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Amnesty International – “WE WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING”
MILITARY RESPONSIBILITY FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN RAKHINE STATE, MYANMAR
“We got an order to burn down the entire village if there is any disturbance. If you villagers aren’t living peacefully, we will destroy everything.”
Audio recording of a Myanmar military officer, during a phone conversation with a Rohingya man from Inn Din village, Maungdaw Township, in late August 2017. Within days, the Rohingya areas of Inn Din had been razed by the security forces.
Early in the morning of 25 August 2017, a Rohingya armed group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched coordinated attacks on security force posts in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, the Myanmar security forces, led by the Myanmar Army, attacked the entire Rohingya population in villages across northern Rakhine State.
In the 10 months after 25 August, the Myanmar security forces drove more than 702,000 women, men, and children—more than 80 per cent of the Rohingya who lived in northern Rakhine State at the crisis’s outset— into neighbouring Bangladesh. The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population was achieved by a relentless and systematic campaign in which the Myanmar security forces unlawfully killed thousands of Rohingya, including young children; raped and committed other sexual violence against hundreds of Rohingya women and girls; tortured Rohingya men and boys in detention sites; pushed Rohingya communities toward starvation by burning markets and blocking access to farmland; and burned hundreds of Rohingya villages in a targeted and deliberate manner.
These crimes amount to crimes against humanity under international law, as they were perpetrated as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Rohingya population. Amnesty International has evidence of nine of the 11 crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court being committed since 25 August 2017, including murder, torture, deportation or forcible transfer, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts, such as forced starvation.
Amnesty International also has evidence that responsibility for these crimes extends to the highest levels of the military, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services. This report is based on more than 400 interviews carried out between September 2017 and June 2018, including during four research missions to the refugee camps in Bangladesh and three missions to Myanmar, one of which was to Rakhine State. The interviews were overwhelmingly with survivors and direct witnesses to crimes. Amnesty International sought out people from different ethnic and religious communities from northern Rakhine State, including Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim group; ethnic Rakhine, Mro, Khami, and Thet, all predominantly Buddhist groups; and Hindu.
In addition to survivors and witnesses, Amnesty International interviewed humanitarian aid workers in Bangladesh and Myanmar; medical professionals in Bangladesh who had treated violence-related injuries among Rohingya refugees; analysts of the Myanmar military; diplomats; journalists; and local administrative officials in Myanmar, known as Village Administrators. The report also draws on an extensive analysis of satellite imagery and data; forensic medical examination of injury photographs; authenticated photographic and video material taken by Rohingya in northern Rakhine State; confidential documents, particularly on the Myanmar military’s command structure; and open source investigations and analysis, including of Facebook posts related to the Myanmar military.
The Rohingya have long faced systematic discrimination and persecution in Myanmar. Successive governments have denied that the Rohingya are an ethnic group from Myanmar and instead asserted that they are migrants from Bangladesh who settled in the country “illegally”. In addition to the daily persecution the Rohingya endure, there is a long history of violent expulsions by the Myanmar security forces. In 1978, up to 200,000 Rohingya were forced to flee Myanmar during and after a major military crackdown on “illegal immigration” codenamed “Operation Nagamin” (Dragon King). In 1991 and 1992, an estimated 250,000 Rohingya fled after another campaign of violence by the Myanmar security forces. In both cases, most Rohingya were repatriated from Bangladesh in subsequent years in a manner that raised serious questions as to whether the process was voluntary. Neither repatriation process led to improvements in the lives of the Rohingya; on the contrary, the repatriations were followed by the further erosion of Rohingya rights and dignity. More recently, starting in October 2016, tens of thousands of Rohingya were forced to flee Rakhine State. More recently, starting in October 2016, tens of thousands of Rohingya were forced to flee Rakhine State after the Myanmar security forces targeted Rohingya women, men, children, and entire villages following attacks on police posts by the then-unknown Rohingya armed group ARSA.
Tensions were already escalating in northern Rakhine State in the months and weeks before 25 August 2017. The Myanmar security forces arrested and arbitrarily detained scores of Rohingya men and boys, ostensibly in an attempt to identify members of ARSA and gather information about their plans and activities. Amnesty International interviewed 23 men and two teenage boys whom the security forces had arrested and tortured or otherwise ill-treated during this period. Individuals were often beaten during the arrest and taken to Border Guard Police (BGP) bases, where they were held for days or, in some cases, weeks.
In the weeks leading up to 25 August 2017, the Myanmar Army reinforced its presence in northern Rakhine State, bringing in battalions from the 33rd and 99th Light Infantry Divisions (LIDs). In June 2017, Amnesty International had provided evidence that implicated each of these combat divisions in war crimes in northern Shan State between late 2016 and mid-2017, as part of the Myanmar military’s operations during the ongoing internal armed conflicts there. The deployment of those troops—equipped for combat with an opposing armed group and with a track record of punishing ethnic minorities collectively for their perceived support to an armed group—signaled a shift to an even more aggressive strategy, honed over decades by the Myanmar military, in which entire villages and ethnic groups are cast as the enemy during security operations. The authorities’ particular animus towards the Rohingya made that all the more lethal. Threats of violence were delivered in certain Rohingya villages. Around 20 August 2017, a field commander from the 33rd LID met in Chut Pyin with Rohingya leaders from nearby villages in Rathedaung Township. On 27 August in Maung Nu village, Buthidaung Township, soldiers from the 564th Light Infantry Battalion (LIB), commanded by a combat division known as Military Operation Command (MOC) No. 15, headquartered in northern Rakhine State under Western Command, rounded up Rohingya from the village and brought them to a large compound owned by some of the village’s most prominent Rohingya community members. There, they separated men and older boys from the rest of the group, brought them out to the courtyard, and summarily and extrajudicially executed them—opening fire on some at point-blank range, and murdering others with knives. Women and girls were subjected to sexual violence, in particular humiliating body searches during which soldiers looked for and stole money, gold, and other valuables.
Three days later, on 30 August, soldiers from the 99th LID shepherded Rohingya women, men, and children from Min Gyi village, Maungdaw Township, down to the banks of a nearby river. There, the soldiers separated men and older boys from women and younger children; forced the men to lie or crouch down; and then opened fire, summarily and extrajudicially executing them. Later that day, soldiers took groups of captured women and young children to houses in the Rohingya area of the village, where they raped many women and girls and stabbed or beat the young children, at times to death. The soldiers then set the houses on fire with people still inside. Some women and children managed to escape by breaking through the bamboo siding of the burning houses; they joined the exodus to Bangladesh, where they received treatment for severe burn wounds and other injuries. As in Chut Pyin, more than 200 Rohingya were killed in Min Gyi. News of the massacres quickly spread among surrounding Rohingya villages, causing many people to flee out of fear they might suffer the same fate. Amnesty International focused on four such villages in detail—Chein Kar Li and Koe Tan Kauk in Rathedaung Township; Inn Din, in Maungdaw Township; and Gu Dar Pyin, in Buthidaung Township—but received testimonies from dozens of other villages that indicate similar attacks in which several dozen or more Rohingya were unlawfully killed. In total, thousands of Rohingya women, men, and children were killed. Most women and girls were raped in one of three contexts. First, women and girls were raped during or immediately after a military attack on their village, such as during the massacres in Chut Pyin and Min Gyi. In these incidents, soldiers often took women and girls away to another location—empty houses, fields, schools, and, in one case, a mosque—where they assaulted them, often in mass and gang rapes. Second, women and girls were raped in their home during more general security force activity in villages, including during searches or raids for suspected ARSA members. Third, women and girls were raped and subjected to other sexual violence as they fled towards Bangladesh.
Although the military announced the end of its “clearance operations” on 5 September 2017, unlawful killings, rape and other sexual violence, and village burning continued for weeks after that. A month into the crisis, almost half a million Rohingya had been forced into Bangladesh. But hundreds of thousands of others remained in northern Rakhine State, trying to continue living in their homes and working their land. The security forces burned several Rohingya markets and blocked access to others, cutting off Centre’s of trade where people could buy and sell goods. And fourth, at the time of the rice harvest in late 2017, the security forces blocked Rohingya in many villages from accessing their rice fields. Dozens of Rohingya villages have been wiped off the map through bulldozing, including structures that had survived village burning. Evidence related to the military’s crimes against humanity has potentially been cleared away as well.
