A grieving Rohingya mother clutches the lifeless body of her baby, who died in a boat accident while crossing the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh on September 13, 2017.(Credit: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadoulu Agency)
Elham Asaad Buaras
Myanmar’s military chiefs held covert meetings to expel Rohingyas from Rakhine State during the weeks leading up to the August 2017 pogrom that forced over 700,000 to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to a newly released report.
The documents compiled by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) and verified by Reuters, contradict the narrative advanced by Myanmar’s former civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who claimed military operations were in response to Muslim militant attacks.
Rohingya refugees described massacres, gang rapes, and children being thrown into fires.
The non-profit Médecins Sans Frontières estimated that at least 10,000 people died. Hundreds of Rohingya villages were burned to the ground.
The report, published by Reuters on August 3, exposes how commanders held meetings discussing means to clear Rohingya villages, plant spies and pass resolutions to demolish homes and mosques.
The approximately 25,000 pages of official documents show how the military systematically demonised the Rohingya, created militias that would take part in operations against the Muslim minority.
They also coordinated their actions with ultranationalist Buddhist monks. During the meetings, commanders repeatedly used a racial slur for the Rohingya as well as referred to them as “Bengalis,” who had become “too daring” and had grown too numerous.
The records also reveal efforts to conceal military operations from the international community. CIJA war crimes investigators have for the past four years worked secretly to compile evidence they hope can secure convictions at an international criminal court.
Documents spanning the period 2013 to 2018 give unprecedented insight into the persecution and purge of the Rohingya from the perspective of the Burmese authorities, especially two “clearance operations” in 2016 and 2017 that expelled 800,000 people.
Beginning work in 2018, CIJA amassed many resources related to the expulsion of the Rohingya, who since fleeing have been languishing in squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh. The cache illustrates the obsession the authorities had with reducing the Rohingya population.
Stephen Rapp, a former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes and who now sits on CIJA’s board, said, “Everything in it points to this intention to engage in this kind of mass removal process.”
In a meeting with officials in Rakhine, held around the time of the 2017 expulsion, the then army chief and current junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, told the Buddhist population to remain in place and pointed to a demographic imbalance between the Rohingya and the rest of the Rakhine population, the documents show.
Some officers who spearheaded the expulsion of the Rohingyas have since been promoted.
Many in Myanmar supported the military, which denied committing atrocities and said the Rohingya had burned their own homes.
The Burmese rallied around Suu Kyi as she dismissed reports of atrocities as an “iceberg of misinformation.” In 2019, she went to The Hague to defend Myanmar against charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
But the military last year toppled Suu Kyi’s elected government.
The coup has altered views and opened a window on the 2017 atrocities. After the military seized control, the country plunged into civil war, as new armed resistance groups joined forces with existing ethnic armed actors to topple the junta.
Public outrage over the coup and the killings of over 2,000 civilians has led to mass defections in the military. Some soldiers are now shedding light on the army’s practices for the first time.
Captain Nay Myo Thet told Reuters he was in Rakhine in 2017, where he said he engaged in logistical support, including transport and supplies, for the military. He described the looting of the Rohingya villages. Soldiers took cattle, furniture, and solar panels that the Rohingya used to power their homes. Sizeable items were loaded onto trucks under the watch of a senior officer, he said.
He was tasked with catching three goats belonging to Rohingya for a dinner party for the troops, he said.
Reacting to the CIJA documents, a spokesperson for Amnesty International told The Muslim News, the “ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingyas is ongoing—building on entrenched patterns of abuse.
For decades, the Rohingyas in Myanmar have been denied their rights to nationality, freedom of movement, and access to services, including education, employment, and healthcare. Since the coup, the Myanmar military has re-enacted restrictions on the right to move freely and detained hundreds of Rohingyas, including children.
Limitations on freedom of movement further restrict Rohingyas from access to healthcare, livelihood, education, and the right to seek safety.”
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