Wednesday, 18 October 2017
Press Release: Amnesty International
Myanmar: New evidence of systematic campaign of crimes
against humanity to terrorize and drive Rohingya out
More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have
fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar
security forces’ targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape
and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet
of the ongoing crisis.
‘My World Is Finished’: Rohingya Targeted in
Crimes against Humanity in Myanmar describes how Myanmar’s
security forces are carrying out a systematic, organized and ruthless campaign
of violence against the Rohingya population as a whole in northern Rakhine
State, after a Rohingya armed group attacked around 30 security posts on 25
August.
My World Is Finished
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Dozens of eyewitnesses to the worst violence consistently
implicated specific units, including the Myanmar Army’s Western Command, the
33rd Light Infantry Division, and the Border Guard Police.
“In this orchestrated campaign, Myanmar’s security forces
have brutally meted out revenge on the entire Rohingya population of northern
Rakhine State, in an apparent attempt to permanently drive them out of the
country. These atrocities continue to fuel the region’s worst refugee crisis in
decades,” said Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty
International.
“Exposing these heinous crimes is the first step on the
long road to justice. Those responsible must be held to account; Myanmar’s
military can’t simply sweep serious violations under the carpet by announcing
another sham internal investigation. The Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min
Aung Hlaing, must take immediate action to stop his troops from committing
atrocities.”
Crimes against humanity
Witness accounts, satellite imagery and data, and photo
and video evidence gathered by Amnesty International all point to the same
conclusion: hundreds of thousands of Rohingya women, men, and children have
been the victims of a widespread and systematic attack, amounting to crimes
against humanity.
Crimes Against Humanity: http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/crimes-against-humanity.html
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
lists 11 types of acts which, when knowingly committed during such an attack,
constitute crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has consistently
documented at least six of these amid the current wave of violence in northern
Rakhine State: murder, deportation and forcible displacement, torture, rape and
other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhumane acts such as denying
food and other life-saving provisions.
This conclusion is based on testimonies from more than
120 Rohingya men and women who have fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks, as well
as 30 interviews with medical professionals, aid workers, journalists and
Bangladeshi officials.
Amnesty International’s experts corroborated many witness
accounts of the Myanmar security forces’ crimes by analysing satellite imagery
and data, as well as verifying photographs and video footage taken inside
Rakhine State. The organization has also requested access to Rakhine State to
investigate abuses on the ground, including by members of the Arakan Rohingya
Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya armed group. Amnesty International
continues to call for unfettered access to the UN Fact-Finding Mission and
other independent observers.
Murder and massacres
In the hours and days following the ARSA attacks on 25
August, the Myanmar security forces, sometimes joined by local vigilantes,
surrounded Rohingya villages throughout the northern part of Rakhine State. As
Rohingya women, men, and children fled their homes, the soldiers and police
officers often opened fire, killing or seriously injuring at least hundreds of
people.
Survivors described running to nearby hills and rice
fields, where they hid until the forces left. The elderly and people with
disabilities were often unable to flee, and burned to death in their homes
after the military set them alight.
This pattern was replicated in dozens of villages across
Maungdaw, Rathedaung, and Buthidaung townships. But the security forces, and in
particular the Myanmar military, appear to have unleashed their most lethal
response in specific villages near where ARSA carried out its attacks.
Amnesty International documented events in five such
villages where at least a dozen people were killed: Chein Kar Li, Koe Tan Kauk,
and Chut Pyin, all in Rathedaung Township; and Inn Din and Min Gyi, in Maungdaw
Township. In Chut Pyin and Min Gyi, the death toll was particularly high, with
at least scores of Rohingya women, men, and children killed by Myanmar security
forces.
Amnesty International interviewed 17 survivors of the
massacre in Chut Pyin, six of whom had gunshot wounds. Almost all had lost at
least one family member, with some losing many. They consistently described the
Myanmar military, joined by Border Guard Police and local vigilantes,
surrounding Chut Pyin, opening fire on those fleeing, and then systematically
burning Rohingya houses and buildings.
Fatima, 12, told Amnesty International that she was at
home with her parents, eight siblings, and grandmother when they saw fire
rising from another part of their village. As the family ran out of their
house, she said men in uniform opened fire on them from behind. She saw both
her father and 10-year-old sister get shot, then Fatima was also hit in the
back of her right leg, just above the knee.
“I fell down, but my neighbour grabbed me and carried
me,” she recalled. After a week on the run, she finally received treatment in
Bangladesh. Her mother and older brother were also killed in Chut Pyin.
Amnesty International sent photographs of Fatima’s wound
to a forensic medical expert, who said it was consistent with a bullet wound
that “would have entered the thigh from behind.” Medical professionals in
Bangladesh described treating many wounds that appeared to have been caused by
gunshots fired from behind –matching consistent witness testimony that the
military fired on Rohingya as they tried to run away.
In Chein Kar Li and Koe Tan Kauk, two neighbouring
villages, Amnesty International documented the same pattern of attack by the
Myanmar military.
Sona Mia, 77, said he was at home in Koe Tan Kauk when
Myanmar soldiers surrounded the village and opened fire on 27 August. His
20-year-old daughter, Rayna Khatun, had a disability that left her unable to
walk or speak. One of his sons put her on his shoulders, and the family slowly
made its way toward the hill on the village’s edge. As they heard the shooting
get closer and closer, they decided they had to leave Rayna in a Rohingya house
that had been abandoned.
“We didn’t think we’d be able to make it,” Sona Mia
recalled. “I told her to sit there, we’d come back… After arriving on the hill,
we spotted the house where we left her. It was a bit away, but we could see.
The soldiers were burning [houses], and eventually we saw that house, it was
burned too.”
After the military left the village in the late
afternoon, Sona Mia’s sons went down and found Rayna Khatun’s burnt body among
the torched house. They dug a grave at the edge of that house’s courtyard, and
buried her there.
Rape and other sexual violence
Amnesty International interviewed seven Rohingya
survivors of sexual violence committed by the Myanmar security forces. Of
those, four women and a 15-year-old girl had been raped, each in a separate
group with between two and five other women and girls who were also raped. The
rapes occurred in two villages that the organization investigated: Min Gyi in
Maungdaw Township and Kyun Pauk in Buthidaung Township.
As previously documented by Human Rights Watch and The
Guardian, after entering Min Gyi (known locally as Tula Toli) on the morning of
30 August, Myanmar soldiers pursued Rohingya villagers who fled down to the
riverbank and then separated the men and older boys from the women and younger
children.
After opening fire on and executing at least scores of
men and older boys, as well as some women and younger children, the soldiers
took women in groups to nearby houses where they raped them, before setting
fire to those houses and other Rohingya parts of the village.
S.K., 30, told Amnesty International that after watching
the executions, she and many other women and younger children were taken to a
ditch, where they were forced to stand in knee-deep water:
“They took the women in groups to different houses.
…There were five of us [women], taken by four soldiers [in military uniform].
They took our money, our possessions, and then they beat us with a wooden
stick. My children were with me. They hit them too. Shafi, my two-year-old son,
he was hit hard with a wooden stick. One hit, and he was dead… Three of my
children were killed. Mohamed Osman (10) [and] Mohamed Saddiq (five) too. Other
women [in the house] also had children [with them] that were killed.
“All of the women were stripped naked…They had very
strong wooden sticks. They first hit us in the head, to make us weak. Then they
hit us [in the vagina] with the wooden sticks. Then they raped us. A different
soldier for each [woman].”
After raping women and girls, the soldiers set fire to
the houses, killing many of the victims inside.
Deliberate, organized village burnings
On 3 October, the UN Operational Satellite Applications
Programme (UNOSAT) reported that it had identified 20.7 square kilometres of
buildings destroyed by fire in Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships since 25
August. Even that likely underestimated the overall scale of destruction and
burning, as dense cloud cover affected what the satellites were able to detect.
Amnesty International’s own review of fire data from
remote satellite sensing indicates at least 156 large fires in northern Rakhine
State since 25 August, also likely to be an underestimate. In the previous five
years, no fires were detected during the same period, which is also the monsoon
season, strongly indicating that the burning has been intentional.
Before and after satellite images strikingly illustrate
what witnesses also consistently told Amnesty International – that the Myanmar
security forces only burned Rohingya villages or areas. For example, satellite
images of Inn Din and Min Gyi show large swathes of structures razed by fire
virtually side by side with areas that were left untouched. Distinct features
of the untouched areas, combined with accounts from Rohingya residents as to
where they and other ethnic communities lived in those villages, indicate that
only Rohingya areas were razed.
Amnesty International has noted a similar pattern in at
least a dozen more villages where Rohingya lived in close proximity to people
from other ethnicities.
“Given their ongoing denials, Myanmar’s authorities may
have thought they would literally get away with murder on a massive scale. But
modern technology, coupled with rigorous human rights research, have tipped the
scales against them,” said Tirana Hassan.
“It is time for the international community to move
beyond public outcry and take action to end the campaign of violence that has
driven more than half the Rohingya population out of Myanmar. Through cutting
off military cooperation, imposing arms embargoes and targeted sanctions on
individuals responsible for abuses, a clear message must be sent that the
military’s crimes against humanity in Rakhine State will not be tolerated.
“The international community must ensure that the ethnic
cleansing campaign does not achieve its unlawful, reprehensible goal. To do so,
the international community must combine encouraging and supporting Bangladesh
in providing adequate conditions and safe asylum to Rohingya refugees, with
ensuring that Myanmar respects their human right to return safely, voluntarily
and with dignity to their country and insisting that it ends, once and for all,
the systematic discrimination against the Rohingya and other root causes of the
current crisis.”
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