MAUNGDAW, Myanmar — Plainclothes police hovered around
him. The elderly Rohingya man was too afraid to talk.
He was gathered with dozens of other men, staring blankly
at journalists on a government-led trip Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state. He is
among the 200,000 or so Rohingya who remain in this area, after more than
720,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh during a campaign of terror at the hands
of the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar.
The U.N. rights commission said there was “genocidal
intent” in Myanmar’s targeted killings, the razing of Rohingya villages and the
mass flight of refugees to neighboring Bangladesh.
Myanmar leaders — including Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi — have stuck with the claim that authorities were trying to
quell an insurgency. The Myanmar propaganda push includes media trips, where a
rotating cast of foreign journalists are led around Rakhine state in police
convoys.
As one official put it “How can it be genocide if Muslims
are still here?”
The elderly Rohingya man eventually did talk.
But it came on a phone call to The Washington Post. He
mocked the picture painted by Myanmar government minders on the lives of the
remaining 300,000 or so Rohingya still in Rakhine.
Some homes in Muslim villages nearby his were torched as
recently as this week, he said.
“We were told to tell [journalists] about how we are
treated well here. They told us to talk about how we are living peacefully,” he
continued, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his
safety.
He couldn’t bring himself to toe the line, but could not
speak the truth, either.
“We know they are recording us,” he said.
India deports Rohinya Muslims, drawing ire
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Faced with international pressure and mounting calls for
accountability over their atrocities against the Rohingya, Myanmar has mounted
a defense of denial and defiance. Among the collateral damage is the reputation
of Suu Kyi, which many see as tarnished and compromised.
For diplomats, aid groups and others, the attempt to
shift the narrative is more evidence that Myanmar is unable or unwilling to
correct long-standing discrimination against the beleaguered Rohingya.
It also underscores Myanmar’s resistance to bring any
measure of accountability for the abuses and attacks committed last year, and
to allow journalists to freely investigate the massacres there.
Two
journalists from the Reuters news agency, Wa Lone and
Kyaw Soe Oo, who reported on the massacre of 10 Muslim men at the nearby
village of Inn Din, were convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for
violating the country’s secrets act.
Read more: https://lnkd.in/gcArC-p
Meanwhile, the Rohingya languish and grow more desperate.
“The bottom line is that there has been no noteworthy
progress,” said one senior diplomat in Yangon, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Myanmar government “still seems utterly unable or
unwilling to understand what they would need to do to get themselves out of
this mess,” the official said.
The government’s efforts have also failed to mask
attempts by Myanmar to erase any indication that hundreds of thousands of
Rohingya ever lived here. Buddhists and Hindus are moving into new homes built
across the state, and Rohingya Muslims who remain in Myanmar say they continue
to be harassed and extorted.
The United Nations, which has just begun to access some
parts of northern Rakhine
state, say communities there are isolated and fearful.
Read more: https://lnkd.in/gGfF3Wx
International pressure is ramping up. In late September,
the U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to create an independent
body to expedite criminal prosecution of Myanmar generals over their treatment
of the Rohingya.
Year after Rohingya campaign, Myanmar’s
general are unapologetic
Read more: https://lnkd.in/gcArC-p
Their action followed a 444-page report from a U.N.
fact-finding mission that explored in excruciating detail how the Myanmar
military has followed a pattern of torture across other ethnic minority states,
such as Shan and Kachin, and described the clearance operation against the
Rohingya as having “genocidal intent.”
The U.N. findings could give prosecutors evidence for
possible future cases in regional or international courts.
The Myanmar government and military has held firm to the
explanation that their operation in Rakhine state was provoked by Rohingya
militant attacks on police posts, but reports from both the United Nations and
State Department indicate a degree of premeditation and coordination.
Myanmar says that it is ready to repatriate hundreds of
Rohingya back to their homes.
At a refugee reception center close to the border, one
Myanmar official boasted about new roads that Rohingya refugees will travel on
from Bangladesh before turning over their identification documents for
verification and eventually moving into new purpose-built villages to start
their lives anew.
In the same breath, officials insist there are “no
Rohingya in Myanmar,” and will compel those who return to adopt a verification
document that makes no mention of the word Rohingya, who are excluded form
citizenship rights.
The Myanmar government says the document will be a
pathway to citizenship. But the Rohingya — who believe themselves native to
Myanmar — say it is just another step to muddle the process and enshrine
second-class status.
The document will call them “Bengali.” The Rohingya want
to keep their identity and recognition that they are full citizens native to
the area.
“Much of the government’s narrative so far has been built
on physical structures, like model villages, because those structures exist,”
said Knut Ostby, the U.N.’s resident coordinator in Myanmar. “But the
rights-based part has not been addressed yet.”
As a gesture of goodwill, Myanmar has promised to close
squalid camps in the southern part of the state where 125,000 Rohingya live
after a spate of violence drove them out of their homes six years ago.
“They told us, we will relocate you, we will construct
individual house for you, and we will give you rations of five years,” said Ro
Nur Deen, a 22-year old Rohingya in the Sittwe camp. “But after that, what will
happen? Wherever we walk, wherever we go, we get into trouble. Will that change?”
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