The Guardian

February 11, 2018

Foreign secretary tells de facto Myanmar leader refugees must return under UN supervision

Boris Johnson has told Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi the UN refugee agency must be allowed to supervise the return of Rohingya refugees, saying it was clear many were terrified to return home.

The UK’s foreign secretary told reporters the charred homes of devastated Rohingya villages were like nothing he had seen before in his life, after visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh and northern Rakhine state in Myanmar.

In his meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s state counsellor, Johnson said he stressed that refugees must feel safe returning home and must be supervised by UNHCR. 

It is understood Johnson also raised the case of two Reuters journalists who have been detained for investigating a massacre in Rakhine. 

The foreign secretary described seeing burnt-out homes and abandoned possessions, including a child’s bicycle, which he said had moved him greatly during his three-hour helicopter tour. 

He said he had met terrified villagers who had refused to say who had burnt down their homes, but rejected Myanmar’s claims that the destruction was self-inflicted.

Johnson said the purpose-built reception centre he was escorted to see had received no returning refugees, despite being in place for months, and that it was surrounded by 10ft high barbed-wife fences. Those who wish to return to Myanmar have to undergo biometric logging before being housed in the centre.

The foreign secretary said he did not believe officials’ claims that no refugees had returned because the Bangladesh authorities had refused to return them. More than 1.1m Rohingya refugees are believed to have fled over the border to escape violence by Myanmar’s military.

“I saw real apprehension both in camps in Bangladesh and amongst the remaining villagers. There’s a lot of fear and that fear needs to be overcome,” he said. “The Burmese authorities need to work very hard with the international agencies to overcome that real alarm that people feel about coming back to Burma.

“I’ve seen nothing like it in my life. Hundreds and hundreds of villages torched. It’s absolutely clear that what is needed now is some leadership, some calm leadership working with the UN agencies to get these people back home.”

The FCO said Johnson’s hour-long meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi had been positive and constructive. A Nobel peace prize winner and former democracy activist, she has come under intense international criticism for her response to the violence against Rohingya. 

She has said she believes reports of the violence to be exaggerated and has accused those who have raised concern of having an agenda. She and Johnson did not appear to reach agreement in their talks about the cause of the conflict, but a government source said they still hoped the UK could work with her on a solution.

Johnson said they had discussed the range of challenges facing the country. “I spoke to her about my own experience witnessing the terrible conditions of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and my deep concern about their future,” he said. “I encouraged her efforts to broker a nationwide peace settlement to put to an end 70 years of conflict in her homeland.”

Burmese authorities should carry out a full and independent investigation into the violence in Rakhine and create conditions that could make it a safe place for the Rohingya refugees to return, he said. They should be able to return “free from fear, and in the knowledge that their basic rights will be respected and upheld”.

Min Khant

RB Opinion

February 10, 2018

Union Minister U Thein Swe’s statement at Myanmar Parliament on (6.2.2018) in regard exclusion of Rohingyas identity in census made by the British authority in 1911, 1921, and 1931 had been incomplete-process. Because the census records of British authority of the then BURMA from time to time were shown different figures, and usually added from one-census account to another newly found indigenous identities of BURMESE people reside across the nation. Does the British deny the processes? 

While insertion of Rohingyas identity in the list of Myanmar consecutive governments’ records depended on their mindset and way of thinking alone, Rohingyas have nothing to do about the identity that did not include in their disorganized census enumerations along the history. Rohingyas, having the indigenous people like others in country, and well acceptance by senior renowned Burmese politicians. Who have strived, have been heartily honored in the mind of Burmese till now and who gained independence from British in 1948, ROHINGYA identity was imbued in indigenous list of Myanmar national and thus some of indigenous rights were legally conferred on them, as Rohingyas deserved similar to others, who the conscious politicians of Myanmar can deny this?

Rohingyas people have had some extent of rights conferred by the first democratic government after independence in 1948. Rohingyas have got to broadcast their own language from BBS (Burma Broadcasting Service) since 1961- 65. Their existence in north Rakhine is recorded in the then encyclopedia of Burma in volume (9), page 89-90. Former Rohingya university students were honored to form student association similar to others. Tatmadaw magazines around 1960s were too much proud to unfolding the availability of Rohingyas in their north Rakhine localities as faithful to the government. A number of editorials in regard Rohingya historical backgrounds and their fine arts were allowed to be exposed in Guardian Magazines that had monthly been issued around 1960s. The state high school, middle school and even the year 2008 in distant university curriculum of higher education of Myanmar are full evident of Rohingyas’ indications to be practiced by the entire students of Myanmar. 

Since the first democratic election to 2010 election for more than 60 years, Rohingyas have been able to vote and to be elected as eligible voters in electioneering processes and the rightful parliamentarians. The authoritarians were all the same Burmese and the same inheritors of Military godfather, Ne WIN. They have not had questions to bar Rohingyas from the past elections, excluding 2015. 

To stop Rohingyas from 2015 election, which lifted Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to state Counsellor of Myanmar, Rohingyas of Rakhine were excluded from voting, after disenfrenching them via the last (2010-15) parliament’s approval that chaired By Thura U Shwe Man. 

The recent Myanmar parliament’s discussion by Minister U Thein Swe due to the name Rohingyas “was never mentioned in any of the census lists, and it is not included among the list of 135 ethnic nationals” is the continuation fine artwork of Thura Shweman and vet. Aye Maung of Arakan Army supporter who, was in the last upper house parliamentarian of the parliament and right now he is in jail, to sadden the entire Rohingyas population and the world community who support the Rohingyas morally. 

For the census of 2014, Myanmar had received 64 millions of dollars from UNFPA and donor countries to do census, promising the world and donors “it would allow all the people of Myanmar to fill the form as per their wishes”. However, the name ROHINGYA identity was severely barred from filling by either Rohingyas in Rakhine or Rohingyas from others along the nation by the coordinated efforts of all staffers assigned by the government. In accord the statistic, there are roughly 644 kinds of indigenous identities rather than 135. All are waiting the exact identities. 

Since the state law and order restoration council’s (SLORC) beginning of state power in 1988, it had been trying to eradicate Rohingyas under the blueprint (1982-citizenship law) of U NE WIN. 

During the time of Daw Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in 2011-12, she had been asked by the local and international community regarding the Rohingyas status. And some persons’ shootings to Daw Suu as “would you agree to advocate the Rohingyas that successive military governments wanted to wipe out, and she would reply, it was up to next democratically elected parliament decision”. 

Seeing this immoral character of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her dominant parliament of today in Nay Pyi Daw, she let her relevant minister to declare the world there is no Rohingyas in Myanmar and a decision was made by the majority of NLD parliamentarians whom whether Rohingyas and international community like it not. 

People’s hope democracy in Myanmar would be of an inspiration to have a good future flourishing the democratic rights for all, particularly for minorities like Rohingyas and others. Daw Suu Kyi led parliament of Myanmar is a powerful lobby go-down to abolish the rights of others through having the majority’s voices against the rights of minority’s groups. 

Even though people from majority ethnic had voted NLD and that of the party’s leader Daw Suu Kyi with a great hope, NLD’s victorious in the past 2015 election is orchestrated to bully the minorities with coordinating efforts of others who are too against Rohingyas. Though not all parliamentarians in Nay Pyi daw are NLD candidates and some are with their respective thoughts in line principle of the political parties’ policies in parliaments, regarding the Rohingyas, all the parliamentarians are in the same line to eradicate Rohingyas to vote unanimously against Rohingyas. Nothing can come out good from Daw Suu Led parliament.

Myanmar citizens both Burmese and different indigenous after having the repression and coercion of Myanmar military consecutive regimes since 1962 revolutionary period to 2010, all strata would have been seeking freedom and self-determination from the military’s unrestraint after suffering in their social life for a 50 years of life span. 

All Burmese either they are in rank of Military posts or ordinary, they all want domination and control on ethnic people and abuse in politics, economic and social welfare, Burmese never ever want to share least quota to ethnic brethren, fearing losing the domination of Burmese on tiny minority. 

A multi democratic protest in 1988 all along the country was a sign of mass people’ coordinated wishes to a change of military ruling system for a prosperous nation similar to neighboring countries after suffering a lot under the harsh military regimes. 

Again, the 2015 election was a great hope for almost entire people including many of the ethnic people though they have been their own political choices at the dawn of democratization. NLD followers and military power have been in THE mood of coordination now to crush all ethnic people demands that a returning to the era of military. 

Neither NLD nor any of future dominant Burmese political powers will be in combination of military forces to keep the state power in Burmese hands and control ethnic peoples from the other. The immoral policy of Burmese is well understood by national brethrens and Burmese will not change their attitude at whatever costs. The NLD and military will put forth their control on all ethnic people’ due demands through killing, fighting, burning, evicting, displacing, relocating and mush of untold troubling. 

Right now, the NLD led parliament efforts to produce resolution “ there has not been any Rohingyas identity and it will not be such an identity” by the collective efforts of all parliamentarians to declare both in local and international community is a foolish and pigheaded work of the current government. 

And, it will be a sham for this regime to wipe out the Name ROHINGYA because the primary evidences that have been before and from the dawn of Independence time is at the present of all people of local and international community.

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

Reuters 

February 8, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM A MASSACRE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CASES 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEIGHBOR TURNS ON NEIGHBOR 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORGANIZING THE ARSON ATTACKS 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The army did not respond to a request for comment. 

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

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

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

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

“I STARTED HACKING HIM WITH A SWORD” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE VICTIMS ARE CHOSEN 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRESH CLOTHES AND A LAST MEAL 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VENGEANCE FOR A MISSING FARMER 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Foster Klug

Associated Press

February 7, 2018

NAYAPARA REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh — Abdul Goni says the Myanmar government was starving his family one stage at a time.

First, soldiers stopped the Rohingya Muslim from walking three hours to the forest for the firewood he sold to feed his family. Then Buddhist neighbors and seven soldiers took his only cow, which he rented out to fertilize rice fields. Next, he says, they killed his uncle and strung him up on a wire for trying to stop the theft of his buffalos.

By the time Goni saw bodies floating down the local river, of fellow Rohingya killed for illegal fishing, he knew his family would die if they didn't leave. On bad days, they carved the flesh out of banana plant stalks for food. On the worst days, his children ate nothing.

"I felt so sorry that I couldn't give them enough food," the 25-year-old says, tears running down his face, in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, just across the border from Myanmar. "Everything just got worse and worse. ... Day by day, the pressure was increasing all around us. They used to tell us, 'This isn't your land. ... We'll starve you out.'"

First, massacres, rapes and the wholesale destruction of villages by the Myanmar military in western Rakhine state forced nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, in reprisal for Rohingya militant attacks on Aug. 25. Now, the food supply appears to be another weapon that's being used against the dwindling numbers of Rohingya in Myanmar.

The accounts of hunger could not be independently confirmed, as Myanmar's government does not allow reporters into the northern part of Rakhine state, where most of the Rohingya lived. However, more than a dozen interviews by The Associated Press with the most recent refugees show growing desperation, as the noose tightens around their communities in what U.N. officials have said may be a genocide. The U.N. and human rights groups such as Amnesty International have also warned of increasing hunger among the Rohingya in areas where conflict and displacement have been most rampant.

Repeated calls to Myanmar's military weren't answered, but the Myanmar government denies ethnic cleansing and says it is battling terrorists. Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye says the government has been distributing food aid to as many people as possible.

"There are many ways that we have been reaching out to villagers frequently," he says. "And that's why it's not possible that there are people who are completely cut off from food or facing hunger."

The Rohingya Muslims, who have been loathed by Myanmar's Buddhist majority for decades, are locked down in their villages — sometimes even in their homes — and prevented from farming, fishing, foraging, trade and work, the refugees and aid groups say. In other words, they can no longer do what they need to do to eat. While restrictions on freedom of movement and access to food have long been in place, they have tightened dramatically in recent weeks, the AP interviews show.

"It was worse than a jail," says Goni, who finally left Hpa Yon Chaung village in Buthidaung township on Jan. 5. "People at least get food twice a day in jail. ...We were always surrounded, always under stress, always watched."

The hunger the Rohingya faced at home is evident when they come to the Bangladesh camps, where new refugees, especially children and women, suffer from "unbelievable" levels of malnutrition, according to Dr. Ismail Mehr.

"They are definitely coming in starving," says Mehr, who recently returned to the United States from treating refugees in the camps. "We saw the vitamin deficiencies in the children and the adults; we saw ... severely malnourished people who are basically skin and bones. It looked like the pictures from the Nazi camps."

The government's restrictions on access to northern Rakhine make it almost impossible to tell how many people are without food, how widespread the problem is or whether people are dying. The International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Yangon, says that since the end of August it has distributed food to more than 180,000 people in northern Rakhine state. The World Food Program said it was granted access in December and January to field locations including Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Mrauk U townships for the first time since August.

The people AP interviewed were mostly from Buthidaung township, where many day laborers, farmers and foragers were hit hard when the restrictions tightened, and Rathedaung township, where the impoverished Muslim communities are often encircled by Buddhists.

Mohammad Ilyas, 55, fled to Bangladesh with only a shirt and a lungi sarong, along with dozens of others from Rathedaung township. He says the military and his neighbors took Rohingya rice paddies and rice stockpiles.

"Sometimes we stayed hungry for a day, two days, even five days," Ilyas, who is from Ah Nauk Pyin village, says. "The Myanmar government doesn't want a single Muslim to remain there. They want to erase us completely."

Activists, aid groups and researchers say Myanmar squeezed the Rohingya by severely hampering many of the humanitarian operations that were crucial for their survival. Food aid was further disrupted by violence in 2016 and the bloodshed after Rohingya insurgents staged an unprecedented wave of 30 attacks on security posts across Rakhine state in August and killed at least 14 people.

Even before August, aid agencies in 2017 predicted a spike in severe malnutrition in children. In a report released today, Amnesty International details evidence of forced starvation by the military, including stopping the Rohingya from harvesting their rice fields in November and December. The Food and Agriculture Organization has also warned that the lack of access to food and fuel are adding to hunger in Myanmar.

Buddhists in Rakhine state began blocking food aid when they noticed that the Muslims were getting more than they were, according to Thomas MacManus, a specialist in international state crimes at Queen Mary University of London who has researched the Rohingya since 2012. Tightened curfews meant people couldn't harvest shrimp or rice, tend to their cattle, gather firewood or fish. Since August, an almost 24-hour-a-day curfew means no one is leaving their villages, he says.

MacManus says the Myanmar government has regularly employed a scorched-earth strategy that has denied food to other ethnic groups it has battled, including the Shan and the Kachin.

"What they're trying to do is design a situation where life just doesn't become livable anymore," he says. "You just block off an area and they can't get material or food. It is a time-honored way of doing genocide, and one of the easiest ways because you can do it slowly and without too much attention."

In this war on food, rice paddies are a major battlefield.

Last fall the Myanmar military stopped farmer Rashid Ahmed, 60, from harvesting his rice fields, which were about a 15-minute walk outside a village he could no longer leave. He stood by helpless as his Buddhist neighbors, assisted by the military, collected his rice and took his six buffalos. Without food, he says, he could not stay.

"It would have been better if they had just shot us instead of starving us out," says Ahmed, thin but wiry from years of field work, as he sat in a long hut with dozens of other new arrivals to the Bangladesh camps. "What they did was slower; it was crueler. They left us to imagine the worst, to wake up every day and think about what would happen when there was no food at all."

His family ate so many banana stalks that by the time they left, all 20 plants in his compound were gone.

"I always grew my own food, and now suddenly I couldn't feed myself or my family," says Ahmed, who is from Zay Di Taung village.

After Aug. 25, when he was trapped in his village, Mohammad Rafique, 25, a day laborer from Hpa Yon Chaung, survived on rice he'd stockpiled in his home. When that ran out in October, he sold family jewelry to get rice. When the money was gone, he begged from neighbors who still had rice stockpiles, often going without food so his children could eat.

"The market was closed; no one was harvesting," he says. "I was eating only once a day, sometimes not at all. ... I felt shame that I had to beg for food, but I had no other choice."

Without rice, things got very bad for the Rohingya very quickly.

Aid groups couldn't reach them regularly. The Buddhists blockaded their villages and wouldn't hire them; they put an embargo on Rohingya goods and even stopped selling them phone cards so they couldn't communicate with the outside world, according to aid groups. The Muslims ate through their stockpiles; they borrowed from friends and neighbors; then they ran out.

Food became so hard to get for Mohammad Hashim, 25, a wood cutter from Pyin La village, that he and his family sometimes ate broken rice grains normally given to chickens.

"We sometimes went two days without food," Hashim says. "They treated us like animals."

Goni says that of the 500 families who lived near him, around 150 have fled to Bangladesh. Everyone else wants to leave, he said, but they either don't have enough money or are too old.

"Some families have enough food because they stockpiled rice, but that can't last forever," he says. "If they can't get to Bangladesh, and they run out of rice, the only option is death."

___

Associated Press video journalist Rishabh Jain contributed to this report.

By Matthew Pennington

Associated Press

February 8, 2018

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are demanding Myanmar’s exclusion from U.S.-led military exercises in neighboring Thailand next week amid pressure for more American sanctions in response to atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

Myanmar’s planned participation in the Cobra Gold exercise, which starts Feb. 13, comes as its security forces are accused of killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians and burning down villages after Rohingya militant attacks last summer. More than 680,000 Rohingya — loathed in majority Buddhist Myanmar and denied citizenship — have fled to Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands more already sheltering there. They are unlikely to return any time soon.

That makes the country’s involvement in Cobra Gold, America’s largest, annual multi-nation drills in the Asia-Pacific, all the more controversial, although Myanmar has taken part before. Up to three officers from Myanmar are being invited to observe the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief portion of the drills, Pentagon spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Logan said. He said the identity and ranks of the officers participating is still under discussion.

“Simply put, militaries engaged in ethnic cleansing should not be honing their skills alongside U.S. troops,” Sen. John McCain, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Associated Press.

The criticism by Democrats and Republicans in Congress reflects the souring view of the Southeast Asian nation’s transformation from decades of army rule to democracy as evidence of widespread abuses has mounted. Myanmar’s siege-like denial it’s done anything wrong has only furthered its estrangement from much of the world. Before last year’s crackdown, McCain was advocating more U.S.-Myanmar military ties, not less. Now he’s one of the sponsors of a new sanctions bill.

The Trump administration already has imposed sanctions on the chief of Myanmar’s western military command and says it’s considering blacklisting others. It maintains restrictions on visas and assistance to Myanmar’s military.

But the Senate’s bipartisan bill, approved Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee, would turn the screw by pushing for more targeted sanctions and by reinforcing restrictions on military engagement with Myanmar, also known as Burma. A partner bill has been introduced in the House.

“We need to bridge the impunity gap that protects Burma’s military,” said Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described the attacks on Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing.” U.N.-appointed investigator Yanghee Lee has gone further, saying it “bears the hallmarks of a genocide,” which the world body defines as acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group. Unlike ethnic cleansing, genocide is a crime under international law.

Rep. Ed Royce, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Republican chairman, and Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, architect of a law prohibiting U.S. assistance to foreign military units implicated in serious human rights abuses, also said Myanmar had no business taking part in the drills in Thailand. They include 29 nations. About 20 are observers.

“We should not be rewarding those who flagrantly violate international law with impunity,” Leahy said.

The plight of the Rohingya has highlighted the Myanmar military’s unchallenged authority over security operations despite ceding power to a civilian government after 2015 elections.

Myanmar staunchly denies that its security forces have targeted civilians in its “clearance operations” in Rakhine State on Myanmar’s west coast. Even civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, has bristled at the international criticism. But Myanmar’s denials have appeared increasingly tenuous as horrific accounts from refugees have accumulated.

The Associated Press last week documented through video and witness accounts at least five mass graves of Rohingya civilians. Witnesses reported the military used acid to erase the identity of victims. The government denied it, maintaining that only “terrorists” were killed and then “carefully buried.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis added his voice to the U.S. criticism. Visiting Asia late last month, he said the Rohingya have suffered “a tragedy that’s worse than anything” the media have been able to portray.

And yet the Pentagon sees benefits in sustaining lower-level ties with Myanmar’s military. Although the U.S. primarily engages Myanmar’s civilian leaders, it still hopes to shape the attitudes of military officers and help counter China’s strategic influence, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Katina Adams, a State Department spokeswoman for East Asia, said the Cobra Gold invite reflected a U.S. effort to “save lives” by improving regional coordination for disasters like Cyclone Nargis. The storm killed more than 100,000 Burmese in 2008.

Thailand extended the invite, Pentagon spokesman Logan said.

“That’s a dodge,” retorted John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, who wants Myanmar treated as a pariah again. “If the U.S. had strongly objected to their participation, they wouldn’t have been invited. Everyone knows that.”

____

Associated Press writer Richard Lardner contributed to this report.

Tengku Emma Zuriana bt Tengku Azmi 

RB Opinion

February 8, 2018

I was deeply disturbed by Hannah Beech’s controversial article in the New York Times, published on February 1, with the title “The Rohingya Suffer Real Horrors. So Why Are Some of Their Stories Untrue?”. While everyone looks with disdain at the barbaric act of Myanmar against Rohingya, being a member of ASEAN, I can affirm that her article exactly narrates the Myanmar military's version that Myanmar armed forces did nothing to Rohingya and Rohingya are lying. In addition, the essay could create doubts that might shift attention from genocidal issues to trivial ones which are magnified to give a distorted picture to the international community.

It seems to me that Hannah Beech deliberately chose to highlight Rohingya children fond of cricket including a 9-year-old unaccompanied child and man having 6 wives (this is surprising as men are allowed to have only 4 wives in Islam). I keep asking myself why she chose to sensationalize such trivial issues when the resignation of Bill Richardson from Myanmar Advisory Committee in the Rohingya crisis and AP's report by Foster Klug on the discovery of 5 mass graves at 'Gudar Pyin' require urgent international attention. Bill Richardson accused the committee of trying to whitewash Myanmar military's crimes against the Rohingya. This is a very serious accusation that needs attention.

During my visit to genocide survivors camps in Cox’s Bazar Bangladesh with the European Rohingya Council Chairman, Dr. Hla Kyaw, to organize mobile clinic, I still remember a woman who claimed to be a Rohingya and tried to gain sympathy by telling sad stories of her missing husband and her child who hadn’t eaten for days. Once the woman left, Dr. Hla Kyaw said “she’s not a Rohingya but a Bangladeshi, who is poor and having a difficult life. Her dialect is identical to the Rohingya but some of the words uttered are not used by the Rohingya.” 

In the race for survival, occasional lies like this does happen in Cox’s Bazar as in any other parts in the world. We should not play the victim-blaming game; and forget what Myanmar has done to 688,000 Rohingya refugees who just survived Myanmar’s genocidal campaign and are forced to flee their homeland, crossing treacherous sea and inhospitable terrain.

Hannah apparently tried to bring another side of the story within the crisis but her attempt will only strengthen the narrative of Myanmar who wants to wipe out Rohingya from Rakhine so that they can monopolize the rich natural resources with China that already has 70% stake in 'Kyauk Pyu' deep sea port and materialize China's big ambition: “Belt & Road” infrastructure network. 

China is renowned for her human rights abuses of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang [East Turkistan] and also a veto member of Security Council that has, in the past, vetoed all resolutions on Rohingya. The reason China gives for doing so is to allow Myanmar time to solve their internal problems as a new democratic state. The lame excuse should not be used as the crisis has affected neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and India.

Matters like these should be given attention by professional investigative journalists to help prevent continued persecution and genocide inflicted by Myanmar on the Rohingya instead of echoing Myanmar anti-Rohingya propaganda. 

The skewed reporting reminds me of a social media viral on Facebook by irresponsible netizens -- who gave a negative picture of the Rohingya without checking the facts -- in Malaysia in September 2017. It poisoned the minds of the locals who looked at the Ampang Park melee. We should instead look at reasons for them to be refugees and not blame them for being forced to flee to Malaysia.

The only way to solve refugees problem is not to create refugees, but to bring the perpetrator to justice. 

Let us hold hands in improving the plight of the Rohingya.

Tengku Emma Zuriana bt Tengku Azmi is Ambassador to Malaysia, The European Rohingya Council

By Azeem Ibrahim

The Washington Post

February 7, 2018

The international community and the politics of the word “genocide” have a long and complex history. In the wake of the Holocaust, the prevention of mass atrocities was one of the founding aims of the United Nations. Yet ever since the U.N.’s establishment, and the enshrinement into international law of the duty of the international community to intervene in cases of mass slaughter, individual member nations and the U.N. assembly as a whole have systematically resisted characterizing humanitarian crises as “genocides” in order to avoid their moral and legal duty to intervene. In other words, we take the concept of genocide extremely seriously. But we tend to take a more “nuanced” approach when genocides are actually happening in the world.

Even so, French President Emmanuel Macron has now spoken of the Rohingya crisis in Burma – where, since August, two-thirds of the minority population have been pushed out of the country in a sustained campaign by the country’s military — as “genocide.” U.N. humanitarian officials describe the situation as bearing “the hallmarks of genocide.”

Meanwhile, Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special envoy on human rights in Burma, has held back from making the categorical declaration of genocide “until a credible international tribunal or court had weighed the evidence,” presumably for the usual political reasons. But given the mounting evidence, it is becoming increasingly difficult to characterize what is happening with euphemisms or legally watered-down terms such as “ethnic cleansing.”

As if the obvious fact of large-scale displacement were not enough, evidence is now emerging of a number of previously unreported mass graves around Rakhine state, the area where most Rohingya resided before the current wave of persecution began.

The details are telling. According to Associated Press reports, the bodies were deliberately and systematically disfigured to make them unrecognizable. For the attackers, massacring their enemies does not seem to have been enough; they also appear to have been intent on destroying the identity and memory of those they killed.

Needless to say, no one in the Burmese state apparatus has heard anything about mass graves. But just to be sure that no evil shall be seen or heard, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma has been barred from the country — like just about every humanitarian nongovernmental organization involved with the Rohingya, Médecins Sans Frontières being only the most notorious example.

Diplomatic “politeness” aside, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Burma has reverted to its previous status as a rogue state. It pursues a systematic policy of genocide within its borders and completely stonewalls any attempt, however feeble, by the international community to establish the facts of the situation and impose some degree of accountability.

That Burma would choose to pursue such a course of action is not completely surprising. But it is deeply disappointing after the hard work the country has put into re-engaging with the international community in the past 10 years. Since 2008, the former military junta has been working to implement a putative transition to democracy, which culminated with the election of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as leader of the civilian government. Many Western observers, myself included, had hoped that this could lead to an improvement in the humanitarian record of the country.

Yet despite the so-called transition to democracy, the old military leadership retains an extraordinary amount of power and influence in the country, including complete autonomy over matters of security, defense and foreign relations. What is more, much of the Burmese Buddhist population, including the leadership of the civilian government, has absorbed the decades of dehumanizing anti-Rohingya propaganda perpetrated by previous military regimes, and the current “crackdown” does in fact have wide popular support. Most of the country is rallying around the assault on the Rohingya.

Nevertheless, the fact that democracy and genocide can go hand in hand is not even the most fundamental and disturbing aspect of this crisis. Rather more frightening is the impotence of the United Nations, the hollowness of international humanitarian law and the moral vacuity of the international community in the age of President Trump. Everyone at the United Nations and in capitals around the world knows that what is going on in Rakhine state is genocide and will one day be defined as such legally. But it is equally certain that the world’s political leaders will contrive to postpone assigning that status until the complete removal of the Rohingya from Burma is a fait accompli. At most, in a decade’s time, some lower-ranking military officials might get carted off to the Hague and scapegoated for the crimes of an entire society. And with that, we will also have washed our hands of our complicity in yet another genocide.

This tragic episode paints a bleak picture of the years ahead of us. Human rights are a keystone of global stability and security. The world’s leaders undermine them at their own peril — and, unfortunately, at our peril, as well. But in an age of collapsing American global power under a callous and unenlightened presidential administration, realpolitik is the name of the game. The West sees nothing to be gained by standing up for the basic human rights of a Muslim population in a faraway country, and no other global power cares. But the precedent this sets for the authoritarian regimes of the world is as dangerous as it is clear. We will be reaping the consequences of our inaction for decades to come.

By Associated Press 

February 6, 2018

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Switzerland’s President Alain Berset said Tuesday his country supports the full implementation of the recommendations made by an advisory commission headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on resolving the Rohingya crisis.

He made the comment while visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district to talk to Rohingya refugees who have fled to the country to escape violence in Myanmar.

The Annan-led commission submitted a report to Myanmar authorities in August, urging action to prevent violence, maintain peace and foster reconciliation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the Rohingya have fled from.

More than 680,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape a crackdown by Myanmar’s military that began following attacks by a Rohingya militant group on Aug. 25.

Berset, who is on a four-day official visit to Bangladesh, said he wanted safe return of the Rohingya to Myanmar as agreed in November by both countries.

The surge in the number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Buddhist-majority Myanmar followed a crackdown launched by the Myanmar military in August. In November, Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to gradually repatriate the refugees. The returns were scheduled to begin in January, but were delayed by incomplete preparations and concerns that the Rohingya were being forced back.

Human rights groups have expressed concern about the safety and security of the refugees if they are sent back.

Berset also visited a government-run hospital in Cox’s Bazar town that received Swiss contributions.

He said the massive refugee crisis had put Bangladesh and the international community under enormous pressure to provide shelter and the most urgent services.

“Switzerland is working closely with Bangladesh, U.N. agencies and other development partners in order to respond to this crisis,” he said.

Up to 500,000 Rohingya have been living for decades in Bangladesh, and the new influx has put extreme pressure on the country’s resources. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh would do its best, but Myanmar must accept them all back.

Berset’s visit is the first by a Swiss president to Bangladesh since it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971.