Last Wednesday an international court found Ratko Mladić, the notorious “butcher of Bosnia,” guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. As Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, Mladić’s troops forced thousands of civilians to flee from “ethnic cleansing” – a cruel euphemism that will forever be associated with the wars in the former Yugoslavia. At the time Mladić appeared all-powerful and untouchable, presiding over the genocide at Srebrenica and wantonly committing war crimes. He will now die in prison.

It took decades for international justice to catch up with Mladić. And while the verdict is a welcome warning to other perpetrators, it also poses the uncomfortable question of whether the international community is doing enough to hold those responsible for atrocities today accountable for their crimes? 

Last month, at a meeting held at the United Nations in New York, I argued that “democracy in Myanmar cannot be built on the bones of the Rohingya.” Sitting between the former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh and the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, those were my concluding remarks regarding the quickest and most brutal episode of ethnic cleansing of our times. They were made to a room crowded with diplomats, UN bureaucrats and human rights activists who were gathered because since 25 August more than 622,000 Rohingya have crossed the border from Myanmar (Burma) into Bangladesh. 

The Rohingya are fleeing so-called “clearance operations” carried out by the Myanmar military in Rakhine State, including widespread killings, rape, and the burning of more than 280 villages. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has described these attacks as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” 

The Rohingya, a distinct Muslim ethnic group in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, have been persecuted for generations. Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law does not recognize the estimated 1 million Rohingya as one of the country’s “national races,” rendering them stateless. Other discriminatory laws restrict their freedom of movement and access to employment and education. In short, the conditions under which the Rohingya minority live in Myanmar constitute a uniquely Southeast Asian form of apartheid.

The military’s operations began as collective punishment for a coordinated attack on police and army barracks by Rohingya militants armed mainly with knives. One week later, the Commander of Myanmar’s military, General Min Aung Hlaing, described the “Bengali problem” (he refuses to use the term Rohingya) as an “unfinished job” that previous governments had failed to complete. Atrocities committed against the Rohingya population since then constitute crimes against humanity under international law. They may ultimately prove to be genocidal in intent. 

The response of the UN Security Council has been tepid at best. It took ten weeks for the Council just to issue a Presidential statement condemning the atrocities. The reason for the delay is that China is a powerful ally of the Generals who still dominate Myanmar. China is also Myanmar’s largest supplier of arms. But facing global outrage, China eventually agreed to a unanimous Presidential statement rather than a legally-binding resolution. Words, but no action.

Despite the Security Council’s inertia, the flow of Rohingya refugees has ebbed. This is not because atrocities were halted, but because Myanmar’s military has largely finished its job. Possibly as much as 80% of the Rohingya population have fled. And no one knows how many more are dead or displaced inside Myanmar. Unfinished business, indeed.

My comment at the UN regarding the bones of the Rohingya was a response to those who see these atrocities as unconscionable, but ultimately, as a lesser priority than the political preservation of Myanmar’s frail democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi. The greatest threat to Myanmar’s democracy today, however, is the impunity of its Generals. What kind of a country will Myanmar be if they are allowed to successfully impose their scorched earth policy on Rakhine State? They will certainly have no incentive to respect the human rights of the other 135 ethnic groups who live within Myanmar’s borders. 

But there is an alternative. First, the international community should suspend all bilateral ties with Myanmar’s military. All senior officers with command responsibility for ethnic cleansing should also face targeted sanctions. And all international trade, aid and investment programs in Rakhine State should be scrupulously reviewed. The local authorities and the Myanmar military must not be allowed to profit from the seizure of Rohingya crops, livestock and land. 

The United States, Canada, European Union and others have already imposed some of these measures, but all UN member states should do so. 

Secondly, influential international friends of Aung San Suu Kyi need to continue to lobby her to implement the recommendations of the Rakhine Commission. Led by Kofi Annan, the Commission has offered practical suggestions to end the persecution of the Rohingya and ease conflict in Rakhine. Not by coincidence, its final report was released on 24 August, the day before the current conflagration began. Expeditiously implementing the Commission’s recommendations would weaken those inside Myanmar’s military who still prefer to conduct domestic policy with bayonets and bullets.

Finally, we need to recognize that the international community has utterly failed the Rohingya. Despite years of warnings about the risk of mass atrocities, including by my own organization, a number of governments took refuge in the idea that quiet diplomacy – including acquiescing to Myanmar’s insistence on not publicly mentioning the Rohingya – would create space for gentle reform. Instead it had the reverse affect, encouraging those generals who desired a final solution in Rakhine State and wanted to test the limits of Aung San Suu Kyi’s moral authority. 

Unlike Ratko Mladić’s victims, Rohingya refugees should not have to wait two decades for justice. It is time to amplify the voices of those calling for the Myanmar authorities to uphold their responsibility to protect the Rohingya. This will require more than hand wringing. It will necessitate holding General Min Aung Hlaing and all those responsible for ethnic cleansing in Myanmar accountable for their actions. What is at stake is not just the fate of the Rohingya, but the very idea of an international community that is prepared to defend universal rights.

Over the course of three months, over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh to escape what the United Nations has described as a case of “textbook case of ethnic cleansing.”

Earlier this week, China proposed a three stage resolution to repatriate Rohingya refugees back to the country formerly known as Burma. The plan emphasizes the need for a long-term solution to the Rohingya “problem”. And according to a new report by Amnesty International, which has investigated the treatment of the Muslim minority, the conflict’s origins can be traced back to decades ago.

For Ba Sein, a 74-year-old ethnic Rohingya refugee, the current crisis in Southeast Asia began well over 40 years ago. From his home in the United Kingdom, where he helps run the advocacy site Rohingya Blogger, he recalls the Myanmar military’s first campaign to push the Rohingya from the country.

“They were herded like animals onto army trucks” Ba Sein – Rohingya Blogger

In 1978, in an onslaught known as Operation Nagamin, or Operation Dragon King in English, about 200,000 Rohingya made the journey to Bangladesh, along routes today’s refugees are also following, after tens of thousands of Rohingya were rounded up and taken to detention centers.

“They were herded like animals onto army trucks,” Ba Sein told WikiTribune. “Inside the jails, people were making on the ground like goats without any toilet or room. They all died here. I saw this with my eyes. I will never forget this.”

Operation Dragon King marked the military’s first organized effort to discredit the Rohingya as a people native to Myanmar. Similar to the current rhetoric, the government saw the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who needed to be deported.

Historians characterize Operation Dragon King as a prelude to the 1982 Citizenship law. The contentious law established a list of ethnic groups eligible for citizenship. The law excluded the Rohingya, left them without access to public services and limited their freedom of movement. 

The military wanted a window of time in which to register their “approved” ethnic groups, while screening out the “foreigners.” Despite evidence of the Rohingya living in Myanmar for centuries, the military deemed them Bangladeshis who arrived in Rakhine State during British colonial rule. 

Under the 1982 law, the Rohingya had to provide evidence of their heritage to the country before 1823, when Britain invaded what was then known as Burma. Those suspected of arriving during British rule had their citizenship revoked, leaving them stateless. 

Anwar Arkani, a 50-year-old Rohingya who experienced the Dragon King operation as a child, remembers authorities asking his father to prove his ancestry and produce a national identification card.

“[The officer] asked if you have your ID. My father said, ‘Yes.’ The police took it and tore it apart up front of him. He asked him for his ID again. [My father] said, “Are you nuts? You just tore it up, now you want to magical produce it again?” They hit him with the butt of a gun, took him to jail and he died there.”

The push to Bangladesh

Arkani and his mother and brother joined the 200,000 Rohingya fleeing for the Bangladesh border after his father died in police detention. Other migrants reported rape and torture.

His 50-kilometer trek in 1978 was probably not that different from the experience of Rohingya who are part of the current exodus. The biggest change over the past 40 years is how the Bangladesh government and international community has responded, he said. He remembers a Bangladesh government in 1978 that made it clear that the Rohingya were unwelcome.

“That Bangladesh camp was the worst thing you can imagine. There was nowhere to toilet,” said Arkani, who now lives in Canada. “They took anything from us.”

Dealing with immense poverty among its own population in 1978, the Bangladesh government used food – or the lack of it – in an attempt to make refugees retreat on their own. In May 1978, food was tightly rationed in refugee camps in order to ensure life was not “comfortable”for the recently arrived Rohingya.

Alan Lindquist, a British humanitarian worker in Bangladesh, recalled the official in charge of the refugee camps, Secretary Syed All Khasru, as saying: “It is all very well to have fat, well-fed refugees. But I must be a politician, and we are not going to make the refugees so comfortable that they won’t go back to Burma.” 

An estimated 10,000 Rohingya died in Bangladesh refugee camps between May to December of 1978, casualties of underfeeding and malnutrition. The tactic was effective in its purpose. Within the year,more than half of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh voluntarily returned to Burma.

The military eventually accepted the repatriation of 187,000 Rohingya after the UN agreed to give Myanmar $7 million in aid, according to the International Boundary Research Unit of UK’s Durham University. 

During the current Rohingya refugee crisis, China has emerged as a mediating force with its proposal of a repatriation deal between the Myanmar military and the Bangladesh government. 

Tension in Rakhine, then Arakan

The Rohingya of today, however, will return to a more hostile Myanmar. 

The military currently practices an “institutionalized system of segregation” of the Muslim minority that “constitutes apartheid” according to a report from Amnesty International released on Monday. 

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the 2017 Rohingya crisis “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” a designation not given to the 1978 mass exodus.

According to Ba Sein, the Rohingya have a social stigma that did not exist 40 years ago, “You could find work back then…some had an education,” he said.

Ba Sein and his family worked for the government in 1978, an elite position in the socialist Myanmar. His position as an auditor and his connections allowed him to witness the atrocities in the Rohingya detention centers, but survive. Unlike most Rohingya, he also was able to keep his citizenship.

That Rohingya people worked for the national government is a testament to how much the political climate has changed in Myanmar. The idea of Rohingya being accepted into mainstream society now, let alone in government, is difficult for these previous refugees to imagine.

Besides being denied citizenship and an education, Rohingya now face hostility from the majority Buddhist citizenry of Rakhine State. 

This historic tension, dating back to World War II, has devolved back into violence over the past 10 years. The first major clashes came in 2012, following allegations that Rohingya Muslim men raped a Rakhine Buddhist woman. Dozens were killed in ethnic fighting.

The violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims is something that survivors of Operation Dragon King do not recognize. For the most part, the two groups co-existed peacefully in 1978.

“There was no fighting between the [Rakhine Buddhists] and us, just army” Ba Sein said. “Until 2012, there was no problem. Now all the people are being killed without [government] security.”

Anwar Arkani largely agrees that tensions between Buddhists and Muslims were far less extreme four decades ago, though he said he is not surprised at the escalation. As a child, his parents gave him explicit instructions to never enter Buddhist villages which were largely segregated from their Muslim counterparts. The sentiment of the Rohingya as foreigners has long existed.

“All of my memories of the Rakhine are bad things to be honest,” Arkani said. “To them, it was their country, and if we don’t like it, then we can go back home. But this was my home.”