[Beginning in October 2016, Myanmar’s military and local officials methodically removed sharp tools that could be used for self-defense by the Rohingya, destroyed fences around Rohingya homes to make military raids easier, armed and trained ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and shut off the spigot of international aid for the impoverished Rohingya community, the Fortify Rights report says.]
By Hannah Beech
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Rohingya
refugees waiting to board boats to Bangladesh on the bank of the
Naf River in Myanmar
last September. Credit Adam Dean for
The
New York Times
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BANGKOK
— Myanmar’s military
systematically planned a genocidal campaign to rid the country of Rohingya
Muslims, according to a report released on Thursday by the rights-advocacy group
Fortify Rights based on testimony from 254 survivors, officials and workers
over a 21-month period.
The 162-page report says that the exodus of
around 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh last year — after a campaign of
mass slaughter, rape and village burnings in Rakhine State in Myanmar — was the
culmination of months of meticulous planning by the security forces.
Fortify Rights names 22 military and police
officers who it says were directly responsible for the campaign against the
Rohingya and recommends that the United Nations Security Council refer them to
the International Criminal Court.
“Genocide doesn’t happen spontaneously,” said
Matthew F. Smith, a former Human Rights Watch specialist on Myanmar and China
who is chief executive officer of Fortify Rights. “Impunity for these crimes
will pave the path for more violations and attacks in the future.”
Fortify Rights, a nonprofit organization
registered in the United States and Switzerland, was formed in 2013 by Mr.
Smith and fellow human rights activists. It has focused on investigating human
rights abuses in Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar.
Beginning in October 2016, Myanmar’s military
and local officials methodically removed sharp tools that could be used for
self-defense by the Rohingya, destroyed fences around Rohingya homes to make
military raids easier, armed and trained ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and shut off
the spigot of international aid for the impoverished Rohingya community, the
Fortify Rights report says.
Most of all, more troops were sent to
northern Rakhine State, where the bulk of the largely stateless Rohingya once
lived. Fortify Rights says that at least 27 Myanmar Army battalions, with up to
11,000 soldiers, and at least three combat police battalions, with around 900
personnel, participated in the bloodletting that began in late August and
continued for weeks afterward.
United States officials have said that the
violence amounted to a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing, and one United
Nations official described the anti-Rohingya campaign as bearing “the hallmarks
of genocide.”
The Fortify Rights report suggests an
alternate story line to the suggestion that the military-led atrocities, which
were often abetted by ethnic Rakhine locals armed with swords, were solely a
response to attacks by Rohingya militants on army and police posts on Aug. 25,
2017.
Myanmar’s military and civilian government
have consistently described the crackdown as “clearance operations” against
Muslim “terrorists.” Top military officers, including Senior Gen. Min Aung
Hlaing, the army chief, have claimed that the military reacted with restraint
following the deadly raids by the Arakan Rohinyga Salvation Army in October
2016 and August 2017.
“There is no genocide and ethnic cleansing in
Myanmar,” said U Zaw Htay, a government spokesman. “Yes, there are human rights
violations, and the government will take action against those who committed human
rights violations.”
Mr. Zaw Htay said that the Myanmar government
would be forming an “investigation team, which will include internationally
well-respected persons to investigate the human rights violations in Rakhine.”
Several commissions, committees and
investigative bodies have been formed in Myanmar to examine the Rakhine
violence. But none have, so far, resulted in substantive shifts in policy or
broad admissions of blame by the state.
“There are international organizations that
accuse Myanmar with the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ without
evidence,” Mr. Zaw Htay added, naming Fortify Rights among them. “If there is
evidence of genocide, then they can inform the government and our government
will investigate and take action.”
Fortify Rights has accused the international
community of failing to adequately condemn the years of state repression of the
Rohingya and, more specifically, the mounting abuses in the months preceding
last year’s military-led campaign.
The Fortify Rights report also describes how
militants from the Arakan Rohinyga Salvation Army killed and tortured Rohingya
whom they considered to be government informants.
The list of Myanmar military officials whom
Fortify Rights finds directly responsible for attacks on Rohingya Muslims
include the commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing; his deputy, Vice
Senior Gen. Soe Win; and the chief of general staff, Gen. Mya Tun Oo.
Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy
Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, just wrapped up a trip to Myanmar and
Bangladesh, where she met with military and government officials, along with
victims of the violence.
“What the United States should be doing,” she
said, “is to insist that the military and security forces that orchestrated
this genocide are held accountable through targeted sanctions so this violence
won’t repeat itself.”
When Myanmar was under full military rule,
the United States and other Western governments placed sanctions on the army
regime. But as the top brass began sharing power with a civilian government,
most of those broad sanctions were lifted. Last December, Maj. Gen. Maung Maung
Soe became the first Myanmar military officer subject to American sanctions
because of his links to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.
“We need more sanctions that target the
people responsible for these abuses, like the over 20 officers that Fortify
Rights names, to ban their travel, freeze their assets,” Ms. Kennedy said.
“What we don’t want is sanctions that hurt the Myanmar population as a whole,
which would harm the most vulnerable people.”
Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay,
Myanmar.