The Rohingya suffered genocide at the hands of their own homeland’s military. This Sunday, Aug. 25, marks the two-year anniversary of the brutal crackdown against this long-persecuted minority group by the Myanmar (Burmese) military and security apparatus known as the Tatmadaw. The “clearance operations” unleashed on that day left tens of thousands killed and raped, and entire villages pillaged and burned to the ground. The crackdown — the apotheosis of a carefully calculated and long-developing genocidal plan against the Rohingya — also triggered a mass exodus of approximately 750,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh.
Today, nearly 1 million Rohingya remain in Bangladesh, living in sprawling, squalid and fetid camps — the majority of them women and children. They are stateless because of their native Myanmar’s refusal to recognize them as citizens, leaving them trapped in a protracted limbo between the urge to return to a homeland where they would face near-certain annihilation and their inability to assimilate into Bangladesh, an impoverished country incapable of absorbing them and eager for them to leave.
On this second anniversary, what has happened and continues to happen to the Rohingya must be acknowledged for what it is: Genocide. Any efforts to repatriate the Rohingya to Myanmar are hollow until meaningful gains are made towards establishing a safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return. The international community must face the reality that the Rohingya will likely remain in the camps in Bangladesh for a long time, and we must shift attention to survivorship and creating a coordinated and robust long-term strategy to ending their purgatorial plight. The United States must take a leadership role in holding the Tatmadaw accountable for its heinous crimes, as well as ensuring that the camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, do not inadvertently complete Myanmar’s intended mission of destroying the Rohingya — not by killing or burning — but by preventing an entire people from having any semblance of a future.
Halt Ill-Prepared and Premature Returns
On Aug. 16, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to start repatriation of a small group of Rohingya, beginning on Aug. 22. Bangladesh asked for assistance from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in verifying 3,450 people, from 1,056 families, approved for repatriation by Myanmar from a much longer list of 22,000 names. The announcement of these rushed and slipshod returns provoked panic in the Rohingya community and challenged numerous assurances by Bangladeshi authorities that any repatriation would be done in safety, with dignity and on a voluntary basis.
UNHCR scrambled to interview people on the list to verify their willingness to return to Myanmar. Refugees throughout the settlement in Cox’s Bazar reported feeling fearful and anxious about the returns, particularly in light of the truncated timeline, which didn’t seem to allow sufficient time for determining voluntariness.
Education is limited throughout the camps, survivors are only allowed to learn in English and Burmese — languages they don’t know.
The day before repatriations were slated to commence, hundreds of residents signed or marked with thumbprints a statement denouncing the planned returns. ”There will be no repatriation without talking to us first,” the statement read. It expressed concern over “how this secret list of names was created and why we are include [sic] on it. We never volunteer our names to go on the list….We have collected signatures from many of the 3,450 people who are on the repatriation list to show our unity and to raise our voice against this repatriation.”
Many international organizations condemned the rushed returns and waited alongside the refugees to see how repatriation activities would unfold. On Aug. 22, officials working in Cox’s Bazar said not one Rohingya turned up to embark on the five buses and two trucks they had arranged to transport people back to Myanmar. Ambia, one of the refugees whose name appeared on the list, told Al Jazaeera, “If we go back there, we will die….They have killed our families. We don’t know what lies there.” Ali, another approved returnee, said, “I would rather commit suicide than go back to Myanmar.
“I would rather commit suicide than go back to Myanmar.”
— Ali, a Rohingya quoted in Al Jazeera
“We can’t and didn’t force them to go back,” Bangladesh refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said. “Repatriation to their own home country was completely up to the refugees, and they clearly weren’t convinced enough.”
This marks the second failed repatriation attempt by Bangladesh and Myanmar. A previous push was made in November of last year, triggering similar widespread panic among the refugees as well as an impassioned backlash that culminated in large-scale protests. Both countries have their reasons for staging these premature repatriation efforts. Myanmar is under tremendous pressure from the international community over the genocide, its continued persecution of Rohingya and other minorities still within its borders, and its failure to create conditions conducive to the refugees’ return. For its part, Bangladesh has been stretched very thin trying to sustain the growing refugee population at Cox’s Bazar. It is also under pressure from its own people to send the Rohingya home, as tensions between the Rohingya and local host communities grow over resources, land encroachment, and international assistance.
These sham, irresponsible repatriation exercises must end. Repatriation can no longer be wielded as a political distraction by both sides. Each effort brings great anxiety to the Rohingya refugees and is a waste of resources that should be channeled into actually making changes conducive to return or improving the conditions in the camps where the Rohingya will most likely remain for the long-term.
The Rohingya refugee camps sprawl as far as the eye can see in Bangladesh.
As things currently stand, Myanmar has taken negligible measures to build confidence, institute policy changes, or create infrastructures essential to guaranteeing the refugees’ dignified, voluntary, and sustainable return, as required under international law. One refugee adroitly captured the current state of affairs for Human Rights Watch: “They [the Myanmar authorities] always abuse us in different ways. Why would we go back to that country to ensure the same cycle of abuse? If we are recognized as Rohingya, given citizenship, our lands, and assurances of freedom of movement, then no one will need to send us back. We will go ourselves.”
The Rohingya have a long list of demands that must be met before return is even an option:
- Being acknowledged as Rohingya (Myanmar authorities refuse to call them as such, instead referring to them as Bengalis or other derogatory monikers in order to perpetuate the narrative that they are not natives to the land but instead illegal immigrant interlopers from Bangladesh);
- Full citizenship in Myanmar (A 1982 citizenship law stripped all Rohingya of citizenship by excluding them from a list of recognized minority groups. Their exclusion from the list rendered them de facto stateless and created the foundation for systematic rights deprivation, disenfranchisement, ghettoization, and, eventually, genocide. Myanmar has promised to issue identity cards to the Rohingya, which would only further entrench their otherness and confirm their non-citizenship status);
- Assurance of safety and security after repatriation (In addition to the fact that the Rohingya’s security would be entrusted to the very same forces that perpetrated murder, rape, and pillage against them, full-blown armed conflict is currently raging between the Arakan Army and the Tatmadaw in the exact location to which the Rohingya would return);
- The return of their homes and lands in the conflict (Satellite images have confirmed that countless villages have been burned and razed, both during the initial genocidal onslaught and after the exodus.); and
- Justice for the crimes perpetrated against them (Myanmar has refused to acknowledge responsibility for any of the atrocities unleashed upon the Rohingya).
Those Rohingya remaining in Myanmar live now in apartheid-like conditions, deprived of all basic rights and confined to open-air concentration camps. Unchanged discriminatory policies in Myanmar mean that these approximately 128,000 internally displaced Rohingya face severe restrictions to movement, educational and livelihood opportunities, reproductive rights, and access to healthcare or humanitarian assistance. Villages continue to be wiped out to make room for military bases and more internment camps. A July 2019 report by the Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) used satellite imagery to demonstrate the ongoing demolition of dozens of Rohingya settlements. Moreover, since November 2018, fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army rebel group in Rakhine state has freshly displaced at least 27,000 Rohingya and caused over a thousand new refugees to cross over into Bangladesh. Since June, the government has instituted a full internet blackout in eight townships in Rakhine State, ensuring nothing gets in or out and providing cover for future abuses. And yet, despite this dismal backdrop, the Myanmar authorities have maintained the fiction that everything is ready to welcome the Rohingya back to their homeland.
Myanmar has done nothing to reassure the Rohingya that the conditions that led to their near-extermination have changed. The country has steadfastly refused to admit that its security forces did anything wrong. With Myanmar’s military as remorseless as ever, it remains patently unsafe for a single Rohingya to return. Until the root causes of the crisis — systematic persecution and violence, statelessness, and military impunity for the most heinous of crimes — are addressed, this repatriation charade must end. It only brings anxiety and fear to a community still grappling with the trauma of what was unleashed upon them two years ago.
Name the Crime
It’s been two years since clearance operations against the Rohingya began in Rakhine State, yet neither the United Nations Security Council nor the United States has called what happened by its rightful name: genocide.
We owe it to the Rohingya women whose babies were snatched from their arms, the Rohingya men and boys who were lined up for massacre, the mothers and daughters who were dragged off and raped, and the hundreds of thousands of children deprived of a future living in the crowded camps in Bangladesh to label what happened to them and their people as the crime of crimes.
As donor fatigue begins to set in and international attention begins to wane, the time is now to properly recognize the scale and severity of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya and, thereby, trigger a global response proportionate to such a designation. A genocide determination is the crucial next step to ensuring any kind of dignity and justice for the Rohingya. It is also essential to preventing Myanmar and like-minded regimes from committing further atrocities against civilians populations with impunity.
The majority of Rohingya survivors are women and children.
Jewish World Watch was one of the first organizations to provide an analysis as to why the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya qualify as genocide. In August 2018, a UN panel issued a report presenting credible evidence that genocide took place in Rakhine State. On August 22, the day the repatriation attempt failed, the same panel concluded that the scale of sexual violence deployed by Myanmar security forces against the Rohingya showed evidence of “genocidal intent.” The finding of genocide has been corroborated by multiple reputable institutions, including Fortify Rights and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This finding was also echoed by the Public International Law and Policy Group—the entity commissioned by the State Department to conduct its analysis on what transpired in Myanmar two years ago.
Nevertheless, the United States has refrained from using the “g” word, instead opting to use the term “ethnic cleansing” to categorize the “extreme, large-scale, widespread [violence] seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.” The crime of “ethnic cleansing” does not exist under international law, but the categorization above is pretty much a clear-cut description of genocide, especially when “well-planned and coordinated”— words the State Department report also used to describe the atrocities. Like the State Department, the UN Security Council has still not adopted a single resolution to name the nature of the crime committed against the Rohingya, or to hold the perpetrators accountable
Time for Action
The ongoing myth of potential repatriation is distracting the international community from the true plight of the Rohingya, allowing Myanmar to perpetuate the lie that it’s actually doing something to accommodate this grievously persecuted population.
It is time for the United States to take the lead to ensure that bad actors with agendas against US interests do not step up to exploit the lack of leadership. The Tatamadaw must be held to account. The Trump Administration has taken some important steps by issuing some sanctions on lower-level officials and visa bans on higher levels ones. But more must be done. We must deploy targeted sanctions on all officers in the upper echelons of the Tatmadaw security apparatus, including Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, as well as the military-owned businesses, which the UN has determined to be directly funding the atrocities.
If the Trump Administration is unwilling to issue a genocide determination and to beef up sanctions against the responsible parties, bills currently being worked on in the House and in Senate could get the job done. Together, we must all continue to apply maximum pressure on our elected officials, particularly in the Senate, to get this legislation passed.
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The United States must deploy maximum resources to ensure that the 1 million people languishing in unlivable conditions in Cox’s Bazar have an opportunity to rebuild their lives. The Rohingya fled Myanmar only to find themselves without hope and resources once again in Bangladesh, deprived of opportunities to work or learn. The international community must step up to aid Bangladesh in supporting the dignified survivorship of this population.
Your support can improve the lives of the Rohingya.