Dear Mariah and
Michaela,
We spent two days
taking testimonies from survivors in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, the largest
refugee camp on earth, hosting up to 900,000 Rohingya on the southern tip on
Bangladesh. The camp is a spaghetti bowl of narrow alleys, dotted with
rudimentary shelters precariously clinging to slippery slopes, ready to slide,
only a few weeks into the rainy season.
Drenched and covered
in mud, Cara and I carefully hung our umbrellas on the bamboo rafters outside
one of the more stable huts, removed sludge-soaked sneakers and entered a
pristine room, cleared of all furnishings save a few mats, the thatched walls
protected by orange, fuchsia and blue tarps stamped “Made in So. Korea.” We sat
on the floor along with five women dressed in burkas, their heads draped in
hijabs. Two were our young Rohingya interpreters, both students aspiring for university
degrees, their faces open and bright, their English, learned in the camp,
flawless—a tribute to their thirst for knowledge in a place where most
schooling ends after the fifth grade.
Three women, newly
arrived to the camps, greeted us warmly, carefully unhitched their veils, and
told us about their families, the homes they fled, their lives in the
camps. We talked for hours, interrupted
only when the monsoon pounded the tin roof with such force we could not hear
one another. Children peeked through panels windows. A curious but shy toddler
wrapped himself in the colorful drape that served as a doorway to an adjoining
room. When a tray of coffee and biscuits passed through the curtain, he
carefully unfurled himself, and briefly joined our small circle, emboldened by
the lure of a sweet treat.
A woman who I will
call M is 36 years old. She said “My home is near a security outpost. On August
25th at 12 pm the security forces started shooting. They shot all day and
night, and finally stopped at 5 am. I saw them kill 12 people at the outpost
alone. They burned our village, and when people ran from their burning homes
they captured the beautiful women. I knew it was for rape. They didn’t rape me,
I think because I speak Rakhine and work as a translator. I knew two women
taken by the police. When I inquired about the women, I heard that the women
were dead.”
T arrived on August
27th last year. She said when the military came to her village they burned all
the homes. She saw them rape three women. As they left the village, she said,
“Security forces just started shooting people--they killed two little children
who were running away.”
S told us she was
raped by multiple soldiers. She said she is always in pain and is still
bleeding—then she lifted her dress and showed us the fresh blood on her slip.
One after another, women told us the details of their terror, of soldiers and
former neighbors who murdered men and boys, raped girls—5, 6, 7 years old, set
flames to mosques, rounded people up and threw their bodies into mass graves.
Everything we heard
from Rohingya women and men, both in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and the
Internally Displaced Person camps (prisoner of war internments) in Rakhine
State, Myanmar, as well as all the evidence we have seen, points to genocide.
Myanmar government rebuttals that the Rohingya spontaneously decided to burn
all their villages and flee to Bangladesh did nothing to credibly refute the
overwhelming evidence.
The facts are clear
and meticulously documented in the new Fortify Rights Report which names 22
senior military offices. Starting in early 2017, the Myanmar military trained
and armed local non-Rohingya citizens. In mid-August soldiers went door to
door, confiscated weapons and sharp objects like knives, taking anything
Rohingya might use to defend themselves.
They tore down fences around Rohingya homes, providing better lines of
sight to facilitate attacks. They ousted international humanitarian groups who
provided needed food and health care for a desperately poor population,
weakening the Rohingya. These actions were all taken in the first weeks of
August.
Then, on August
25th, according to Fortify Rights, 27 Myanmar Army battalions, comprising up to
11,000 soldiers, along with at least three combat police battalions, comprising
an estimated 900 police personnel, attacked. They burned villages, shot fleeing
residents, gang raped women and girls—5, 6, 7 years old, hid bodies in mass
graves, and forcibly exiled hundreds of thousands of people.
Thousands have
already perished. For survivors, the failure to act now will have grave
implications. Myanmar includes well over 100 indigenous ethnic peoples
comprising at least 35 percent of the
nation’s population. The military has a long history of targeting indigenous
peoples with complete impunity and then profiting off of stealing their natural
resources, including jade and silver from Kachin, minerals from Shan, and
natural gas from Rakhine. License to slaughter one group is license to
slaughter others. The failure to hold the perpetrators responsible and place
the military under civilian control represents an ongoing peril to both the
Rohingya and tens of thousands of other indigenous people of Myanmar and
endangers every border country with influxes of innumerable refugees.
Accountability will
not be easy. Countries of conscience
will have to pressure China, which is playing a destructive role. ASEAN
countries will have to abandon their failed policy of non-interference. The
United States and other governments must apply targeted sanctions to
perpetrators. The United Nations Security Council must refer cases of Genocide
and Crimes Against Humanity to the International Criminal Court. And for the
Rohingya to safely and securely return to their homes, Myanmar must provide full citizenship to this indigenous
ethnic group, rebuild Rakhine State, and expend considerable resources building
trust between Rohingya and non-Rohingya local communities.
The good news is
that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told us Bangladesh will refer the crimes to
the International Criminal Court.
The United States
has a central role to play, yet when we inquired about U.S. intentions, we were
dismayed by the response. A senior American diplomat told our delegation that
the U.S. is taking a “small ball approach”. A “small ball approach” to
genocide?
