyas. “We've been making various efforts… but there has been virtually no progress,” she said. A day earlier, her foreign affairs adviser, Gowher Rizvi, called for re-imposition of sanctions against Burma. “Without pressure, nothing will happen. Myanmar won't be secure for the Rohingyas. If Myanmar is not secure, Rohingyas will not go back,” the adviser noted. Underscoring the severity of the situation, Rizvi went on to state, “If Myanmar can get away [with that], there will be no security of minorities anywhere in the world. So, we really need to wake up,” he said, calling for “extraordinary international support” for the Rohingyas.

So far Burma has cleared some 600 cases for repatriation in response to Bangladesh's supplied list of 8,030 names. The former accused the latter of not adhering to the terms of the agreement in preparing the list. Dhaka rejected the allegation. It feels betrayed by Naypyidaw's machinations to stall the much-desired repatriation. Included in those are: coming up with new demands and inordinate delay in verification.

The repatriation and the physical arrangement deals, signed on November 23, 2017 and January 16, 2018 respectively, set the January 23 deadline for the repatriation of 670,000 Rohingyas who sought shelter in this country, fleeing atrocities of a monumental scale in the Arakan state. In order to placate its eastern neighbour, Bangladesh refrained from including in the list more than 200,000 Rohingyas who came before August 25, 2017.

The Burmese attitude and handling of the repatriation process raise the question if Naypyidaw was ever sincere in taking back the Rohingyas. At a time when repatriation deals were being negotiated, instead of creating an enabling condition, the security forces in Burma continued their operations in the northern Arakan, killing people, torching houses and forcing the survivors to seek asylum in Bangladesh until a few weeks ago. As a matter of strategy and to erase the evidence of genocide, Naypyidaw is bulldozing the charred dwellings and other structures of Rohingya villages and vegetation. It is also setting up security installations and facilitating transmigration of Rakhine Buddhists in the Rohingya land. Press reports inform that members of the Rakhine community of Bangladesh are also being encouraged by the Burmese authorities to settle in the Rohingya land—in all likelihood, with the purported aim to malign Bangladesh that Buddhists are not safe in this land.

The so-called “temporary shelters” in a closed zone with high-perimeter, barbed wire fences and watch towers clearly indicate the interned conditions in which the repatriated Rohingyas would be in for uncertain periods, before (if ever) they are settled in their own homes. The above conditions, coupled with the failure to acknowledge the wanton atrocities committed and prosecute the perpetrators, the bizarre laying of blame on the Rohingyas for torching their own homes, and the outright refusal to consider restoration of citizenship and other associated rights, have led discerning observers to conclude that a “safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas” is no longer a valid option. It also needs to be borne in mind that since August 25, 2017, despite calls for independent international enquiry into the violence, thus far Burma has remained resolute in not granting full access to areas of concern to the UN Fact Finding Mission, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma, and also the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, impeding the process of establishing truth and accountability. Such conditions led the International Commission of Jurists to conclude that “The current situation in Rakhine State is incongruous to voluntary returns of the Rohingya refugees.”

Of the three “durable solutions” recognised in conventional refugee discourse, if “voluntary repatriation” is ruled out, then “third-country resettlement” and “local integration” remain the other options. Are those options feasible in the Rohingya refugee context?

Very recently, the special envoy of the Canadian prime minister recommended that Canada should welcome refugees from the Rohingya community. Days ago, the Filipino president also expressed a similar interest. There is no reason to believe if at all these countries and others will end up taking Rohingyas; the number in all likelihood would be paltry compared to the existing refugee caseload. In that context, such declarations should be essentially viewed as well-meaning expressions of solidarity with the Rohingyas. With the United States, the largest refugee receiving country, in retreat from its decades-long policy of admitting refugees and with the increase in sway of right-wing political forces in Europe and Australia, the future of a third-country resettlement appears to be bleak.

Against the current anti-refugee, anti-migrant and xenophobic context, particularly in the global north, Bangladesh has set a unique example by admitting and providing shelter to the hapless victims of genocide. It has done so despite being a resource-poor and densely populated country. Bangladesh government has categorically stated that local integration of Rohingyas is not an option, a view largely shared by its populace. Such a policy, if ever considered, will likely be politically charged and will, in all likelihood, work against the national consensus that exists in favour of the Rohingyas now. There is also the important moral and strategic question: by exploring solutions other than voluntary return, would not the international community be complicit in fulfilling the long-term Burmese agenda of depopulating Arakan of the Rohingyas?

Thus, if safe, dignified and voluntary repatriation is not in the offing, if third-country resettlement is a non-starter, and if local integration is not a practical proposition, what fate should lie for the Rohingyas? Surely, Bangladesh does not have the capacity to take care of more than a million people for an uncertain period. At this time of global uncertainty, there is always the likelihood of the outbreak of new humanitarian crises and hence no guarantee that the international community will continue to support maintaining the Rohingya refugees for perpetuity. All these lead us to think of a creative and practical durable solution to address the issue. The Protected Return to Protected Homeland (PR2PH) plan, presented at the Berlin Myanmar Genocide Conference in February this year by the members of global Rohingya community and their supporters, is an important contribution in that conversation.

The core of PR2PH plan is the declaration of northern Arakan as the Rohingya Homeland, the ancestral home of the Rohingya, protected by international forces and ensuring the return of 1 million Rohingyas from Bangladesh and other members of Rohingya diaspora who fled what Amartya Sen and Desmond Tutu had termed as “slow burning genocide” to Arakan permanently, or on a temporary basis, to rebuild their homeland through self-rule. It will also entail setting up a demilitarised zone south of Maungdaw ensuring that no Tatmadaw forces are present in the region. Such an arrangement will address the Rohingya's existential need for an internationally protected homeland in northern Arakan within the Union of Burma.

While facilitating their return, Bangladesh and the international community must acknowledge the reality that this is not a typical case of repatriation and thus a matter of agreeing on modalities and setting up of logistics for facilitating the return of refugees to their country of origin, where the situation that led to their flight has registered an improvement. On the contrary, this is a case where the genocidal regime is still in control of the state and has remained resolutely committed in its intent to exterminate the population. Hence, the emphasis is on the concept, Protected Return.

The idea of re-establishing Rohingya homeland, though conceived by the Rohingya leaders, was neatly articulated by Irwin Cotler, a Canadian constitutional lawyer, war crimes justice and legal counsel of Nelson Mandela and Andrei Sakharov, at the Berlin conference. There is little scope to dismiss the Homeland plan as impractical and unfeasible. As has been noted by Rohingya specialist Maung Zarni, the idea of “a home for Rohingya is rooted in the Burmese official documents including Encyclopaedia which defined officially Northern Arakan State (of Mayu Frontier area) as Rohingya homeland (1964) and Myanmar Ministry of Defence's highest leadership spelled this out in July 1961 during the Mujahideen's surrender.” Zarni provides documentary evidence to back his statement and argues that as part of a surrender deal, the military leadership in Rangoon gave in to the Mujahideen's demand to keep Mayu district out of Akyab (Sittwe) based Rakhine control. This suited the military's own agenda of keeping Rakhine nationalists in check. The first founding chief administrator of this homeland for Rohingyas was the then young Lt-Colonel Tin Oo, now 95-year-old Vice Chair of the ruling National League for Democracy, the oldest colleague of Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. The unwillingness of the Burmese state to provide protection to the Rohingya has necessitated the need for international protection of the designated homeland that very much existed four decades ago.

No doubt the Burmese leadership will oppose the PR2PH plan. Time has long past for the international community to go beyond appeasing the murderous regime and robustly implement the homeland plan for the Rohingyas. This is perhaps the only feasible and legitimate durable solution to save them from the predatory genocidal Burmese politico-military establishment and to avert undesirable consequences that this protracted refugee situation may create not only for Bangladesh, but also for the region as a whole, with wider consequences for the global community.

CR Abrar teaches international relations at the University of Dhaka.



By Maung Zarni
April 9, 2018

Only 2 generations ago the Rohingya people of Northern Arakan or Rakhine State of Myanmar had a homeland.

The homeland of Rohingya people was officially referred to as the Mayu Frontier region, and was a separate administrative district made up of the two predominantly Rohingya, but not segregated towns of Maung Daw and Buthidaung, and parts of Rathaey Daung. Owing to the specific request of the Rohingya community leaders and parliamentary representatives, who were worried about being placed under the regional control of Akyab or Sittwe-based Rakhine nationalists, who clamoured for an autonomous statehood for Rakhine, the Burmese Ministry of Defence in Rangoon established Mayu District in the late 1950’s as a distinct administrative region, and placed it under the Ministry’s Border Affairs Division. The first founding chief administrator of this homeland for Rohingyas is the then young Lt-Colonel Tin Oo, now 95-years-old Vice Chair of the ruling National League for Democracy.

Because of the two ongoing separatist movements – Rakhine Buddhists’ independence struggle and Rohingyas’ Mujahedeen movements –the new Rohingya district was not fully operational under Tin Oo’s military command until 1961.

By virtue of his deputy-commandership of the All Rakhine Command (now Western Command), my own relative, Zeya Kyaw Htin Major Ant Kywe, was deputy administrator of Mayu District in 1961 while the Commander Lt-Colonel Ye Gaung, who later became Ne Win’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was Mayu Region’s Chief Administrator.

Even in the formative years of General Ne Win’s coup government that went by the name of the Revolutionary Council, the military government kept intact the official recognition of Mayu District as Rohingya’s ancestral and contemporaneous homeland. The official Myanmar Encyclopedia Volume 9 (1964) left nothing equivocal about this recognition: “the Mayu District is home to the Rohingya people, who make up 70% to 75% of the district’s population. Largely adherents of Islam, Rohingyas are native people of this region. Majority of them are farmers, labourers and fishermen.”

Today, the large swath of their homeland – stretching 100 Km – has become a UNESCO-worthy World Heritage site of mass killings where 318 villages had been burned systematically by Myanmar Tatmadaw and auxiliary troops which subsequently bulldozed both charred village remains and unknown number of mass graves.

Since the 1990’s when the United Nations first set up the UN Special Rapporteur to monitor and investigate pervasive human rights abuses in Burma, including those to which Rohingya population in Northern Rakhine have been subjected to successive Myanmar or Burmese governments, both military and civilian, have categorically denied the existence of Rohingya people as an ethnic community of the country, let alone acknowledge truthfully that Rohingyas were accorded a specific region of their own.

In fact, ex-General Tin Oo, the elderly Vice Chair of the ruling NLD and the oldest colleague of Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi knew these facts – about the state’s official embrace of Rohingyas as an ethnic people of the Union of Burma and the Ministry of Defence’s patronage in the establishment of Mayu Frontier Region for the Rohingya community. After the two bouts of organized violence took place in Rakhine state involving both Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists, Tin Oo was heard on the Burmese language service of the Radio Free Asia denying that Rohingyas were a distinct ethnic people, in spite of his own intimate knowledge of the fact to the contrary.

The Burmese public, known for their pervasive anti-Muslim and anti-Indian subcontinent racism, is of course to believe one of their iconic anti-military veterans when Tin Oo repeated the Burmese military’s institutionalized stance: the country has no ethnic group named Rohingya, and those who identify as such are unwanted “Bengali” migrants which the neighbouring Bangladesh tacitly encouraged to illegally migrate into the sparsely populated Rakhine or Arakan through the 170-miles-longtah porous land and river boundaries.

When Aung San Suu Kyi infamously asked the US Ambassador Scott Marciel (UN officials and international diplomats) not to use the name “Rohingya” because in her misguided view calling Rohingya by their own group name was going to further inflame the Burmese nationalist passion against the group she was in fact driving the last nail into the coffin of Rohingya identity and presence as an ethnic community living in their own ancestral land of Mayu Frontier region.

In 3 consecutive years since the mass violence flared up against Rohingyas in Rakhine state, I had attempted to provide a select network of Burmese opinion makers – including nationally acclaimed writers, journalists, artists, as well as a few dozen spiritual leaders drawn from Buddhist clergy, Christian churches, Hindu and Muslim communities – with Burmese language official documentation which expose the intense and intentional denial of Rohingya identity, presence and history and, conversely, support solidly the claims of Rohingyas’ claim of Northern Arakan as their ancestral homeland and their pre-British presence on it.

The power of 40-years of sustained propaganda by the military is such that the otherwise intelligent and compassionate Burmese remain unpersuaded by the facts about Rohingya people: my non-Rohingya Burmese friends stare at the official encyclopedia, official transcripts by Prime Minister U Nu, high ranking military officials including the Deputy Commander in Chief of the Burmese armed forces, as well as a wide array of documentation as if the old official facts were lies and the new official lies were facts.

Alas, truths are fragile and lies die hard, in a deeply racist mental culture such as today’s Myanmar.

Tragically, Myanmar’s rejection of Rohingya people is complete and total: all key pillars of the State and society – namely the powerful Armed Forces, the Sangha or Buddhist Order, the political class led by Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy – have stated their counter-factual view that Rohingyas do not exist, never existed and will never exist as who they say they are as an ethnic group. Worse still, the country’s Christian and other ethnic non-Burmese who also suffer from decades of military oppression and cultural subjugation at the hands of the dominant Bama majority have expressed no empathy or solidarity when it comes to Rohingya’s plight.

In light of this society-wide rejection of Rohingya people a mere bilateral repatriation scheme has proven to be absolutely no panacea: in fact, repatriation has become a vicious cycle for Rohingyas and Bangladesh. Such well-worn repatriation mantra expressed as “voluntary, safe and dignified” return will simply not do.

The only viable way for the Rohingyas to regain normalcy of life and have a chance to rebuild their communal life is more proactive and aggressive intervention by the external state and non-state actors.

Specifically, Rohingyas need to be provided with their own homeland under international protection. The talk of the restoration of homeland to this world’s largest population with no piece of earth they can call home, belong to or settle down must not be misconstrued as another attempt at ‘ethnic separatism’ as the Burmese military and the public have done, in reaction to the call made by the Berlin Conference on Myanmar Genocide. How the protected homeland will work, and which forces will provide the protection, who will administer the protected homeland are questions that can be pursued once the idea is accepted among key state and non-state actors with express concerns about the plight of 1 million Rohingyas which Myanmar has “dumped” on the sovereign territory of the Bangladeshi neighbour.

As a matter of fact, in her address to the UN General Assembly last fall Prime Minister Sheik Hasina of Bangladesh officially proposed the creation of a ‘safe zone’ in N. Arakan state where Rohingyas have been expelled. Hasina’s proposal needs to be looked afresh again with urgency and seriousness, with the view towards forging an international alliance of friends that can in turn firmly push for restoring Rohingyas their rightful homeland where they can belong, and where they can rebuild their communities, under international protection.

Over the last 40 years, there have so far been 3 such agreements since the perpetrating state of then Burma launched the very first centrally organized wave of violent mass expulsion of Rohingyas in February 1978. None had worked. There are absolutely no indications that the current bilateral agreement ceremoniously signed in the Burmese capital Nay Pyi Daw on 23 November will be any different.

By all means maintain the current talks of economic sanctions, as well as international justice and accountability regarding Myanmar perpetrators including Suu Kyi and her military partners in power. But what Rohingyas need and want more than anything is a homeland where they can live in peace and rebuild their scorch-earthed communities under international protection. The solution to Myanmar genocide will not come from the perpetrators.

It is high time that Bangladesh lead a serious international effort to help actualize the protected return of Rohingyas to their protected homeland in their ancestral place of Northern Arakan or Rakhine. Such an effort needs to be given a serious grassroots and state-level backing worldwide. For Rohingyas deserve and need a piece of earth which they can call home, just like every human community that walks this planet.


A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia. His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and Myanmar’s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal, forthcoming). He holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education) , National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015).

Rohingya refugees build shelter with bamboo at the Jamtoli camp in the morning in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, January 22, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Reuters
April 9, 2018

AMSTERDAM -- The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has asked it to rule on whether it has jurisdiction over the deportations of Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh, a possible crime against humanity, according to a filing published on Monday.

A ruling affirming jurisdiction could pave the way for Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate the deportation of many thousands of Rohingya, though Myanmar is unlikely to cooperate. 

“This is not an abstract question but a concrete one, affecting whether the Court may exercise jurisdiction ... to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute,” Bensouda said in the filing.

The main reason for doubt over jurisdiction is that, while Bangladesh is a member of the court, Myanmar is not. 

Bensouda argued that, given the cross-border nature of the crime of deportation, a ruling in favor of ICC jurisdiction would be in line with established legal principles. 

But she acknowledged uncertainty around the definition of the crime of deportation and limits of the court’s jurisdiction. 

Her request is the first of its kind filed at the court. She asked the court to call a hearing to hear her arguments, as well as those of other interested parties. 


The magistrate assigned to consider the request, Congolese judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, will have considerable leeway in determining how to proceed. 

According to the United Nations, some 700,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya fled their homes into Bangladesh after militant attacks in August last year triggered a military crackdown that the United Nations has said constitutes ethnic cleansing. 

Buddhist-majority Myanmar rejects that charge, saying its forces have been waging a legitimate campaign against Rohingya who attacked government forces. Many in Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 

Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Kevin Liffey



The Rohingya that arrived in Malaysia with 56 people aboard on March 31 [Photo:  ROYAL THAI ARMY / HANDOUT / VIA AFP-JIJI]

 RB News
April 8, 2018

Sittwe (Akyab)/Kuala Lumpur -- Two Rohingya boats with approximately 140 people on board have gone missing en route to Malaysia since they left Sittwe (Akyab) on March 24, reliable sources say.

One boat with 56 Rohingya people on board arrived in Malaysia on March 31, which the Malaysian Navy rescued and later handed to the Immigration Department (Read HERE). The 2 boats left from Sittwe's 'Thae Chaung' beach on the same day with this boat but have been missing since then.

"Earlier, we have come to know one boat reached to Malaysia on March 31. But 2 other boats with 140 people in total, mostly women and children, have still been missing. They have lost contacts with us and we don't know their whereabouts. Their relatives are extremely worried," said Mohammed (pseudonym), Rohingya in Sittwe, to RB News.

The people are leaving are mostly from IDP (Internally Displaced People) Camps in Sittwe, where more than 140,000 people have been forced to live apartheid condition since 2012. And so, more boats are likely to leave Myanmar in the upcoming weeks.

An internally displaced Rohingya in Sittwe said "we can't move anywhere. Our access to livelihoods has been barred. We can't work and have enough food to eat. We are hopeless and don't know when this condition is going to end. We have been forced to live in prison-like-camps since 2012.

"That's why those who have relatives in Malaysia are paying the agents and some properties to sell are selling them off so that they can pay the agents to leave for Malaysia. Two more boats are about to leave soon."

Sources say that each person leaving for Malaysia has to pay Kyat 700,000 to the agents and the agents, in turn, have to bribe the Myanmar Police or Security Force in Sittwe Kyat 10 Million per boat. And each boat can accommodate around 100 people on board.

The Rohingya people subjected to Genocide by the Myanmar military and Security Forces are fleeing the country for Malaysia, which they consider safe haven, through various other routes such as by lands across central Myanmar and Thailand.

About 700,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since last year and more people are still fleeing as the Genocide in Myanmar continues. Many of these survivors in Bangladesh are reported to have been fleeing the country from Cox's Bazaar and Chittagong districts.

[Report by Saeed Arakani & M.S. Anwar]

Please email to editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and feedback.


A Rohingya refugee man with child walks on a bamboo bridge to cross a water stream in Balukhali refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Antoni Slodkowski
April 8, 2018

YANGON -- Myanmar is not ready for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees, said the most senior United Nations official to visit the country this year, after Myanmar was accused of instigating ethnic cleansing and driving nearly 700,000 Muslims to Bangladesh.

“From what I’ve seen and heard from people – no access to health services, concerns about protection, continued displacements – conditions are not conducive to return,” Ursula Mueller, U.N.’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said after a six-day visit to Myanmar. 

A Myanmar government spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Mueller’s remarks. 

The Myanmar government has previously pledged to do its best to make sure repatriation under an agreement signed with Bangladesh in November would be “fair, dignified and safe”. 

Myanmar has so far verified several hundred Rohingya Muslim refugees for possible repatriation. The group would be “the first batch” of refugees and could come back to Myanmar “when it was convenient for them,” a Myanmar official said last month. 

Mueller was granted rare access in Myanmar, allowed to visit the most affected areas in Rakhine state, and met army-controlled ministers of defence and border affairs, as well as de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian officials. 

The exodus of Rohingya Muslims followed an Aug. 25 crackdown by the military in the northwestern Rakhine state. Rohingya refugees reported killings, burnings, looting and rape, in response to militant attacks on security forces. 

“I asked (Myanmar officials) to end the violence … and that the return of the refugees from (Bangladeshi refugee camps in) Cox’s Bazar is to be on a voluntary, dignified way, when solutions are durable,” Mueller told Reuters in an interview in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon. 

Myanmar says its forces have been engaged in a legitimate campaign against Muslim “terrorists”. 

Bangladesh officials have previously expressed doubts about Myanmar’s willingness to take back Rohingya refugees. 

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete a voluntary repatriation of the refugees in two years. Myanmar set up two reception centres and what it says is a temporary camp near the border in Rakhine to receive the first arrivals. 

“We are right now at the border ready to receive, if the Bangladeshis bring them to our side,” Kyaw Tin, Myanmar minister of international cooperation, told reporters in January. 

Many in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The U.N. has described Myanmar’s counteroffensive as ethnic cleansing, which Myanmar denies. 

Asked whether she believed in government assurances the Rohingya would be allowed to return to their homes after a temporary stay in camps, Mueller said: “I’m really concerned about the situation.” 

Part of the problem is that, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch, Myanmar has bulldozed at least 55 villages that were emptied during the violence. 

“I witnessed areas where villages were burned down and bulldozed...I’ve not seen or heard that there are any preparations for people to go to their places of origin,” Mueller said.

Myanmar officials have said the villages were bulldozed to make way for refugee resettlement. 

Mueller said she has also raised the issue with Myanmar officials of limited humanitarian aid access to the vulnerable people in the country and added, referring to the authorities, that she would “push them on granting access” for aid agencies. 

Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski. Editing by Lincoln Feast.

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.


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