LAUSR

A humanitarian crisis of enormous scale and scope is unfolding in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State and its border zone with Bangladesh. More than 420 000 Rohingya women, children, and men have fled widespread violence in Rakhine State in the past 3 weeks. Some 240 000 of them are children, according to UNICEF. The Bangladesh–Myanmar border already shelters about 400 000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar from earlier waves of violence and mass displacement. The UN Secretary-General reports shortages of food, potable water, shelter, and access to medical care for these new arrivals. This acute crisis was initiated by armed attacks by a Rohingya group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, against more than 20 Myanmar police stations and an army base on Aug 25, 2017. The Myanmar Armed Forces, under the command of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, responded to these attacks with a widespread assault, ostensibly against the Rohingya armed group, which they deem a terrorist organisation, but now demonstrably also against the civilian population of the region. The Myanmar military has closed the region to humanitarian assistance, to a UN investigative group, to human rights groups, and to the media, making it difficult to assess conditions on the ground. But there is evidence emerging of extreme violence. Human Rights Watch has used satellite imaging to investigate the violence and documented extensive burning of Rohingya homes and villages across northern Rakhine State. First-hand accounts of survivors from these areas who have reached Bangladesh are consistent in reporting burning of homes and communities, tor ture, extrajudicial killings of civilians (including women and children) by the security forces, systematic rape of Rohingya women and girls, and verbal threats to leave Myanmar or be killed. Amnesty International has confirmed reports of landmines being laid along the Myanmar–Bangladesh border of Rakhine State, of land mine injuries, and that the Myanmar authorities are responsible for mining these areas. The Myanmar military has insisted that the Rohingya are burning their own homes and justified their own actions as anti-terrorism. Although this round of violence is unprecedented in scale, the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has been persecuted for decades. Since 2012, some 120 000 Rohingya have been living in squalid internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Rakhine after communal violence flared up against them, led by Buddhist extremists. Diplomats in Yangon have reported that food distribution and medical services for these IDP camps have been suspended in the wake of the Aug 25, 2017, attacks, compounding the humanitarian crisis inside Myanmar. In addition to the refugees in Bangladesh and the IDPs, there are populations of Rohingya refugees in India and Pakistan from earlier waves of persecution, and in Malaysia and Thailand where an estimated 150 000 have fled by sea and faced refusals to land and human trafficking into the regional fishing and other industries. The Myanmar military are also engaged in ethnic conflicts and displacement of ethnic and religious minority groups in at least two other states, Kachin State and northern Shan State. There have also been human rights abuses against other Burmese Muslims who are not ethnic Rohingya. But what is occurring now, and which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called on Sept 11, 2017, “a textbook example of ethnic cleaning”, might be something much graver: the Myanmar military’s attempt to drive the remaining Rohingya population from Myanmar. On Sept 13, 2017,