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December 7, 2016

“I once again conveyed Indonesia’s concerns over the situation in Rakhine State to State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” stated the RI Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi after meeting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw, Myanmar on Tuesday evening (6/12).

Minister Retno and State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi openly discussed the situation and developments in Rakhine State. The Minister underlined the importance that security and stability are restored so that inclusive development of Rakhine State can continue. In addition, the Minister hoped that the government of Myanmar continues to uphold respect and protection of human rights of the entire community of Rakhine State, particularly the Muslim minority, especially in efforts to restore stability. “The issue of inclusiveness, where the entire community has the same rights and obligations, is the key to resolving the Rakhine issue,” said the Minister. 

In response, the State Counsellor of Myanmar agreed with the Minister on the importance of inclusive development.

Minister Retno also emphasized the importance of access for humanitarian aid to Rakhine, which was welcomed by the State Counsellor of Myanmar.

The State Counsellor of Myanmar also expressed her appreciation for Indonesia’s development aid thus far, including the humanitarian aid which has reached Rakhine State in the aftermath of the 9 December 2016 incident. “The Myanmar government has opened the door to humanitarian aid from Indonesia, which has made possible for aid from the PKPU to reach Rakhine State,” said the Minister.

Indonesians have provided aid for the construction of two schools in Rakhine region. The construction has been completed. Indonesia has helped build six schools in Rakhine State.

The Minister also stated that Indonesia is ready to resume cooperation in building educational and health infrastructure in Rakhine State. In this regard, the RI Minister conveyed Indonesia’s plan to help development of health facilities on a 4000 sq. meter site in Rakhine State.

In addition, as part of the effort to increase tolerance and harmony among the people of Rakhine State, Indonesia and Myanmar have agreed to increase interfaith dialog cooperation. Indonesia will also continue providing capacity building to Myanmar in the fields of good governance, democracy and human rights.

Indonesia will continue its intensive engagement, whether it is with the Government of Myanmar, the Commission led by Kofi Annan, as well as other parties who share concerns about the situation in Rakhine State.



By Dr Maung Zarni
December 7, 2016

From the outset, I have dismissed Kofi Annan's involvement as nothing more than a public relations exercise launched against the backdrop of strident calls for the UN Commission of Inquiry.

That is, after having done background checks on the 3-Rakhine commissioners on his commission, the scope and the underlying philosophy on which the commission seems premised, and the make-up.

It has made its initial impact on the human rights networks internationally
and the Rohingya activists themselves:

The announcement below poured water on the burning coal - calls for COI.

Many seem intimidated, impressed or pleased to get former UN Secretary General Annan and Chair of The Elders (retired heads of state and other famous politicians). The "welcomers"
ignore well-documented criminal role Kofi Annan played in the death of 800,000;

Annan concealed a crucial and urgent cable addressed to him and which he received straight from the field - Rwanda - by Head of the Peacekeeping Force, Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire on Jan. 11, 1994 warning of the risk of genocide. Annan was the Head of UN Peacekeeping Force in New York headquarters.

Annan chose NOT to share it with the Security Council, not did he follow up such an important piece of evidence deserved. 

That was according to the UN-sponsored inquiry led by a former Swedish Prime Minister. 


The rest is history.

To be fair to those who welcomed it and showed initial enthusiasm, having a 3-member international team including Annan was certainly better than the previous Rakhine Inquiry Commission formed on 17 Aug 2012 - under previous Thein Sein regime. It was chaired by old history tutor at Mandalay and a friend, with another old, but now former friend Kyaw Yin Hlaing as Secretary.

The RIC ended up - again as I expected - up nothing more than a tool for whitewash for the regime-sanctioned mass violence and destruction of Rohingyas that took place in June and Oct 2012.

Now have a quick read at what Annan claimed officially his commission was going to.


There are 4 problems with Kofi Annan Commission:

1) NO ROHINGYA REPRESENTATION

like the previous Burmese-only Presidential Inquiry Commission of 2012, Kofi Annan Commission has absolutely no Rohingya representation. (Burmese Muslims do NOT represent Rohingya Muslims and are NOT seem by Rohingyas as their representational voices, naturally).

2) Of the 3 Rakhines, Saw Khint Tint (Rakhine woman leader) holds well-known and well-documented genocidal views towards Rohingya; 2) Mr WinMra defended the Burmese military as its ambassador mass atrocities in the past at UN and other fora including Geneva and New York, and is currently head of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission, which does NOT respect ROhingya's right to self-identify; and 3) Dr/Mr Tha Hla Shwe recently denies that there is any racial or religious discrimination - in Rakhine or in Burma; that's rather blatant in law of the passage of 4 race-and-faith-based national laws, and everything else that has been going on including the Burma Army leadership claiming its institutional duties now includes the defence of Buddhism and "Burmese" race.

3) Allegations of mass atrocities repeated in waves are excluded from its focus

In the last 4 years there have been credible and well-documented reports of international human rights crimes committed against the Rohingya. Those reports come from the UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights situation in Myanmar. And they identity the role of state security troops and authorities in these rights abuses. Besides there is a growing body of legal, sociological analyses and field studies which increasingly adopt a common view: a genocide is in the process. 

The Commission's scope is only on the two communities - Rakhine and Rohingya the latter of which cannot even be officially mentioned.

4) its sentiment is ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT will lessen the tensions in the communal conflicts and pave the way for future reconciliation between these two communities.

Because the Commission completely ignores or effectively unaware of the state's CENTRAL role in formulating the destruction of Rohingyas as a group it is keen to serve Development up as the panacea. 

Kofi Annan had made it clear that his mission was NOT about investigating allegations of international crimes and human rights violations, despite the human rights activists urging him to do so. 

Now Kofi Annan has clearly veered off the official scope of his Commission and began to make comments to the media which can only be construed as words of the genocide whitewash.

Kofi Annan downplays claims of Myanmar genocide

6 December 2016


This is extremely harmful to the Rohingyas who have jus begun to receive the kind of grassroots and worldwide attention they deserve. 

Despite his fame, Kofi is the man who has Rwandan blood on his hand: 800,000 of them. 

I will NOT trust this man's integrity, will to stop or motives in getting involved a case which is increasingly described by researchers and scholars, and law practitioners with years of personal and direct understanding of the nature of persecution.

How is Kofi Annan in a position to 'downplay or confirm" any allegations of genocide?

He's spent a total of less than 7 days in Rakhine, chauffeured around in an SUV, accompanied by anti-Rohingya Rakhines and all choreographed by Aung San Suu Kyi's Office in Nay Pyi Daw - over two whirlwind visits.

It took years to collect evidence, interview Rohingyas, army officers, Rakhine, etc. as well as do archival research in Burmese, Bengali and English to try to assess the nature of the persecution and claims of rights abuses. 

After nearly 6 years in his capacity as Special Rap on human rights in Myanmar the

Argentinian human rights lawyer Tomas Ojea Quintana has publicly stated that Myanmar is committing a genocide, that UN has an unwritten policy of not calling a genocide genocide and that Aung San Suu Kyi shows no signs of ending it. 

I find it extraordinarily IRRESPONSIBLE, ARROGANT AND CALLOUS to dismiss allegations of atrocity crimes by the State of Myanmar - in light of the on-going media reports based on fleeing Rohingya refugees - by now 20,000 - in Bangladesh, telephone transmissions, etc.

Two most recent reports here - one from AFP:

21,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh from Myanmar: IOM

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE | Published — Tuesday 6 December 2016


================================

Myanmar Rakhine: Inside the closed Rakhine region


Additionally, it is extremely stupid for Kofi Annan to make dismissive comments about these allegations whereas in fact there is a growing body of serious longitudinal (multiyear and on-going) studies of the atrocities against Rohingya. 

====================================




Here is my short-list of studies and analyses.

We must not allow this career UN bureaucrat to let another 800,000 destroyed. 

Their destruction may not come as swift as Tutsis in Rwanda.

But as Lancet's Harvard study pointed out - just look at the doctor: patient ratio in the two Rohingya towns of Buthidaung and Maung Daw, you will get a deeply troubling and shocking picture of the kind of existence Rohingyas have been forced to lead - by the national hybrid-gov of Suu Kyi-Min Aung Hlaing:

1: 150,000 Rohingya 
1: 670 (non-Rohingya) in near by Sittwe. 

Raphael Lemkin, the man who gave us the term genocide, discussed how guns and weapons were not the only instruments of genocide.

Sub-survival level nutritional provisions are a part of a genocidal arsenal. 

I condemn both Suu Kyi and Kofi Annan for their criminal irresponsibility in dismissing and downplaying the allegations of genocide. 

[1] Confronting the genocide in Myanmar, Katherine Southwick, Asia and
Pacific Policy Society, 1 Dec. 2016.

[1] The Slow Genocide of Rohingyas, Amartya Sen, Harvard Conference on
the Rohingya Persecution, 4 Nov. 2014.

[1] Recognising the Rohingya People, Editorial, Lancet, 1 Dec. 2016

The Rohingya People of Myanmar: Health, Human Rights and Identity,
Lancet, 1 Dec. 2016

Rohingya Face Health Care Bias in parts of Asia, study finds, New York Times, 5 Dec. 2016.

[1] A Genocide In the Making, Foreign Policy, Sir Geoffrey Nice and
Francis Wade, Foreign Policy, 30 Nov. 2016


[1] Genocide Roundtable, Oxford University Conference on Myanmar’s
Democratic Transition and the Rohingyas, 11 May 2016

[1] Dr. Gregory Stanton at Myanmar Muslims Genocide Awareness

[1] Burma’s Million-Strong Rohingya Population Faces ‘Final Stages of
Genocide,’ Says Report, TIME, 28 Oct. 2015.

[1] Clinic Study Finds Evidence of Genocide in Myanmar, Yale Law
School, 29 Oct. 2015

[1] The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya, Maung Zarni and
Alice Cowley, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, June 2014

RB News
December 7, 2016

Maungdaw, Arakan – The Myanmar army has been reported plundering 300 Rohingya shops and gang raping women, one of whom is said to have died as a result. 

On December 6th, 2016 the Myanmar military was reported plundering more than 300 Rohingya shops at random in Myaw Taung village tract in Northern Maungdaw Township, according to locals. 

They reported that the military has also burnt down several houses and killed many innocents since November 12th. 

On December 1st a group of 500 soldiers were reported entering the village and then forcing all of the women there from their homes. They were said to have sexually abused and beaten all of the women in the group. Locals say that at this time all of the gold and cash from the houses in the village were looted, as well as motorcycles, furniture and other valuables. 

On December 2nd and 3rd the military was reported bringing boats and villagers from the Na Ta La village of Pha Wet Chaung to Myaw Taung. They then reportedly looted the village again with the help of the Na Ta La villagers, who were also reported stealing Rohingya owned buffaloes, cows and goats and taking them back to Pha Wet Chaung. 

On December 4th at 6pm the soldiers were reported forcing more than 500 women and children to come out from their homes and gather at a school in the village. From this group the soldiers were said to have selected some of the women and then took them away in groups. 

The women were reportedly gang raped while they were taken away, and then returned to the school afterwards at around 11pm, when they were accompanied by a group of soldiers. After this the women and children were allowed to return to their homes. 

A 16 year old girl who was in one of the groups taken away and raped by the soldiers died on next day, December 5th, locals said. 

After six days of the military plundering the village, locals say there is no food left anywhere. They warn that the children in the village are now at serious risk of starvation.

Report contributed by MYARF.

Rohingya houses in Thu Oo Lar village brunt to the ground by Myanmar military in mid November
Protesters hold signs during a demonstration against what organisers say is the crackdown on ethnic Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, outside the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 25, 2016. The text on the poster reads, “Rohingya are our brothers”. Credit: Reuters

By Maung Zarni and Gregory Stanton
December 6, 2016

The world is reacting with horror to the massacre of Rohingyas in Rakhine State, but Suu Kyi and her government continue to turn a blind eye to what increasingly appears like a genocide.

Amidst widespread protests in Asian capitals over the ongoing massacre of Rohingyas in Western Myanmar, Adama Dieng, UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, issued a sternly-worded statement over the “allegations of extrajudicial executions, torture, rape and the destruction of religious property” in Rohingya villages, and firmly urged the Aung San Suu Kyi government to “demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law and to the human rights of all its populations”.

Human Rights Watch has presented satellite images of over a thousand charred buildings in Rohingya villages where government troops have been carrying out ‘clearance operations’ since October 9 when Rohingya militants, armed with swords, sticks and a ‘few hand-made’ guns, attacked three border posts near the country’s border with Bangladesh, killing several Burmese troops. For nine weeks, the government has locked down the northern portion of Rakhine State, blocking the flow of humanitarian assistance (both food and medicine) to 160,000 Rohingya Muslims. Rohingya activists have smuggled out grainy images of burning rice supplies in the areas of the military’s mop-up operations, indicating that the government intends to deprive the entire Rohingya population in the locked-down area of their food supply. The government’s intention can only be understood as an induced starvation of the Rohingya population – an act of genocide.

Reminiscent of past genocide cases, the government troops separate men of all ages from their families for brutal interrogations while raping women with blanket impunity. A friend told me about a phone conversation between a woman survivor and her relative, a Rohingya migrant worker in a poor neighbourhood called Salayang in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The woman reportedly said, “Just wish us to die [a] fast death. We can’t bear this any more. They (the Burmese troops) are killing our men and boys. They are doing anything they please with us women. We don’t want to be carrying babies of these monsters. Please, please, send us birth control pills.”

Weeks of wanton slaughter, arson and rape have resulted in the displacement of over 30,000 Rohingyas from entire villages in the swampy flat plains of northern Rakhine. The UNHCR has estimated that at least 10,000 Rohingyas fleeing death and destruction have gathered along the 170-mile land and river borders with Bangladesh. The Bangladesh government has decided to keep its borders shut, forcing the refugees back to the Burmese side. A small number of those who have made it across to the nearest refugee camp tell tales of horror in Rakhine, confirming the widely reported allegations of mass atrocities against the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

History of oppression

These are just the most recent testimonies of a well-documented, systematic program of state-organised persecution of the Rohingya over the last four decades. General Khin Nyunt, former head of military intelligence with 25 years of intimate involvement in these violent operations against the Rohingya, recorded in his Burmese-language book The Problem of Burma’s Western Gate that nearly 280,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh in the first large-scale operations against them in 1978. When General Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh threatened to arm the Rohingyas if Myanmar refused to take them back, the Ne Win government grudgingly accepted the UNHCR’s managed repatriation of the majority of those who fled.

Following this repatriation, Myanmar’s military rulers enacted a new citizenship law in 1982, stripping the Rohingyas of all citizenship and legal rights, thus making them instant aliens on their own ancestral land. The law excludes from citizenship any Rohingya who cannot prove their ancestors were already in residence in Myanmar on the eve of the first Anglo-Burmese War of 1824. Few people have such records. This requirement is enforced only with respect to the Rohingya. The Rohingya are also excluded from the list of groups that were recognised as ethnic minorities in the multi-ethnic Union of Burma.

The official estimate of the Rohingya population is 1.33 million, of which 800,000 are completely without any legal status. They are effectively stateless. An estimated 60,000 Rohingya children are un-registered because the Burmese government refuses to grant each newborn the right to a nationality, in direct violation of its obligations as a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

State-sponsored violence against the Rohingya and other minorities from 1978 to 2012 went largely un-reported in the global media because Myanmar was almost completely closed off from the western world. Since its commercial opening in 2012, the government of president Thein Sein framed its persecution of the Rohingya people as ‘communal or sectarian violence’ between the Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhist Rakhine people. The world has come to view the violence against the Rohingya as a clash between religious communities. In reality, it is ethnic persecution.

By releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and permitting her party contest the parliamentary election, in which it won a majority, the Thein Sein military junta has lulled the world into believing that Myanmar is “democratising.” In fact, the junta still holds a quarter of the seats in parliament as well as the key ministries of defence, home affairs and border affairs. In sharp contrast to the official explanation of violence in Rakhine as communal, Suu Kyi’s government has sought to tell the world that her government is fighting Rohingya Muslim extremists who are spreading Islamic terrorism. Western governments have rolled back the economic, military and diplomatic sanctions on Myanmar and have moved to normalised relations.

Deafening silence

But Suu Kyi’s silence on the ongoing massacre of Rohingyas has not gone unnoticed. Fellow Nobel laureates and world leaders continue to call on her to stop the genocide being perpetrated by the Burmese generals, whose partnership and cooperation she depends on for her influence.

Not only have these calls fallen on deaf ears but they have become a laughing matter for Suu Kyi and much of the Burmese population, who remain deeply enthralled with the woman they call mother.

In her live webcast town hall meeting this week with thousands of adoring Burmese supporters in Singapore, where Suu Kyi was on a three-day official visit, she took a question from the audience, which framed the growing allegations of rape, arson and slaughter of Rohingyas as “external fabrications”. Suu Kyi agreed that the allegations are “fabrications”. Then, she laughed out loud.

Dieng and Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, have requested independent UN investigations on the alleged ‘ethnic cleansing’ and other mass atrocities in the Rohingya region of Rakhine State. Instead, Suu Kyi’s government announced the establishment of a “national inquiry commission” with vice president Myint Swe as chair. Myint Swe, a former lieutenant general, also previously headed military intelligence and coordinated the border affairs army division, one of the main persecutors of the Rohingyas.

Suu Kyi and her government are in complete denial of the genocidal massacres being perpetrated against the Rohingya. When a Nobel Peace Prize finds allegations of genocide funny, she becomes undeserving of the prize. In fact, Suu Kyi should be prosecuted for complicity in the crimes.

Maung Zarni is co-author (with Alice Cowley) of The Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya and a grassroots Burmese activist who coordinated the international consumer boycott of Myanmar in support of the National League for Democracy from 1995-2004. Gregory Stanton is the founding president of Genocide Watch and research professor at George Mason University, USA.

Rohingya refugees sit as they wait to enter the Kutupalang Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh (November 21, 2016). Image Credit: REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Emanuel Stoakes
December 6, 2016

Cynicism and denial hold sway in Myanmar, even as children’s lives are put at risk.

Roughly a year ago, remarkable scenes were broadcast around the world from the streets of Yangon as citizens gathered to participate in, and celebrate, Myanmar’s general election.

The intense atmosphere of hope that accompanied the poll, the first openly contested one if its kind for decades, was an inspiration to behold; at the time, unfamiliar observers could be forgiven for thinking that the country was on the verge of making a clean break with its troubled past.

Twelve months on and harder political realities have come to the fore. It has taken the sternest test yet of the new government to show how far Aung San Suu Kyi, the state counselor and de facto civilian leader, will go to express solidarity with the armed forces, an autonomous state-within-a-state, which retains the constitutional right to run key ministries and set its own budgets.

It is perhaps out of a desire to avoid a confrontation between competing parts of state power that Suu Kyi has opted to take this stance while neglecting to do more to help those affected by the present crisis, in which thousands of children have been needlessly placed at risk of starvation and death.

This urgent humanitarian situation is just one of the outcomes of a drama currently taking place in Rakhine state, western Myanmar, involving one of the most unwanted and hopeless minorities in the world: the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim group of roughly one million people.

The minority, who are almost entirely stateless, have been persecuted in Myanmar for decades, enduring policies designed to make their lives miserable, including limitations on freedom of movement, access to healthcare, education, and other basic rights. Crimes such as rape, extrajudicial killings and extortion have occurred with impunity.

In October, a group of militants committed the first known act of armed aggression by the minority in decades, eliciting a severe crackdown by state forces and setting into motion a series of events that have had dire consequences.

“Distraught and Disgusted”

It is in this context that the lives of thousands of minors have been imperiled. Humanitarian aid to parts of northern Rakhine state was suspended following the declaration of a “military operations area” in which the army has been conducting counter-insurgency sweeps. Allegations of rapes, killings, and arson leaked out of the locked-down zone, only to be met with fervent denials from various parts of the Burmese state; verification has been close to impossible given that independent media have been denied access to the affected areas.

Email updates provided to humanitarian groups by the United Nations acknowledge that roughly 3,000 children in parts of Northern Rakhine State are suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition — a condition affecting infants and children produced by prolonged periods without access to adequate food and drink. The internal message observes that those minors reliant on specialized care for SAM “have not been able to receive their regular treatment” due to government-sanctioned blocks on humanitarian aid deliveries, which have lasted for weeks. “Without appropriate treatment,” the author of the email adds, “30-50 percent of SAM children may die.”

Pierre Peron, spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the UN’s key humanitarian agency confirmed the numbers cited above, and echoed its grim conclusions, noting that without access to the care they had been receiving, “many children with SAM are at risk of dying.”

While the time frame of risk to the children was not clearly stated in the emails, one humanitarian official speaking on condition of anonymity told me that those deprived of access to the treatments administered at therapeutic feeding centers are classed as going back to “square one” in terms of their condition — and therefore at greatly heightened risk of death — after three weeks. Aid has been severely restricted for roughly a month and a half.

Asked what the general reaction was to the blockade among staff working in the humanitarian community, he replied that he and his colleagues were “distraught and disgusted.”

Rights groups were similarly condemnatory about the restrictions on aid. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told me that many Rohingya were “facing a crisis of survival” as a result of the restrictions. Referring to the blockade, he indicated that the decision to limit the humanitarian presence in the area may be attributable to the most cynical of motives.

“What’s clear is that the Myanmar government doesn’t want any outside eyes and ears seeing what the security forces are doing in this area, and that means keeping the humanitarians out regardless of the suffering that this causes to the Rohingya people dependent on international assistance,” he said.

Matthew Smith, executive director of Bangkok-based NGO Fortify Rights, was terser in his analysis, saying “the authorities have no defensible reason to block aid. It’s inhumane, pure and simple.”

A State of Denial — and Complicity

Against the backdrop of deteriorating humanitarian conditions and alleged atrocities, Suu Kyi, known in the past for her panegyrics to human rights, has signed off on an increasingly absurd campaign of denial delivered by parts of the government under her control. Saying little on the matter herself, the message from her subordinates has been one of total support for the military.

While the decision not to alienate the armed forces may be shrewd, and certain efforts to do good may be taking place “behind closed doors,” the consequences of this political theater have been deadly serious.

It has eased pressure on the military-controlled parts of the state that are playing a key role in blocking aid, despite the fact that the move to suspend access amounts to a form of collective punishment for communities in the area. With every week that passes more people — beyond the 3,000 children — are at risk of sickness and even death.

That is not all. The language issuing from officials and appointees dealing with the situation, particularly when referring to the Rohingya as a group, has been dangerous and even dehumanizing.

Perhaps the most grotesque example of this was provided by the man picked to head the initial investigation into the violence, Member of Parliament U Aung Win. In an interview with the BBC, laughing as he spoke, he refuted allegations of rape by the military on the grounds that no soldier would deign to violate Rohingya women as they are “very dirty.”

More denialist effluvia was emitted recently by senior government spokesman Zaw Htay in a press conference posted on a Facebook page controlled by Suu Kyi’s office. The spin doctor took aim at the most concrete evidence yet of criminality by government forces — satellite imagery circulated by Human Rights Watch demonstrating obvious destruction of hundreds of Rohingya homes — fallaciously claiming that he had refuted “wrong accusations” made by the organization. At the same presser it was asserted, to the amazement of journalists, that the timing of the violence was part of a conspiracy involving groups that lobby for Rohingya rights.

While these lines have not taken been seriously by the international community, they are received with more credulity by the Burmese public. The idea that the Rohingya, who are the subject of widespread prejudice throughout Myanmar, are involved in conspiracies with international groups has long been by promoted by popular demagogues in the country. Advancing such a narrative to deflect criticism from the army and government is not only deeply cynical but genuinely dangerous.

Elsewhere, commentary in state outlets drifted into the language of outright dehumanization. The Global Light of Myanmar, a mouthpiece newspaper controlled by the Suu Kyi-run Ministry of Information, ran a self-explanatory piece titled “The Thorn Needs Removing If It Pierces,” implicitly supporting the actions of the armed forces, while remaining ambiguous on whether or not the “thorn” was a symbol for all Rohingya or just the insurgents. In the same manner a more recent op-ed warned of the danger posed by “detestable human fleas… trying to combine with each other to amass their force.”

“Burnt Alive in Their Homes”

In contrast to the government’s position, allegations of atrocities were treated as highly credible by The Arakan Project, an independent monitoring group that provides briefings to the United Nations.

“According to our information, the claims about rapes, arson attacks, and killings are accurate. More than 100 civilians have been killed, including women and children, and hundreds have been arrested. The military have shot people on sight, while they were fleeing,” Chris Lewa, director of the group, told me.

“In some cases people were burnt alive in their homes,” she added.

Rights groups have likewise treated claims of abuse seriously, while one senior UN official asserted that the purpose of the current military crackdown was “ethnic cleansing.” OHCHR, the UN’s dedicated human rights agency, added to the crescendo, stating recently that the crackdown may have involved crimes against humanity.

To date, the government has resisted calls for an international investigation of the violence, most recently announcing a second, entirely domestic probe into the situation. Suu Kyi herself, in her first sit-down interview with foreign media on the issue, opted to blame the international community for “concentrating on the negative side of the situation.”

The new investigation has drawn controversy given that it will be headed by a retired general once blacklisted by the United States, known for his role in suppressing popular protests in 2007. While this development is unlikely to assuage critics, the inquiry looks set to be an improvement on the one headed by Aung Win.

There have been other small glimmers of hope: a recent Reuters report cited diplomats who claimed that, after long weeks of waiting, the state counselor was far more willing to pressure the military on the aid situation.

At the time of writing, rumors are adrift that there may be some movement on the issue when Kofi Annan, head of the broader commission on Rakhine state set up prior to the violence, completes his visit to parts of the region.

Such an intervention could not come soon enough; yet crucial questions remain — will this be yet more theater, accompanied only by minimal change on the ground? If so, how much worse does it have to get before more meaningful steps are taken?

Emanuel Stoakes is a journalist specializing in rights-related stories. He has produced two major documentaries on the Rohingya minority in Myanmar and written for The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Vice, Al Jazeera, and The Diplomat, among others.

Myanmar's Rohingya refugees, seen at a camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, on November 26, 2016. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP


By AFP
December 6, 2016

DHAKA - Around 21,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks to escape violence in neighbouring Myanmar, an official of the International Organisation for Migration said Tuesday (Dec 6).

Bangladesh has stepped up patrols on the border to try to stem the tide of refugees fleeing a bloody crackdown by Myanmar's army in the western state of Rakhine since early October.

But Sanjukta Sahany, head of the IOM office in Bangladesh's south-eastern district of Cox's Bazar bordering Rakhine, said around 21,000 members of the stateless ethnic minority had crossed over in the past two months.

The vast majority of those who arrived took refuge in makeshift settlements, official refugee camps and villages, said Sahany.

"An estimated 21,000 Rohingya have arrived in Cox's Bazar district between October 9 and December 2," she told AFP by phone.

"It is based on the figures collected by UN agencies and international NGOs."

Those interviewed by AFP inside Bangladesh told horrifying stories of gang-rape, torture and murder at the hands of Myanmar's security forces.

Analysis of satellite images by Human Rights Watch found hundreds of buildings in the Rohingya villages have been razed.

Myanmar has denied allegations of abuse but has banned foreign journalists and independent investigators from accessing the area.

Myanmar's Nobel peace laureate and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a growing international backlash for what a United Nations official has said amounts to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, a Muslim group loathed by many of Myanmar's Buddhist majority.

Last week she vowed to work for "peace and national reconciliation", saying her country faced many challenges, but did not mention the violence in Rakhine state.

Bangladesh has reinforced its border posts and deployed coastguard ships to try to prevent a fresh influx of refugees.

In the past two months Bangladeshi border guards have prevented hundreds of boats packed with Rohingya women and children from entering the country.

The Bangladesh government has been under pressure from Muslim groups and the opposition to open its border to the fleeing Rohingya.

On Tuesday police stopped thousands of hardline Muslims from marching to the Myanmar embassy in Dhaka to protest at the ongoing "genocide" of the Rohingya.

Shiblee Noman, an assistant commissioner of Dhaka police, told AFP about 10,000 Muslims joined the march, which was halted at central Dhaka's Nightingale Crossing.

"They were peaceful," he said.

Sahany said the UN agencies and international charities were providing aid to the newly arrived Rohingya.

More than 230,000 Rohingya are already living in Bangladesh, most of them illegally, although around 32,000 are formally registered as refugees.

Violence in Rakhine has surged in the last month after security forces poured into the area.

It followed a series of deadly attacks on police posts blamed on local militants.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks to reporters as Myanmar government-appointed Chairman of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, during his press conference, at a hotel in Yangon, Myanmar December 6, 2016. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun


December 6, 2016

Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday urged Myanmar security forces to act within the rule of law in the country's northwest, where an army crackdown has killed at least 86 people and sent 10,000 fleeing over the border to Bangladesh. 

The violence is the biggest challenge faced by Aung San Suu Kyi's eight-month-old government and has prompted calls for the Nobel Peace laureate to do more to help the Rohingya minority, who are denied citizenship and access to basic services.

Security operations must not compromise citizens' civil rights, said Annan, who heads a government-appointed panel tasked with finding solutions to the conflict between Myanmar's Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingyas.

"There is no trade-off between security and civil liberties," he told reporters in Yangon, the commercial capital, after meeting state counselor Suu Kyi and commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing on his second visit to the country.

"Wherever security operations might be necessary, civilians must be protected at all times and I urge the security services to act in full compliance with the rule of law." 

The committee was "deeply concerned by reports of alleged human rights abuses," Annan said. 

Myanmar authorities have rejected allegations by residents and rights groups that soldiers raped Rohingya women, burnt homes and killed civilians during a crackdown in response to coordinated attacks on three border posts along the frontier with Bangladesh. 

Suu Kyi appointed the nine-member panel before the current fighting erupted to advise on the restive state, where ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslims have lived separately since clashes in 2012 that killed more than 100 people.

Protesters across Southeast Asia have turned out for demonstrations against the violence, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, which have predominantly Muslim populations.

In Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, more than 10,000 people took to the streets on Tuesday to protest outside the Myanmar embassy against the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, a city police official told Reuters.

More than 10,000 people had fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks, United Nations officials said last week. 

(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Wa Lone in YANGON; Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA)

Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan (L) meets Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw in Naypyidaw to discuss the Rakhine Advisory Commission's visit to strife-torn Rakhine state, Dec. 5, 2016. (Photo: AFP)

December 6, 2016

Members of Myanmar’s Rakhine Advisory Commission met with President Htin Kyaw and five lawmakers in Naypyidaw on Monday to discuss the unstable situation in the western state where a security crackdown has sparked allegations of genocide of the Rohingya Muslims who live there.

Led by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, the nine-member commission met with three lawmakers from the lower house of parliament, and two from the upper house following a visit to the northwestern part of Rakhine State.

Myanmar security forces are alleged to have carried out extrajudicial killings, rapes and arson there during their search for “Rohingya militants” responsible for deadly attacks on border guard posts nearly two months ago.

Though the commission had requested a meeting with all lawmakers in Rakhine state, the five parliamentarians were the only ones who agreed to meet with it because of widespread opposition among ethnic Rakhine residents and members of the state legislature’s dominant Arakan National Party (ANP).

“They [members of the commission] have now visited Rakhine three times, and they said cooperation from the Rakhine side was minimal, while that from the Muslim side was very active,” said Soe Win, an upper house lawmaker from the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party who attended the meeting.

“What they want is for both sides to come and talk about their feelings, hardships, and problems, so they can prepare a report based on those findings,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

The commission, appointed in late August by State Counselor Aung Sang Suu Kyi, must submit a report on its findings to the government within a year. The body is looking into conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance, and development issues in the divided and impoverished state.

A commission member told local media that the body will submit an interim report to the government in the next two months, according to state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar.

“But now that only the Muslims are active, that means there will be very few facts about problems that the ethnic Rakhine people are facing,” said Soe Win. “They are not happy about that, so they want to hear suggestions for possible solutions from us.”

With previous governments failing to effectively deal with the religious divisiveness and related issues in Rakhine state, Aung San Suu Kyi is trying to find a solution that will in turn help the multiethnic country achieve her goal of lasting peace.

But ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and ANP members oppose the appointment of three foreigners, including Annan, to the commission, believing that they will side with the Rohingya.

Rakhine civil society organizations refused to meet with commission members, who instead were greeted by protesters during the weekend when they arrived in Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Mrauk-U, and Myebon townships.

‘Let them leave’

More than 1.1 million stateless Rohingya Muslims, whom the Burmese call “Bengalis” because they consider them illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, live in troubled Rakhine state. Myanmar’s Buddhist majority has long subjected them to persecution and attacks and denied them basic rights, including citizenship.

About 120,000 live in displaced persons camps where they were placed following communal violence with Rakhine Buddhists that left more than 200 dead and tens of thousands homeless.

The recent security crackdown has forced tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee their villages and attempt to enter neighboring Bangladesh.

“Among the Muslims in Rakhine state, citizenship should be given to those who really deserve it in accordance with existing laws … and action should be taken against those who don’t meet the requirements,” Soe Win said.

“Remove the barriers that stop Muslims in Rakhine state from going to other parts of the country,” he said. “If there are those who want to go abroad, let them leave. Those were my suggestions.”

ANP lawmaker Htu May cautioned that the commission should not make judgments based only on recent events in Rakhine incidents.

“They need to know the entire history,” she told RFA. “The latest incidents are very different from the previous ones. It should have a separate report.”

“The voices of the ethnic Rakhine people have not been heard in the media for so long,” she said. “The commission should know what we Rakhines have to say about what [people] are going through. That’s why I explained some of these things to the commission on their behalf.”

A statement issued by Htin Kyaw’s office said the parties discussed the importance of humanitarian aid for both communities, the need to promote interaction between the two groups, the need to release news to discount rumors and fake reports, the country’s 1982 Citizenship Rights Act, and economic development to improve living standards in Rakhine.

Annan also met with Aung San Suu Kyi and military commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw.

He will hold a press conference in the commercial capital Yangon on Tuesday, according to Global New Light of Myanmar.

Myanmar Buddhist monks stage a protest outside the Malaysian embassy in Yangon to denounce Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's support for Rohingya Muslims, Dec. 3, 2016. Credit: AFP

Pressure from Malaysia

Meanwhile Myanmar continues to take heat for the crisis in Rakhine from Muslim-majority Malaysia where members of the local Rohingya community have held public protests against Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to stop what they call “genocide.”

Following protests last week by Muslims in Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, Kyaw on Nov. 3 formed an investigative commission on Rakhine to examine the situation that led to the border guard station attacks and subsequent violence, as well as to verify allegations of rights abuses during security operations.

But on Sunday, Prime Minister Najib Razak and members of his cabinet joined another protest in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, sparking a nationalist counterdemonstration in Yangon where nearly 100 monks and laypeople denounced him, the Myanmar Times reported.

Myanmar’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing told his Malaysian counterpart General Haji Zulkifeli Bin Mohd Zain on Monday that the armed forces had not committed any human rights violations in Rakhine,

He told Haji that investigations are under way to determine the truth of the allegations of executions, rape, and arson, and said that some local Rohingya Muslims have failed to abide by the regulations laid down in accordance with existing laws, according to a post on the Facebook page of Malaysia’s defense services office.

The two generals also agreed to exchange information between their military forces to fight terrorism, it said.

Ye Htut, former presidential spokesman and information minister under the previous Myanmar government’s administration, said Aung San Suu Kyi should use her influence and power with the international community to counter accusations that the military has committed human rights abuses against the Rohingya in Rakhine.

He issued a post on his Facebook page on Monday advising her to interact more with countries that belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to engender more understanding of the realities that Myanmar faces in Rakhine.

He also accused Najib Razak of using the Rohingya issue to increase his political standing and support among conservative Malaysian Muslims as he fends off corruption allegations of involvement in taking billions of dollars of public money from a state investment fund.

The demonstrations prompted Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, to summon the Malaysia ambassador in Yangon, though he has yet to respond, said Aye Soe, the ministry’s deputy director general on Monday.

She said the ministry would issue a statement after meeting with the envoy.

Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt and Waiyan Moe Myint for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

By Matthew Smith
December 6, 2016

Four years ago, I was in Myanmar's Rakhine State soon after deadly violence erupted between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims. It was a horrendous scene. And it's happening again.

Back then, Buddhist civilians and state security forces unleashed coordinated attacks against Rohingya and other Muslims. I documented pre-dawn raids and cold-blooded massacres.

In a small village in Mrauk-U Township on October 23, 2012, 70 Rohingya were killed, including 28 children -- 13 under the age of 5. Children were hacked to death. Some were thrown into fires.

Entire villages were razed; smoke billowed from homes and mosques in 13 of 17 townships statewide and bodies were disposed in mass graves, none of which have been exhumed for forensic purposes. I personally documented four separate mass gravesites.

At the time, an unpublished United Nations investigation obtained by Al Jazeera's investigative unit, found more than 100 Rohingya women and girls were raped. The authorities then corralled more than 130,000 Rohingya into more than 40 squalid interment camps, where they remain confined today.

This all happened under former President Thein Sein, a longtime military general lauded by the West as a reformer.

Now Nobel-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is State Counselor, the de facto head of state --and the same atrocities are happening again.


The recent violence

On October 9, a group of Rohingya men and boys allegedly attacked three police outposts in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships, killing nine police. This was highly unusual. Despite unending persecution, Rohingya militancy hasn't been seen for decades.

The Myanmar military commenced a full-on offensive that's ongoing in northern Rakhine State -- a veritable black zone sealed off from aid workers and international observers.

We've documented unlawful killings of unarmed Rohingya men, and we've steadily received allegations of mass rape of Rohingya women and girls by army soldiers. 

Helicopter gunners opened fire from the sky and entire villages have burned, evidenced by high-resolution satellite imagery obtained by Human Rights Watch.

Meantime, the civilian government and military continue to block all access to affected areas. Pre-existing aid programs, which were keeping thousands of Rohingya alive, have been suspended for eight weeks.

According to the UN, the authorities are denying at least 130,000 men, women and children access to humanitarian aid -- food, nutrition and health care. Thirty thousand are likely displaced in the blackout zone. An estimated 3,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition.
Without urgent aid, they will likely die.

Nearly all of the international aid workers in Maungdaw Township have left as the government has not renewed their travel authorizations. Independent monitors and media are still barred.

State-run media has claimed international journalists and human rights groups are working "hand in glove" with terrorists. It has alluded to Rohingya as a "thorn" that "has to be removed," and as "detestable human fleas."

Make no mistake: this is genocide talk. And it is happening with Aung San Suu Kyi's imprimatur.


Suu Kyi's culpability

The dominant narrative suggests Suu Kyi's hands are tied and that she has no control over the military. This is a half-truth.

By law, the military controls the ministries of Defense, Home Affairs and Border Affairs. These are instrumental ministries with respect to abuses in northern Rakhine State and Suu Kyi doesn't control them.

But in military lockstep, the State Counselor's office has flatly denied any abuses may have taken place since October 9. And she's since doubled down, accusing the international community of "always drumming up cause for bigger fires of resentment.

Her office has demanded apologies from the BBC and the UN's refugee agency after the latter alleged "ethnic cleansing" was taking place.

Moreover, Suu Kyi does control the ministries of Information, Foreign Affairs and others, and she could swiftly renew travel authorizations for aid workers. But she isn't.

No one in the country has as much moral authority to change public opinion and counteract hate speech as Suu Kyi.

So UN officials and governments are rightly sounding alarms. 

The UN Special Advisor on genocide prevention last week called for urgent action while the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights alleged again that crimes against humanity may be taking place. The US government called for a "credible and independent investigation," a call echoed by various Asian parliaments in recent weeks.

But this is not enough. 

Left to its own devices, Myanmar will continue to destroy this ethnic and religious minority. We can't let that happen.


What can be done

In his final days in office, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon should travel to Myanmar and personally ensure the authorities provide immediate and unfettered access to all populations in need in Rakhine State. Any failure to end this despicable aid blockade will result in significant loss of life -- indeed, it likely already has.



In addition, UN member states should push for a UN Commission of Inquiry into what is happening in Rakhine State.

In August, Aung San Suu Kyi appointed an "Advisory Commission" on Rakhine State, which is led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Fortify Rights welcomed the move, but Annan himself has said the commission does not intend to focus on human rights. It's unclear if that directive comes from him or the State Counselor, but regardless, for the Rohingya, it's a problem.

Annan is expected to address the press this afternoon following a three-day guided tour of Rakhine State. We don't expect him to address ongoing human rights violations, but he should. At this point, it's a moral imperative.

His commission isn't the only one expected to abandon human rights. Last week, Suu Kyi's government appointed yet another body to look into the situation in Rakhine State since since October 9. It has all the markings of a whitewash -- it's led by retired army general Myint Swe, a man formerly blacklisted by the US government -- and doesn't include a single Muslim commissioner.

Now is the time for independent UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry to address the totality of the human rights situation in Rakhine State, including grievances from the Rakhine Buddhist communities.

Such an investigation would provide much-needed credibility and could cooperate with Kofi Annan's team while also delving deep to establish the facts, identify perpetrators and make recommendations to end, once and for all, the cycle of atrocity crimes against Rohingya -- before it's too late.

Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be watching a possible genocide unfold. The international community must not.

By AFP
December 5, 2016

Boat packed with at least 31 people reportedly chased by a Myanmar army speedboat as it tried to reach Bangladesh.

Dozens have been reported missing, feared drowned, after a boat packed with Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar and trying to reach Bangladesh sank in a border river, according to the AFP news agency.

A Bangladeshi fisherman told AFP that he had rescued on Monday one woman, who told him that the "overcrowded" boat had sunk in the Naf river, after it was chased by a Myanmar army speedboat.

"We heard a woman's desperate cry for help in the morning while we were fishing in the Naf. We quickly paddled to the spot and saw she was fighting to stay afloat," fisherman Suman Das said by phone.

"The woman told us that their boat was overcrowded with Rohingya villagers who tried to cross the river to enter Bangladesh."

The woman did not know what had happened to the others, and Das could not say how many people were on the boat.

But the private UNB news agency, quoting a Bangladeshi village councillor, said there were at least 31 Rohingya on board.

A Rohingya source told AFP by phone that the bodies of 13 women and children, two of whom had bullet wounds, had washed ashore in his village on Myanmar's side of the Naf.

This could not be independently confirmed, however, and Bangladesh police and border guards said they were not aware of the incident.

An estimated 30,000 Rohingya have been forced to leave their homes since a bloody October crackdown by the Myanmar army in the western Rakhine state, where many of them live.

At least 10,000 have arrived in Bangladesh, the United Nations said last week, although Bangladesh said it has prevented large numbers from entering.

Myanmar has denied allegations of abuse, but has also banned foreign journalists and independent investigators from accessing the area to investigate.

(Photo: Supplied by U Shey Kya villager)

In this Dec. 2, 2016 photo, Mohsena Begum, a Rohingya who escaped to Bangladesh from Myanmar, holds her child and sits at the entrance of a room of an unregistered refugee camp in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar, a southern coastal district about, 296 kilometers (183 miles) south of Dhaka, Bangladesh. “They drove us out of our houses, men and women in separate lines, ordering us to keep our hands folded on the back of our heads,” says 20-year-old Mohsena Begum, her voice choking as she described what happened to the little village of Caira Fara, which had long been home to hundreds of members of Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community. In refugee camps in Bangladesh, survivors of a wave of violence that has swept Myanmar in recent weeks say government forces have targeted minority Rohingya villages, burning many to the ground, killing the innocent and raping women. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)

By Julhas Alam 
December 5, 2016

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- The Myanmar soldiers came in the morning, the young mother says. They set fire to the concrete-and-thatch homes, forcing the villagers to cluster together. When some of her neighbors tried to escape into the fields, they were shot. After that, she says, most people stopped running away.

"They drove us out of our houses, men and women in separate lines, ordering us to keep our hands folded on the back of our heads," says 20-year-old Mohsena Begum, her voice choking as she described what happened to the little village of Caira Fara, which had long been home to hundreds of members of Myanmar's minority Rohingya community. She said that when about 50 people had been gathered together, the soldiers, along with a group of local men, pulled four village leaders from the crowd and slit their throats.

Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, the Rohingya have long faced persecution in Myanmar, where most are denied citizenship. The latest outbreak of violence was triggered by October attacks on guard posts near the Bangladesh border that killed nine police officers. While the attackers' identities and motives are unclear, the government launched a massive counter-insurgency sweep through Rohingya areas in western Rakhine state. Most Rohingya live in Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh.

The government, which has implied the attacks were carried out by Rohingya sympathizers, has acknowledged using helicopter gunships in support of ground troops in the sweep. While survivors and human rights groups have tracked waves of anti-Rohingya violence in recent weeks, the Myanmar government insists that stories like Begum's are exaggerations.

Myanmar's leader, the Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has accused the international community of stoking unrest.

"It doesn't help if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation, in spite of the fact that there were attacks on police outposts," she said in a recent interview on Singapore's Channel News Asia.

Suu Kyi, whose party took power in March after decades of military-backed rule, has been accused of not acting strongly enough to curb the violence against the more than 1 million Rohingya believed to be in the country. Although many have lived in Rakhine for generations, they are widely seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

"It helps if people recognize the difficulty and are more focused on resolving these difficulties rather than exaggerating them, so that everything seems worse than it really is," she said in the interview.

But Begum says she has no need to exaggerate what happened in Caira Fara.

She said that after the four leaders were killed, violence churned through the village in chaotic scenes of horror. Begum's husband, a poor, illiterate farm laborer, was beaten and then murdered by having his throat slit, along with an unknown number of other villagers, she said. Their bodies were eventually driven away in a truck.

She said attackers knocked her young son knocked from her grasp, then raped her.

Finally, when the soldiers weren't paying attention, she grabbed her son and ran into the nearby hills. After hiding for two days, her brother gave her enough money - about $38 - to pay smugglers to get her and her son into Bangladesh.

When Bangladeshi border guards stopped them, she began to weep.

"I told them I have no one to protect me there," she says, and told them: "'Look at my baby! He will die if I go back there.'" After that, they let her pass.

Much of Rakhine has been closed to outsiders, including journalists, since the violence began. However, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, leader of a commission formed to investigate the situation in Rakhine state, was allowed to visit in recent days. He is expected to hold a press conference Tuesday in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city.

Along the banks of the Naf River, which marks the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, it's not difficult to find people who can talk about what is happening.

Some 15,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh over past month, often brought in by smugglers, according to police and intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government refuses to release numbers publicly. They have joined up to 500,000 undocumented Rohingya who have been living in Bangladesh after arriving from Myanmar in waves since the 1970s. Some 33,000 registered Rohingya refugees live the Cox's Bazar district. Bangladesh does not welcome Rohingya - its maritime patrols sometimes turn back refugee boats full of them - but it is seen as a haven compared to Myanmar.

The U.N. says up 30,000 Rohingya Muslims have abandoned their homes amid the recent violence. Satellite images analyzed by the rights group Human Rights Watch show 1,250 structures destroyed in November in Rohingya villages.

Osman Gani, a thin, fast-talking Arabic teacher, fled after his village, Gouzo Bil, was attacked Nov. 11.

"They came and killed mercilessly. They burned our homes," says Gani, standing near the Naf River over the weekend. "No one was there to save us."

He hid with his family for about a week near the village. But when searches intensified, and with soldiers targeting men, he was forced to leave Myanmar without his family.

"I had no other choice but to leave them behind. I came to the bank of the river and started swimming," he says. His family was able to join him in Bangladesh a few days later.

As he fled north, he used his mobile phone to film destruction in other Rohingya villages he passed through. In some, the blackened remains of what appear to be children can be seen amid the wreckage of homes. Gani's voice can be heard in some of the videos but The Associated Press could not confirm their authenticity.

"I have shot videos!" he says, holding out his mobile phone to a reporter. "Don't you see the charred bodies?"

While he was initially in hiding after the attack, Osmani said he also managed to slip back into his village and film what remained of his home.

As he walks through the village, a child can be heard talking to him.

"Where are you coming from?" the boy asks.

Gani doesn't answer, instead asking, "Where's my cow?"

Then he pans through the ashes and broken concrete. "This is my land, my home," he says. "This is Puitta's. This is Uncle Yunus."

---

AP writer Tim Sullivan contributed to this report from New Delhi.

Rohingya Exodus