GENEVA (20 December 2017) – The Government of Myanmar has informed UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee that all access to the country has been denied and cooperation withdrawn for the duration of her tenure. 

Ms. Lee had been due to visit Myanmar in January to assess the state of human rights countrywide, including the human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

“I am puzzled and disappointed by this decision by the Myanmar Government,” said Ms. Lee. “This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country.” 

The Special Rapporteur said she sincerely hoped Myanmar would revisit the decision. 

“Only two weeks ago, Myanmar’s Permanent Representative informed the Human Rights Council of its continuing cooperation with the UN, referencing the relationship with my role as Special Rapporteur,” she said. 

“Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July.” 

Ms. Lee had previously been afforded cooperation and access to Myanmar, and had maintained a relationship of mutual respect with the Government. The Government has now claimed that her end-of-mission statement in July was biased and unfair. 

The Special Rapporteur’s mandate requires two visits to Myanmar a year, in order to report to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. Since taking up the mandate in June 2014, she has visited six times. 

While the Government had responded positively to past requests to visit, access to some areas had been consistently refused, with the authorities citing security concerns. 

The Government is also not cooperating with the Human Rights Council Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, established in March 2017. 

“It is a shame that Myanmar has decided to take this route,” said Ms. Lee. “The Government has repeatedly denied violations of human rights are occurring throughout Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State. They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise,” said the expert. 

END

Ms. Yanghee Lee (Republic of Korea) was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2014 as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Ms. Lee served as member and chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2003-2011). She is currently a professor at Sungkyunwan University, Seoul, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Ms. Lee is the founding President of International Child Rights Center, and serves as Vice-chair of the National Unification Advisory Council.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. 

For more information and media requests please contact:

Ms. Shilla Kim (+41 22 917 9922 / shillakim@ohchr.org)

Published by OHCHR.

They just kept catching men, making them kneel down and killing them. Then they put their bodies on a pile. First they shot them, and if they were still alive they were killed with machetes.… It took them one-and-a-half hours to carry all the bodies.

I woke up and realized I was in a pool of sticky blood. I tried to wake the others up but they didn’t move. Then I broke through the [bamboo] wall and escaped.… All the houses in the area were on fire. I could hear women screaming from some of the other houses. They could not escape from the fires.

Survivors of the Tula Toli massacre in Rakhine State, Burma. © 2017 Anastasia Taylor-Lind for Human Rights Watch

The soldiers separated the men from the women and the children. They put the women and children near the bank of the river, and they put the men in a different place on the beach. Some of the men were seated, others were trying to run away in fear. They were being slaughtered, killed with shovels and the army was also shooting them and killing them with sharp weapons.… They dug a big hole and then also used the natural holes in the beach to put bodies in, and then they burned them with gasoline. I saw them slide the bodies in.

–Rajuma Khatoum, 35

Between 7 and 10 soldiers took us to a room in a house. I could hear women and girls screaming from the other rooms. They first took my child and threw him down on the ground. He was still alive then, and I had to watch as they slaughtered him. The children of the other two women were killed the same way. A few minutes later, they took the bodies of the children and threw them on a fire outside. 

Then the soldiers raped all three of us women. I was on my back [being raped] for an hour. It was four or five soldiers.… They beat us all until we were half dead, and then they set the house on fire. I saw that one of the corners of the bamboo wall had a hole in it. I made it bigger by kicking it, and I escaped from the house. No one else came out of that house. They all burned to death inside.
–Rajuma Begum, 20

About 10 soldiers took us away [to a house].… If they found children alive, they shot them or beat them to death. When we first entered, we couldn’t even really enter the room because of the number of bodies already there, there were so many. 

One of the soldiers had a big wooden stick, and he hit me on the head and knocked me semi-unconscious. Then they were hitting the children. They stripped us naked, searching for our valuables. It is all blurry, but I remember them beating my 10-year-old sister-in-law – they hit her in the head with a big stick. Her face was swelling up and she was just screaming loudly in pain. Then she was just breathing loudly, and then she was barely breathing. And then she died. 

The house was already on fire when I woke up. I saw another woman on fire. She tried to stand up, but she fell down again. Burning objects were falling on us from the roof. So I stood up and stepped over the bodies of the others, and broke the [bamboo] wall with my leg and escaped. The other woman burned to death inside. Only I managed to escape, no one else came out alive from the house.

–“Fatima,” 15

All four of my children were with me. I was holding them. They smashed the baby first, then they killed the two boys, first hitting them with sticks and then with machetes.… I was unconscious, and when I woke the house was fully on fire. It was when the fire was already burning my legs and my body that I came to. I broke through the wall, and my daughter was already outside. I tried to go back to get the bodies of my children, but they were already on fire so we had to leave them.  

–Mumtaz Begum, 30

By AFP

December 19, 2017

TEKNAF, BANGLADESH -- For decades the Rohingya have been denied recognition in Myanmar but the persecuted minority is close to securing a crucial symbol of their identity - their own unique digital alphabet.

The language of the stateless Muslim people has been included in the planned upgrade to the Unicode Standard, the global coding system that turns written script into digital characters and numbers.

It would allow the Rohingya to write e-mails, send texts and post on social media in their own language - a major step for a people who had no written script until the 1980s.

Victims of violent oppression in Myanmar that has been likened to ethnic cleansing, many Rohingya face far more pressing concerns than searching Google or sending a tweet, and most lack not just the technology but the literacy to do so.

But experts say imparting the Rohingya a digital script of their own is hugely symbolic for the recognition and survival of the marginalised people, even if it is not adopted quickly.

"If a people do not have a written language of their own, it is easier to say that as an ethnic group you don't exist," said Mohammad Hanif, who developed the writing system for the Rohingya language in the 1980s.

"It is easier to repress them," the Rohingya madrassa teacher living in Bangladesh told AFP.

This is especially the case with the Rohingya, with Myanmar even refusing to use their name.

Myanmar refers to them as "Bengalis" instead, painting them as interlopers from Bangladesh even though many of them have lived in the country for generations.

Experts say language is part of the issue, with Rohingya speaking a dialect of Bengali understood in Bangladesh's south-eastern Chittagong region, but foreign to the Buddhist majority in Myanmar.

The minority group has been driven out of Myanmar's westernmost Rakhine state in waves of systematic violence, most recently in an army campaign that Doctors Without Borders say killed at least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims in its first month.

Nearly 650,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since the military crackdown began in August, escaping arson, rape and murder in their homeland.

'IT IS REVOLUTIONARY'

The Rohingya had no written script until Hanif - an Islamic scholar who fled Rakhine in an earlier surge of violence - began studying the nuances of the language.

Hanif said around 50 books have now been written using the script which is also taught in some faith schools catering to the Rohingya in Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Other attempts at developing a writing system had used Arabic, Urdu and English scripts, the latter known as "Rohingya-lish".

But "Hanifi Rohingya" may be the one to be encoded by the Unicode Consortium - a nonprofit that oversees the global standardisation of digital characters and numbers.

A representative for the US-based consortium told AFP by e-mail that Hanifi Rohingya was one of the scripts being considered in the next version, but a final decision would be made in February.

If approved, it would allow the global Rohingya diaspora - including, eventually, the more than 800,000 refugees in Bangladesh - to also send messages through chat services like WhatsApp using their digital alphabet.

"(This) legitimises the struggle of the Rohingya language and its much persecuted people," said Muhammad Noor, a software engineer who built a computer typeface for "Hanifi Rohingya" compatible with word processing, but not online usage.

Translators Without Borders, a nonprofit providing translation services for charities in crisis zones, said the importance of taking the Rohingya language into the digital realm could not be overstated.

"It is revolutionary," the charity's Rebecca Petras told AFP in Cox's Bazar, where the Rohingya camps are located.

"In order for the language to survive, a script is necessary. This would strengthen the language and go a long way to preserve it."

FADING OUT

But the denial of education to most Rohingya in Myanmar means many cannot read or write the script, posing enormous hurdles for its survival in cyber space.

The minority of Rohingya afforded an education in Rakhine were instructed in Burmese, and even religious schools were not permitted to teach the written Rohingya script.

Those seeking to save it from obsolescence are looking to the next generation in makeshift schools across Bangladesh's teeming refugee camps.

More than half the new arrivals since August are children, and experts say unless they learn the written Rohingya script, it will wither away.

Rohingya groups are pushing for its inclusion in schools, but many children are quickly adopting Bengali instead, finding the local language more useful than their mother tongue.

Schools have also focused on Burmese and English, throwing up another roadblock for those fighting for the language's survival.

"The UN schools are our only hope to introduce the written script to half a million children in the camps. But there is no attempt to teach Rohingya language, which is unfair," said Rohingya activist Rafique bin Habib.

MYARF

RB News

December 19, 2017

Maungdaw -- The villagers assure that the dead bodies in Inn Din graves are Rohingya whom were arrested on 31 of August, 2017. 

On 18 December, the Office of Myanmar's Commander-in-cheif announced that someone who does not want to be named informed that there are dead bodies in graves of Inn Din cemetery, Maungdaw South. Today, on 19 December, the office reannounced that there are (10) dead bodies in graves. 

Some undeniable facts about the arrested and killed people from Inn Din village including (10) dead Rohingya men were revealed when investigating with Inn Din Rohingya refugees who escaped for life in Bangladesh refugee camps. 

Since 28 to 31 of August, 2017, Myanmar military and Border Guard Police non-stopped burnt down the Rohingya houses in Inn Din village. So, almost Rohingya villagers escaped to nearby mountains, beach and villages to save their life. 

On 31 of August, 2017, Myanmar military and Border Guard Police arrested (10) Rohingya men who mushroomed on Inn Din beach when their houses were burnt to ground, the Inn Din Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh told RB News. 

The (10) Rohingya arrestees are; 

(1) MV Abdul Malek (s/o) U Mohammed, age-35

(2) Abul Hashim (s/o) U Kamarul, age-30

(3) Abdullah (s/o) U Abul Kalam, age-20

(4) Hafiz Ullah (s/o) U Nur Mohammed, age-28

(5) Rashid (s/o) U Abdul Shukur, age-20

(6) Abdul Mojid (s/o) U Mohammed, age-45

(7) Bangu (s/o) U Amaan Ullah, age-25

(8) Dilu (s/o) U Esop, age-30

(9) Bu Tar (s/o) U Abdul Rahaman, age-45 and 

(10) Rafique (s/o) U Mohammed Ramul, age-25

The villagers further added that the dead bodies in Inn Din graves are the (10) Rohingya men whom the military and Border Guard Police killed after arresting them from beach.

Voice of America

December 18, 2017

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The U.N. refugee agency is mounting a multi-million dollar operation aimed at keeping thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh warm during the winter ahead.

The U.N refugee agency reports on Sunday it will start distributing the first of nearly 200,000 items of warm clothing to help recently arrived Rohingya refugees weather the colder climate ahead.

More than 646,000 Rohingya, fleeing persecution and violence in Myanmar, have arrived in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh since the end of August. The UNHCR says it is worried about their squalid living conditions and lack of protection from myriad risks, including their ability to survive the cooler temperatures in the weeks and months ahead.

UNHCR spokesman, Babar Baloch, said winters in Bangladesh are milder than in other regions. But, he notes temperatures dip low at night and the Rohingya don’t have adequate clothing and shelter to protect themselves.

“Children, who are 55 percent of Rohingya refugee population, are particularly vulnerable. So are the women and they represent more than half of all refugees in Bangladesh. An estimated 10 percent are either disabled or have serious medical conditions or are older persons at risk,” he said.

Baloch said UNHCR is working to improve the quality of shelters in the camps and has distributed thousands of new shelter kits as part of this strategy. He says the refugees also are receiving core relief items, including blankets, kitchen sets and solar lights.

He said UNHCR is distributing cooking fuel composed of compressed rice husks to replace firewood. He says this will protect both children and the environment.

He explained refugee children gathering wood in adjacent forests are vulnerable to attacks and rape. At the same time, he says gathering firewood degrades the environment by stripping back swathes of woodland.

By Human Rights Watch

December 18, 2017

New York – Analysis of satellite imagery reveals new destruction of Rohingya villages during October and November 2017 in northern Rakhine State in Burma, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch identified 40 villages with building destruction occurring in October and November, increasing the total to 354 villages that have been partially or completely destroyed since August 25, 2017. During this period, thousands more Rohingya refugees fled Burma and arrived in Bangladesh.

Satellite imagery confirms that dozens of buildings were burned the same week Burma and Bangladesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding on November 23 to begin returning refugees in Bangladesh within two months. On November 25, satellite data detected an active fire and building destruction in Myo Mi Chang village in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township. Four villages suffered building destruction between November 25 and December 2.

“The Burmese army’s destruction of Rohingya villages within days of signing a refugee repatriation agreement with Bangladesh shows that commitments to safe returns were just a public relations stunt,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The satellite imagery shows what the Burmese army denies: that Rohingya villages continue to be destroyed. Burmese government pledges to ensure the safety of returning Rohingya cannot be taken seriously.”

Human Rights Watch has used satellite imagery to assess and monitor over 1,000 villages and towns in the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathiduang, where the Burmese military and vigilantes have engaged in attacks on Rohingya. Human Rights Watch found that the damage patterns in the 354 affected villages are consistent with burning occurring in the weeks after the military operations began in late August.

Of the 354 affected villages, at least 118 were either partially or completely destroyed after September 5 -- the date the Burmese State Counsellor’s office announced as the end of clearance operations. Of the 40 new villages with building destruction identified by Human Rights Watch, 24 were destroyed in October, 11 in November, and 5 over both months.

The latest documented arson attacks occurred between November 25 and December 2 in four villages. Satellite data from environmental sensors detected an active fire at 12:30 p.m. in the Rohingya village of Myo Mi Chang in Maungdaw Township on November 25. Building destruction was concentrated in the center of the village, which was undamaged until this attack. Other villages subjected to arson attacks during this period include Nga/Myin Baw, Goke Pi, and an unknown village in the village tract of Zee Pin Chaung.

On November 23, Bangladesh and Burma signed an Arrangement on Return of Displaced Persons from Rakhine State on behalf of “residents of Rakhine State” who crossed from Burma into Bangladesh after October 9, 2016 and August 25, 2017. In letters to both governments, Human Rights Watch said the agreement should be shelved, noting the lack of involvement by the United Nations and the unrealistic timetable for safe and voluntary returns starting in January 2018.

Since late August, the Burmese military has committed widespread killings, rapes, arbitrary arrests, and mass arson in hundreds of predominantly Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State, forcing more than 655,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Human Rights Watch has found that this campaign of ethnic cleansing amounts to crimes against humanity. Attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) armed group on 30 security force outposts and an army base that killed 11 Burmese security personnel set off the Burmese military “clearance operations” against the Rohingya.

In November, a Burmese army “investigation team” report concluded that there were “no deaths of innocent people” during the military operation in Rakhine State, and that at least 376 “terrorists” were killed during fighting, contrary to information reported by the UN, media outlets, and human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch. The humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on December 14 concluded that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the violence, over 700 of whom were children, based on survey data of refugees in Bangladesh.

“The UN Security Council and concerned governments shouldn’t continue to stand by as evidence of continuing attacks on the Rohingya community comes to light,” Adams said. “Targeted sanctions need to be imposed now against those responsible for ordering and carrying out crimes against humanity.”

By Justin Rowlatt

BBC News

December 18, 2017

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, is determined that the perpetrators of the horrors committed against the Rohingya face justice.

He's the head of the UN's watchdog for human rights across the world, so his opinions carry weight.

It could go right to the top - he doesn't rule out the possibility that civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the head of the armed forces Gen Aung Min Hlaing, could find themselves in the dock on genocide charges some time in the future.

Earlier this month, Mr Zeid told the UN Human Rights Council that the widespread and systematic nature of the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar (also called Burma) meant that genocide could not be ruled out.

"Given the scale of the military operation, clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high level," said the high commissioner, when we met at the UN headquarters in Geneva for BBC Panorama.

That said, genocide is one of those words that gets bandied about a lot. It sounds terrible - the so-called "crime of crimes". Very few people have ever been convicted of it. 

The crime was defined after the Holocaust. Member countries of the newly founded United Nations signed a convention, defining genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy a particular group. 

It is not Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein's job to prove acts of genocide have been committed - only a court can do that. But he has called for an international criminal investigation into the perpetrators of what he has called the "shockingly brutal attacks" against the Muslim ethnic group who are mainly from northern Rakhine in Myanmar.

But the high commissioner recognised it would be a tough case to make: "For obvious reasons, if you're planning to commit genocide you don't commit it to paper and you don't provide instructions."

"The thresholds for proof are high," he said. "But it wouldn't surprise me in the future if a court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see."

By the beginning of December, nearly 650,000 Rohingya - around two thirds of the entire population - had fled Myanmar after a wave of attacks led by the army that began in late August.

Hundreds of villages were burned and thousands are reported to have been killed.

There is evidence of terrible atrocities being committed: massacres, murders and mass rapes - as I heard myself when I was in the refugee camps as this crisis began. 

What clearly rankles the UN human rights chief is that he had urged Ms Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, to take action to protect the Rohingya six months before the explosion of violence in August.

He said he spoke to her on the telephone when his office published a report in February documenting appalling atrocities committed during an episode of violence that began in October 2016.

"I appealed to her to bring these military operations to an end," he told me. "I appealed to her emotional standing… to do whatever she could to bring this to a close, and to my great regret it did not seem to happen."

Ms Suu Kyi's power over the army is limited, but Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein believes she should have done more to try and stop the military campaign. 

He criticised her for failing to use the term "Rohingya". "To strip their name from them is dehumanising to the point where you begin to believe that anything is possible," he said - powerful language for a top UN official. 

He thought Myanmar's military was emboldened when the international community took no action against them after the violence in 2016. "I suppose that they then drew a conclusion that they could continue without fear," he said.

"What we began to sense was that this was really well thought out and planned," he told me.

The Myanmar government has said the military action was a response to terrorist attacks in August which killed 12 members of the security forces. 

But BBC Panorama has gathered evidence that shows that preparations for the continued assault on the Rohingya began well before that.

We show that Myanmar had been training and arming local Buddhists. Within weeks of last year's violence the government made an offer: "Every Rakhine national wishing to protect their state will have the chance to become part of the local armed police."

"This was a decision made to effectively perpetrate atrocity crimes against the civilian population," said Matthew Smith, chief executive of the human rights organisation Fortify Rights which has been investigating the build-up to this year's violence.

That view is borne out by refugees in the vast camps in Myanmar who saw these volunteers in action, attacking their Rohingya neighbours and burning down their homes.

"They were just like the army, they had the same kind of weapons", said Mohammed Rafique, who ran a successful business in Myanmar. "They were local boys, we knew them. When the army was burning our houses, torturing us, they were there."

Meanwhile the Rohingya were getting more vulnerable in other ways.

By the summer food shortages were widespread in north Rakhine - and the government tightened the screws. The programme has learnt that from mid-August the authorities had cut off virtually all food and other aid to north Rakhine. 

And the army brought in reinforcements. On 10 August, two weeks before the militant attacks, it was reported that a battalion had been flown in.

The UN human rights representative for Myanmar was so concerned she issued a public warning, urging restraint from the Myanmar authorities.

But when Rohingya militants launched attacks on 30 police posts and an army base, the military response was huge, systematic and devastating.

The BBC asked Aung San Suu Kyi and the head of the Myanmar armed forces for a response. But neither of them has replied. 

Almost four months on from those attacks and Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein is concerned the repercussions of the violence are not yet over. He fears this "could just be the opening phases of something much worse". 

He worries jihadi groups could form in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh and launch attacks in Myanmar, perhaps even targeting Buddhist temples. The result could be what he called a "confessional confrontation" - between Buddhists and Muslims.

It is a frightening thought, as the high commissioner acknowledged, but one he believes Myanmar isn't taking seriously enough. 

"I mean the stakes are so enormous," he said. "This sort of flippant manner by which they respond to the serious concerns of the international community is really alarming."

By Habib Siddiqui

RB Opinion

December 17, 2017

One of the sinister methods employed to justify genocide has been to deny the history of the targeted victims. And that is what the criminal Buddhists within the apartheid state of Myanmar has been doing for nearly 70 years since earning independence from Britain on January 4, 1948. Instead of carrying out their hideous elimination process in one shot within a short period of time, however, the Buddhist Myanmar has been doing it slowly stepwise as part of a very sinister national project with full cooperation from top to bottom within the Buddhist community. 

They termed Rohingyas as outsiders and officially robbed their citizenship thereby effectively making them stateless in the land of their ancestors, a crucial policy that would create the official justification for ongoing violence and expulsion of the targeted minority out of the country. The rape of women and wanton killing of innocent Rohingyas, let alone relentless persecution were employed as tactics to create an environment for forced exodus. The Rohingyas were denied each of the 30 rights enshrined in the Universal of Declaration of Human Rights. 

To erase the Rohingya history, the names of historical landmarks were changed: Arakan was named the Rakhine state, and its capital city Akyab changed to Sittwe. Muslim monuments - mosques, shrines and madrassas that once dotted the Arakan coastal line was systematically gutted and destroyed. 

Sadly, even such destructive measures were not considered enough by the Buddhist genocidal perpetrators; they raped, killed and terrorized people; they pillaged, burned and demolished Rohingya villages and towns. 

History books were changed to de-link the Rohingya from the soil of Arakan. And worse still, to mobilize general Buddhist public against Rohingyas - who are mostly Muslims (and some Hindus) - the latter were dehumanized through carefully crafted propaganda. The victims were depicted as 'vermin', 'cockroaches', 'snakes', etc. to create the moral justification for their total extinction or annihilation. Pseudo scholars and academics with fascist leanings - like Aye Kyaw (now dead who taught in a NY university) and Aye Chan (who teaches at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan) - stirred up the Rakhine Buddhists and others within Myanmar to distort history and delegitimize the Rohingya people, thanks to Government incentives and supports that they received. The xenophobic Buddhist monks played their hate cards in ways that the world has not seen in decades. With active support from the government, its military and police, plus Buddhist politicians - all hardcore racists and bigots - the genocidal pogroms unleashed against the targeted Rohingya came easy and were perceived as justifiable by the Buddhist public. 

In genocidal pogroms of 1978 and 1991-92, more than half a million of Rohingyas were pushed out to Bangladesh when not everyone was later welcome back. In the latest 2017 pogrom alone, some 647,000 (and growing) Rohingyas have been pushed out. Thus, the Rohingya minority that once comprised roughly 45-47% of the population (per estimates made by area experts) before the current episodes (dating back to June 2012) has been reduced drastically to perhaps less than half a million living inside the Apartheid Myanmar. According to credible international agencies and medical sources, at least 6,700 Rohingyas were killed and tens of thousands of girls and women were raped by Buddhists of Myanmar - military and fascist Rakhines. Hundreds of Rohingya villages have also been destroyed by them to make return of the refugees impossible. 

Sittwe, which used to be a mixed-ethnic city has no resemblance of its rich past heritage of co-existence. Rohingyas are interned in concentration camps with no access to the outside world. The Jama mosque now stands disused and moldering, behind barbed wire. Its 89-year-old imam is interned. All the Muslim owned shops have been grabbed by Rakhines, who now falsely claim that Rohingyas never owned any shop in the bazaar. Sittwe University, which used to enroll hundreds of Muslim students, now only teaches around 30 Rohingya, all of whom are in a distance-learning program.

Buthidaung, close to the border with Bangladesh, the traditional home of many Rohingyas no longer has anyone of their kind representing them in anything in the township where they comprised 90% population. It is now represented by a minority Rakhine, a hostile MP, who wants to push out the remainder Rohingyas to Bangladesh. 

Rangoon (now called Yangon) whose majority population during the British era, esp. the 1930s, were Muslims and Hindus – racially Indian, has now a very small community that feels threatened, unsafe and insecure of their very existence. In the early decades of Burma’s independence, a Rohingya elite thrived in Rangoon. Rangoon University, the country’s top institution, had enough Rohingya students to form their own union. One of the cabinets of U Nu, the country’s first post-independence leader, included a health minister who identified himself as an Arakanese Muslim.

Even under Ne Win, the general, Burmese national radio aired broadcasts in the Rohingya language. Rohingya, women among them, were represented in Parliament. 

Now, under Suu Kyi, everything is lost, and the days of hated dictator Ne Win, who robbed them of their citizenship, are viewed as better days! 

That is the sad reality of the Rohingyas and other Muslims and Hindus still living inside Suu Kyi’s den of intolerance and hatred called Myanmar. 

In a report released in October, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that Myanmar’s security forces had worked to “effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognizable terrain.”

The United Nations report also said that the crackdown in Rakhine had “targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.”

What is so grotesque is that Myanmar is one of the signatories of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which vowed to prevent genocide. And yet, it is the worst violator of our time! 

The Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” This includes not only killing members of the group, but also causing serious bodily or mental harm and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

As rightly noted in the 70th convention on the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “Genocide does not happen by accident; it is deliberate, with warning signs and precursors.” “Often it is the culmination of years of exclusion, denial of human rights and other wrongs. Since genocide can take place in times of war and in times of peace, we must be ever-vigilant,” he continued.

The Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng echoed similar sentiments, stating: “It is our inaction, our ineffectiveness in addressing the warning signs, that allows it to become a reality. A reality where people are dehumanized and persecuted for who they are, or who they represent. A reality of great suffering, cruelty, and of inhumane acts that have at the basis unacceptable motivations.”

Despite the comprehensive definition of genocide in the Convention, genocide has recurred multiple times, Guterres said. “We are still reacting rather than preventing, and acting only when it is often too late. We must do more to respond early and keep violence from escalating,” he said.

After a year of investigation, the organization Fortify Rights and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said that there is “mounting” evidence that points to a genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar with Burmese Army soldiers, police, and civilians as the major perpetrators.

“The Rohingya have suffered attacks and systematic violations for decades, and the international community must not fail them now when their very existence in Myanmar is threatened,” said Cameron Hudson from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Without urgent action, there’s a high risk of more mass atrocities,” he continued.

More than half of Myanmar’s one million Rohingya have fled the country since genocidal violence reignited in August. It has been the largest and fastest flow of destitute people across a border since the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. “There was nothing left. People were shot in the chest, stomach, legs, face, head, everywhere.” Eyewitness testimony revealed that Rohingya civilians were burned alive, women and girls raped, and men and boys arrested en masse.

“These crimes thrive on impunity and inaction…condemnations aren’t enough,” said Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights Matthew Smith.

Myanmar government’s strict restrictions on Rohingya’s daily lives also point to signs of genocide. In 2013, authorities placed a two-child limit on Rohingya couples in two predominantly Muslim townships in Rakhine State.

Other equally credible international agencies have also come forward to claim that the crisis in Myanmar may constitute genocide such as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein and the British parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “Considering Rohingyas’ self-identify as a distinct ethnic group with their own language and culture – and [that they] are also deemed by the perpetrators themselves as belonging to a different ethnic, national, racial or religious group – given all of this, can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present?” al-Hussein asked.

Though the UN Human Rights Council recently condemned the systematic and gross violations of human rights in Myanmar, the Security Council has failed to act on the crisis. China, shamelessly, with its own history of on-going horrendous crimes perpetrated against the indigenous Uighurs in Xinjiang (East Turkestan), has been responsible for the UNSC inaction on the Rohingya crisis. 

In spite of serious cases of genocide in various parts of our globe, the first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on 2 September 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide. Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide. 

The first state to be found in breach of the Genocide convention was Serbia. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war, but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladic. On 22 November 2017, Ratko was sentenced to life in prison by the ICTY for 10 charges, one of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war.

As the UN appeals for the remaining 45 member states to ratify the Genocide Convention, my question is what about states like Myanmar who are already party to the document? Will the UNSC take action against war criminals in Myanmar only after the last Rohingya is eliminated from their ancestral home? 

Concerned UN and world leaders ought to know that simply increasing the number of signatories for the 1948 Convention beyond 149 members is not going to prevent genocide. The Convention requires all states to take action to prevent and punish genocide. Not only Myanmar, but the entire international community has failed to protect Rohingya civilians from genocidal atrocities.

Just complaining about the genocidal horrors and increasing membership to ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide will not help. The civilized world simply cannot let savages to run the show and get away with their monumental crimes against humanity. If we are to avert a humanitarian disaster like the Rohingya crisis, this horror will have to be matched by stern action on the part of the international community. That means, trial and punishing the monsters.

By AFP

December 15, 2017

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh -- Disease, hunger and misery stalk the Rohingya living in Bangladesh's refugee camps but despite the grinding hardship, few are willing to consider the alternative - returning home under a deal struck with Myanmar.

The arrangement signed by Myanmar and Bangladesh in November to start repatriating refugees within two months is viewed with deep suspicion and dread by Rohingya still traumatised by the violent expulsion from their homeland.

"They make deals, but they won't follow them," said Rohingya refugee Mohammad Syed, who estimated his age at 33.

"When we go back, they will torture and kill us again."

Their fear is not misplaced.

Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday (Dec 14) that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of a Myanmar army crackdown on rebels in Rakhine state that began in August.

The worst bouts of violence have subsided but Rohingya continue to flee, the UN says.

Nearly 650,000 of the Muslim minority have fled across the border into Cox's Bazar district in south-eastern Bangladesh since the army campaign began.

The UN rights chief said in December the catalogue of abuses - including indiscriminate killings, mass rape and the razing of hundreds of Rohingya villages - contained "elements of genocide".

Myanmar has consistently denied committing atrocities in Rakhine, saying the crackdown was a proportionate response to the Rohingya militants who attacked police posts on Aug 25, killing around a dozen officials.

But rights groups say the conditions are not in place to ensure safe, voluntary and dignified returns, and the Rohingya sense danger lurking behind Myanmar's assurances.

"It's a trap. They have given such assurances before, and still made our lives hell," said Rohingya woman Dolu, who goes by one name, in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar.

"I would rather live here. We get food and shelter here, and we can pray freely. We are allowed to live." .

FEAR OF RETURN

The Rohingya have reason to be wary.

The persecuted minority has been the target of past pogroms in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which does not recognise the group as a genuine ethnicity and has stripped them of citizenship.

Many have no homes left after their villages were torched.

Those still living in Rakhine, Myanmar's poorest state, face heavy restrictions on work, travel and access to basic services.

More than 100,000 Rohingya displaced by a 2012 outbreak of violence have been trapped in squalid camps in central Rakhine ever since.

Aid groups have warned Myanmar they would boycott any new camps for Rohingya returnees, saying refugees must be allowed to settle in their own homes and not forced into ghetto-like conditions.

"They have to recognise us as citizens of the country. They have to give us proper Rohingya identity cards. Only then we will go back," said 25-year-old Rohingya man Aziz Khan at Kutupalong, a gigantic camp in Cox's Bazar. "Otherwise we would rather die here in Bangladesh."

Bangladesh has been praised for opening its borders as waves of Rohingya civilians fled army reprisals and Buddhist mobs.

But the government has always maintained that the refugees would one day return, tussling for months with Myanmar over the terms of repatriation deal.

Before the latest surge, Bangladesh was already hosting hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled previous waves of persecution.

This crisis has put enormous pressure on ordinary Bangladeshis living in Cox's Bazar, where the refugee population has grown fourfold since August.

"It is good news, goodbye to them. It is time they go back to where they belong," said Ehsaan Hossain, a shopkeeper at Cox's Bazar where prices for basic goods has skyrocketed.

Others complained about the headache of frequent identity checks and roadside patrols since the Rohingya influx began.

But rickshaw driver Mohammad Ali worried his income - which had doubled since the flood of refugees - would slump if the Rohingya suddenly left en masse.

"In a way, I will miss them if they leave," the 30-year-old told AFP.

By Mushfique Wadud

Thomson Reuters Foundation

December 15, 2017

UKHIYA, Bangladesh -- When Rohingya refugees began arriving in Bangladesh, after violence erupted in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State in August, local residents were puzzled to see some toting small solar panels on their shoulders.

“When we saw they were carrying a solar panel with them, I was surprised. I would never do this in such a situation,” Jashim Uddin, a tea stall owner in Ukhiya, in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

Main Uddin, a government official in charge of Ukhiya sub-district during the Rohingya exodus, said the panels were being carried in despite the sound of gunfire on the border and reports of landmines.

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State since August, when the Myanmar army launched a crackdown following attacks on police posts and an army base by Muslim militants. 

Many reported making an arduous trek lasting between 5 and 15 days along hilly and waterlogged roads – but the hazardous journey did not prevent many of them from carrying a solar panel with them. 

“This solar panel saved my life,” said Ayatullah, 18, once a shopkeeper in Myanmar’s Mongdu township and now a resident of the Thaingkhali refugee camp in Bangladesh. 

He said he had to take care to avoid Myanmar’s army when he fled the country. 

“They were killing everyone they came across. We had to depend on information from our people about the safe route, and a mobile phone was needed for that. This solar panel helped us to charge the mobile phone,” he said. 

A top United Nations human rights official said last week that Myanmar’s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya.

Mainly Buddhist Myanmar denies atrocities against Rohingya, and said in September that nearly 400 people died in the fighting, mostly Rohingya insurgents. 

Ayatulla said that he only brought some clothing to Bangladesh, beside the solar panel. “I thought even if I could not take anything, I must take the solar panel,” he said. 

LIGHTING THE WAY 

Interviews by the Thomson Reuters Foundation with more than 50 Rohingya refugees in Balukhali and Thaingkhali camps in Ukhiya, and observations of refugee households in the camps, suggest large numbers of refugee families brought solar panels with them.

Refugees used the panels, each the size of a laptop computer and fitted with a battery and a small light, to charge mobile phones and provide light at night on the hilly jungle roads on their way to Bangladesh, they said. 

Many said they also thought that the panels would also come in useful if they had to live on the streets in Bangladesh. 

Rashida Begum, 45, from Napura village near Mongdu, made the five-day walk to Bangladesh with three sons and three daughters, bringing a solar panel but no other belongings. 

“This helped me a lot while we stayed in the jungle at night. Without this solar panel, we might not (have reached) Bangladesh,” she said. “It was a difficult thing for me to carry this, but I did it thinking it would be useful for me.” 

Mohammad Yaser, a refugee from Kearipara, near Mongdu, said many rural areas of Rakhine State lack grid electricity connections. Most families used solar panels for lighting at night and other daily activities, while others used candles or kerosene lamps. 

Yaser said that solar panels were cheaper in Myanmar than in Bangladesh, with a 20-watt panel costing 20,000 kyat (about $15). In Bangladesh, an equivalent panel costs 8 to 12 times as much. 

Many of the Rohingya refugees said that they knew about this price difference and it was another reason to bring their panels with them. Security concerns also were a worry. 

“When we arrived in Bangladesh, we had to stay on the street for the first few days. We powered lights with solar panel during that time and the light made us feel safe,” said Abdur Jaher, 45, from Maungdu township in Myanmar, who fled with his wife and their five children. 

SOLAR CAMPS 

At the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, there is no grid electricity connection. Refugees use solar panels, candles and kerosene lamps for light at night. 

The Bangladeshi government also has provided 500 solar-powered street lights and 2,000 home system solar panels for the camps, and solar power is also used for wells and water purification systems. 

The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations organization, similarly is using solar power to provide medical support to refugees in Kutupalong and Balukhali camps, with services available 24 hours a day. 

UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, said on December 7 that Rohingyas were continuing to come to Bangladesh even though both Bangladesh and Myanmar had set up a timetable to allow them to return home. UNHCR said around 1,500 had arrived the previous week. 

The refugees have reported fleeing mass killings, rape and arson attacks against them. 

Reporting by Mushfique Wadud; editing by James Baer and Laurie Goering.

By AFP

December 14, 2017

At least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed in the first month of a Myanmar army crackdown on rebels in Rakhine state that began in late August, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday.

The figure is the highest estimated death toll yet of violence that erupted on August 25 and triggered a massive refugee crisis, with more than 620,000 Rohingya fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh over a three-month period.

The UN and US have described the military operation as "ethnic cleansing" of the Muslim minority, but have not released specific death tolls.

"At least 6,700 Rohingya, in the most conservative estimations, are estimated to have been killed, including at least 730 children below the age of five," MSF said Thursday.

The group's findings come from six surveys of more than 11,426 people in Rohingya refugee camps and cover the first month after the crisis erupted.

"We met and spoke with survivors of violence in Myanmar, who are now sheltering in overcrowded and unsanitary camps in Bangladesh," said the group's medical director Sidney Wong. 

"What we uncovered was staggering, both in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member died as a result of violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely injured."

Rohingya refugees have told consistent stories of security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs driving them out of their homes with bullets, rape and arson that reduced hundreds of villages to ash.

Earlier this month the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the military-led crackdown appeared to include "elements of genocide".

The MSF survey puts a number to the horrors.

Gunshot wounds were the cause of death in 69 percent of the cases, according to the survey.

Another nine percent were reported burned alive inside houses, while five percent died from fatal beatings.

For children under five, nearly 60 percent died after being shot, the survey found.

- 'Rohingya targeted' -

MSF said the peak in deaths coincided with the launch of "clearance operations" by the army and local militias in late August, and showed "that Rohingya have been targeted".

Myanmar's government did not respond to a request for comment. 

But it has consistently denied abuses in Rakhine and puts the official death toll at 400 people -- including 376 Rohingya "terrorists", according to the army.

Authorities have also blocked a UN fact-finding mission from accessing the conflict zone in northern Rakhine state.

The investigators visited refugee camps in Bangladesh in late October and said -- based on interviews -- that the total number of deaths was not known but "may turn out to be extremely high."

The Rohingya are not recognised as an ethnic group in mainly Buddhist Myanmar and have been subject to systematic persecution for decades.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation agreement in late November saying that Rohingya refugees could start to return home in two months, but international aid groups have threatened to boycott working with the government if new camps are set up in northern Rakhine State.

More than 120,000 Rohingya already live in closed-off settlements in the central part of the state since intercommunal violence erupted in 2012.