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Report identifies mounting evidence of Rohingya genocide, blames Myanmar
The report, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the non-profit organization Fortify Rights, says close to 1 million Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes.
"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, Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Without urgent action, there's a high risk of more mass atrocities."
The report, titled, "They Tried to Kill Us All": Atrocity Crimes against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, is based on more than 200 in-depth, in-person interviews. Fortify Rights, which investigates human rights violations in Southeast Asia, spoke with survivors and international aid workers along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.
"They tried to kill us all," said "Mohammed Rafiq, 25 years old and the source of the title of the report. He's from Min Gyi village in Maungdaw Township, and he told investigators that in August, soldiers corralled villagers in a group and then opened fire on them.
"There was nothing left," he said. "People were shot in the chest, stomach, legs, face, head, everywhere."
The report documents widespread and systematic attacks on Rohingya civilians from October to December in 2016 and also from August 25, 2017 until the present. The beginning of the mass atrocities stemmed from an attack carried out by an unknown Rohingya militant group against Burmese police outposts in March and August of 2017. The militants were reportedly angry about the discriminatory treatment of Rohingya Muslims. These attacks prompted the Myanmar Army to launch "clearance operations" which the report describes as "the military uses to describe ongoing multiagency efforts to combat and apprehend Rohingya militants."
But those so-called "clearance operations" were effectively just a mechanism for visiting mass atrocities on massive numbers of Rohingya men, women and children, the report concludes.
Burma security forces are burning down villages to drive out Rohingya Muslims and shooting those that flee
Entire Rohingya villages are being burned down by vigilante mobs and security forces in an orchestrated campaign that has lasted almost three weeks, campaigners have warned. Those trying to flee the attacks are being shot dead.
Fire-detection data, satellite imagery, photographs and videos from the ground has indicated at least 80 large-scale fires in inhabited areas across northern Rakhine State since 25 August, according to Amnesty International.
Satellite sensors during the same month-long period over the past four years detected no fires whatsoever of this magnitude anywhere in the state.
Revealed: Evidence of Rohingya massacre in Myanmar
Disturbing photographs have shed light on a massacre of 10 Rohingya men shot and hacked to death as violence in Myanmar gathered momentum in September.
Released by Reuters news agency as part of an ongoing investigation, the photographs show 10 men tied together in a line, facing the camera.
The same men can then be seen in a tangled and bloody mound, clearly the victims of a violent death.
They offer evidence of a massacre believed to have taken place on the morning of 2 September last year, after the arrival of troops in the village of Inn Din drove its Rohingya inhabitants to flee.
Reporting on the massacre by Reuters has led to the arrest of two of the agency's journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who remain in prison under accusations of breaking Myanmar's official secrets act.
AP finds evidence for graves, Rohingya massacre in Myanmar | Voice of the Cape
The faces of the men half-buried in the mass graves had been burned away by acid or blasted by bullets. Noor Kadir finally recognized his friends only by the colors of their shorts.
Kadir and 14 others, all Rohingya Muslims in the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin, had been choosing players for the soccer-like game of chinlone when the gunfire began. They scattered from what sounded like hard rain on a tin roof. By the time the Myanmar military stopped shooting, only Kadir and two teammates were left alive.
Days later, Kadir found six of his friends among the bodies in two graves.
They are among at least five mass graves, all previously unreported, that have been confirmed by The Associated Press through multiple interviews with more than two dozen survivors in Bangladesh refugee camps and through time-stamped cellphone videos. The Myanmar government regularly claims such massacres of the Rohingya never happened, and has acknowledged only one mass grave containing 10 “terrorists” in the village of Inn Din. However, the AP’s reporting shows a systematic slaughter of Rohingya Muslim civilians by the military, with help from Buddhist neighbors — and suggests many more graves hold many more people.
Myanmar: Fresh evidence of ongoing ethnic cleansing as military starves, abducts and robs Rohingya
Amnesty International also documented three recent incidents of the Myanmar military abducting girls or young women.
In early January, soldiers forced their way into a house in Hpoe Khaung Chaung village, Buthidaung Township. As the soldiers searched the house, Hasina, 25, said they demanded at gunpoint that her uncle hand over her 15-year-old cousin, Samida. The family has not seen the girl again. The same is true of the other abducted girls and young women, making them victims of enforced disappearance.
Rohingya families from villages where the military recently abducted women and girls said they fled in fear that the abductions would continue.
Given the pervasive sexual violence that has marked this and previous military campaigns against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, the abduction of women and young girls raises serious concerns of rape and sexual slavery.
Myanmar refuses visas to UN team investigating abuse of Rohingya Muslims
Myanmar refuses access to UN human rights investigator
The United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday said that Myanmar had refused access to a UN Special Rapporteur tasked with assessing the human rights situation in the country.
There have been widespread claims of persecution against the mostly Muslim minority Rohingya community, hundreds of thousands of whom have migrated to neighboring Bangladesh fleeing sectarian violence associated with a crackdown against Rohingya rebels by Myanmar's security forces.
"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," the OHCHR said in a statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ing-rohingya-massacre/?utm_term=.86de9a530d6d
For more than two months, the Burmese government has held two Reuters reporters in prison for their investigation into a massacre by the country's military. Now, just days after their explosive and detailed account of the operation was finally published, the two men will win a renowned journalism award for their work.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested Dec. 12 and accused by the Burmese government of having “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media.” The pair are being held under the country's Official Secrets Act, but they have yet to be charged officially and continue to be denied due process. If convicted under the arcane colonial-era law, the journalists could face up to 14 years in prison.
(human bones they photographed in a shallow grave)