How Myanmar covered up ethnic cleansing

Two years after Rohingya Muslims were executed, raped and forced out of their homes, the jungle has reclaimed entire villages. The sites of massacres have been replaced by security bases. The Myanmar government insists the ethnic cleansing never happened. It wanted to prove it to us by taking us to Rakhine state, the epicentre of the violence against the Rohingya.

>>Adam DeanThe New York Times
Published : 16 Oct 2019, 03:32 AM
Updated : 16 Oct 2019, 03:32 AM

Perhaps government officials believe their own propaganda. Perhaps they thought there was nothing left for us to see. But there was always something, no matter how hard they tried to obliterate reality.

Nearly everywhere our convoy went, someone was with us. A minder, a guard or a state media television crew, they all did their part to try to feed us the official story. Our first stop was an internment camp for Rohingya in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state. Around 120,000 Rohingya have been stuck here since 2012. They have been erased from the official narrative. Myanmar claims most Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Go home, the government says.

But these Rohingya are evidence of the long Muslim heritage here. Doctors, lawyers and former politicians live forgotten in ghettos, like Jews once did in Nazi Germany. The government minders and armed guards with us pointed out the garbage that, without social services, piles up in the camps. “So dirty,” one said. “They are like that.”

“They.”

We headed north, to where the worst of the brutality against the Rohingya occurred. The government wanted to show us the new investment that it says will transform the state. It promised that plans were being laid to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh. But what we saw was emptiness, a missing people.

At Inn Din, where 10 Rohingya were massacred, there was little evidence of their existence. But we saw rusted carcasses of metal chests where family valuables were once stored. Even after the international community condemned the expulsion of the Rohingya, the burning of villages kept going for weeks and months. The exodus continued.

Police stand in the shade as journalists are led by government officials on a tour of Inn Din, in Rakhine State, Myanmar, on May 29, 2019. Ten Rohingya Muslims were massacred at this village, but there is little evidence on their existence.

Officials held a news conference for us describing all the ways in which the Myanmar government was preparing for Rohingya refugees to come back. Maps, diagrams, PowerPoint presentations — all made up. Only a handful has returned, if that. Security forces with neatly combed hair sat at desks, ready to receive the Rohingya. But it was a charade. As we left the building, officials flipped off the lights. A generator juddered to a stop. Men slipped out of their uniforms. The computers, supposedly meant to document all the returning Rohingya, were never even turned on.

At the next stop we saw rows of half-built houses. These were for the Rohingya, we were told. And what if they didn’t return? An official shrugged. If the Muslims refused the government’s generosity, what could be done? There were no schools, no mosques, no clinics. Just empty homes near where a Rohingya community flourished before it was burned to the ground.

Our car broke down, and we wandered into one destroyed Rohingya village. But the border guards escorted us back to the scripted show. As we drove through the vacant landscape, we suddenly spotted a complete Muslim village, the only sign of the rural Rohingya existence that was once the lifeblood of this region.

We threw the car doors open, compelling the driver, who had been separated from the convoy by the earlier breakdown, to stop. He peered at us anxiously as we ran toward the Rohingya. The sun was setting, and men were gathered for prayer at the mosque, a daily ritual almost forgotten in Rakhine. Ngan Chaung village was like a time capsule of what life was like only a couple of years ago, before the military and Buddhist mobs came with their guns and kindling.

By the time we returned to the town of Maungdaw, we were back in a heavily militarised zone. Security forces stood guard. In what was once a land dominated by Islam, the call to prayer echoing through town, faith now centres around golden Buddhist pagodas.

We looked out again on an empty land. There were no Rohingya here.

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