ND Burma
ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.
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TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
/in Justice Newsletters, NewsDuring periods of authoritarian rule and conflict, mass human rights violations are often committed in darkness, with the truth hidden and manipulated. After a transition to democracy, many perpetrators are often protected by entrenched impunity. In many cases, they still hold great power and tightly control a false narrative about what has taken place. Institutions that were designed to protect
and uphold the rights of the people are weak or broken. In order to build a free and accountable democracy, the truth about what has happened needs to be investigated and shared, perpetrators brought to justice, victims assisted and honored, and laws and institutions reformed to ensure that the mass violations will not recur.
The transitional justice framework is a tool that can assist in developing and implementing effective strategies to deal with a history of mass violations. It is often divided into four major elements: seeking the truth, prosecuting those responsible, helping to repair the lives and dignity of victims (reparations), and providing guarantees of non-repetition (or institutional reform). These elements are interdependent, so an effective approach must be holistic, and the different initiatives should
be sequenced in an order that is appropriate to the context. An approach that is sensitive to gender is also needed to understand how violations impacted men and women differently and to ensure participation of the most vulnerable and marginalized.
“Nothing for Our Land” Impact of Land Confiscation on Farmers in Myanmar
/in NewsDisputes over land remain one of the central challenges in Myanmar’s evolving reform process. Land confiscations and forced evictions were a major feature of decades of military rule and internal armed conflict. Small farmers bore the brunt as government officials, military commanders, and their cronies seized land for personal and institutional enrichment; authorities promoted development plans without regard for those affected; and the military and ethnic armed groups took advantage of fighting and displacement to grab vast swathes of territory.
Despite some protections under the law, government officials frequently confiscated land while providing limited or no notice and no compensation, often instantly depriving farmers of their only source of income and regular source of food.[1] As a result, countless rural families struggled to pay for food, health care, and their children’s education. While the National League for Democracy (NLD) government, which took power in March 2016, has redoubled efforts to address the issue, large numbers of farmers have been left in the lurch, their livelihoods taken from them and their family’s future uncertain.
The total number of acres illegally confiscated in recent decades is unknown, but estimates are in the millions. In 2016, a government official, citing the findings of the Farmers Affairs Committee in the Upper House of Parliament, said “as many as 2 million acres of land across Burma could be considered ‘confiscated.’”[2]
Myanmar’s population remains concentrated in rural areas where farming is the primary means of obtaining a livelihood.[3] Land confiscations have had a disproportionate impact on rural farmers, most of whom own modest plots of land. As Myanmar’s larger reform process has led to increased media freedoms and less enforcement of laws restricting public protests, once-suppressed grievances have risen to the surface, leading to greater activism and widespread calls for land reform.
Recognizing the gravity of the problem, the Myanmar government has in recent years undertaken several initiatives to address land confiscations by investigating claims and recommending compensation or the return of land.
In 2012, the military-installed parliament established the Farmland Investigation Commission, an initiative seemingly begun with an eye on public opinion as the country moved toward multi-party elections. The commission investigated cases of land confiscation from as far back as 1988.[4] In 2013, the Land Utilization Management Central Committee was established to implement the recommendations of the Farmland Investigation Commission.[5] Both were dissolved in 2016, shortly after the NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, took power after overwhelmingly winning national parliamentary elections on November 8, 2015.[6]
During its roughly four years of operation, the Farmland Investigation Commission claims to have received some 20,000 complaints, though estimates of the number of complaints received, reviewed, and left unresolved by the commission vary widely.[7] According to the commission’s secretary-general, as of June 2015, the commission had heard thousands of cases and returned over 335,000 acres of land, benefitting more than 30,000 families. But according to Namati, a local charity that works on land issues in Myanmar, of the cases the commission reviewed, many were reportedly “collective cases”—those in which claims were made on behalf of a group of people or a community—and just 4 percent of complainants were deemed entitled to compensation.[8]
By 2016, the number of acres reportedly returned rose to nearly 360,000. The number of cases reviewed by the commission also reportedly rose to over 12,000. However, at the end of January 2016, the commission had still not reviewed more than 6,000 claims, according to a government report.[9]
Several other reforms were also instituted in the years before the NLD took power. Two new land laws were passed in 2012: the Farmland Law and the Virgin, Fallow, Vacant Management Law.[10] Under the 2008 Myanmar constitution, all land is officially the property of the state, yet together these laws created something akin to a private property system. However, protections against land confiscation were still relatively weak.[11] In January 2016, the outgoing cabinet adopted the National Land Use Policy. Although it is not binding, the policy could provide a partial roadmap for the reform of Myanmar’s land laws.[12] So far, implementation of the National Land Use Policy has been scant, though in January 2018 the government established the National Land Use Council, which provides for the creation of committees to assist carrying out the land use policy.[13]
After taking office in March 2016, the NLD, which had made land issues a central plank in its 2015 election manifesto (saying that the party would “strive” to return “illegally-lost land” and make “payment[s] of compensation and restitution”) moved quickly to address land issues.[14] On June 6, 2016, the government created the “Central Reinvestigation Committee for Confiscated Farmlands and Other Lands” (the “Reinvestigation Committee”). The government hastily declared that it would solve all land confiscation issues within six months.[15] Since then, the government claims to have settled thousands of claims, though thousands more cases have been filed and remain unresolved in addition to the 5,000 or so cases left unresolved by the previous government’s commission.[16]
Since establishing the Reinvestigation Committee, the government has taken steps to reform the process of resolving land confiscation cases. One important feature of the Reinvestigation Committee is that it provides an opportunity for participation by civil society groups on committees established at different administrative levels. It has reserved seats on committees at each administrative level—state/region, district, township, and village tract—for nongovernmental representatives, including some for civil society groups. In doing this the NLD has signaled a commitment to a more inclusive and fair process for resolving often complex land issues.[17] However, research conducted by civil society groups indicates that some of these committees remain ineffective or inactive, particularly the committees established below the township level.[18] In February 2018, the government also formed four groups to monitor the activities of the Reinvestigation Committee, but those committees are comprised solely of government officials.[19]
However, for many of those dispossessed of their land, there has yet to be any positive result. While tens of thousands of acres were released following the recommendation of the Farmland Investigation Commission to the various ministries, the actual return of land to small farmers and villagers has proven more complicated, leaving land and villagers in limbo. Hundreds of people have been arrested by the police, which remains under military control, for staging protests as they await the resolution of their claims.[20] Many protesters have been charged with trespassing and vandalism, among other crimes. In some cases, the courts have handed down prison sentences.[21]
It is not surprising that the NLD government has struggled to solve the myriad longstanding problems associated with Myanmar’s confusing land laws and knot of competing claims. Many cases are extremely complicated, as military land confiscations were followed by sales to corporations and businesses, followed by additional sales to others, making it difficult to create a system that is fair to the original owners, subsequent tenants, and those who later bought the land in good faith. During different periods of Myanmar’s history, dozens of laws were enacted, making the body of laws regulating land acquisition and sales a confusing web of overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, rules difficult to navigate by the vast majority of people it affects. And given the powerful individuals and institutions involved in past land transfers, many farmers and land rights activists have little hope the NLD can quickly solve the problem.[22]
Since 2016, the NLD-led government has both ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and proposed several amendments to laws that affect ownership and use of land. Being a party to the ICESCR carries with it additional obligations under international law, particularly with respect to ensuring the rights to adequate housing and an adequate standard of living, and protections against forced evictions.[23]
The amendments proposed and discussed by the government include the cornerstones of a body of some 70 laws that regulate land use: the Farmland Law, the Vacant Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law, and the 1984 Land Acquisition Act. An attempt to reform the 2012 Farmland Law by the parliament in 2017 was met with widespread criticism from local and international nongovernmental organizations for failing to allow for proper consultation from communities. They also criticized the proposed amendments for failing to adequately protect land tenure security and for failing to conform with the National Land Use Policy, among other shortfalls. [24] The process of amending the Land Acquisition Act also continues. Amendments to the act circulated in 2017 were criticized for incorporating overly broad and ambiguous language pertaining to acquisitions for a “public purpose,” and for legalizing “urgent” acquisitions that can take place within 48 hours, which could facilitate international law violations.[25] A subsequent amended draft of the same law circulated in mid-2018 provides some additional clarity pertaining to “public purpose” but otherwise retains overly broad and ambiguous language, and similarly sanctions “urgent acquisitions” with few apparent protections for land holders.[26]
This long history of farmers being dispossessed of their land and livelihood without compensation has left countless people in Myanmar destitute, insecure, and frustrated. As Myanmar looks to modernize and attract foreign direct investment, it needs to clarify, harmonize, and streamline its laws and ensure that land tenure is protected. Solving historic land confiscations and disputes will not be easy, but the government, military, and civil society groups should work together to resolve this chronic source of instability and grievance. Myanmar’s future depends on it.
Human Rights Watch
AAPP Launches Human Rights Education Program in Mon State High Schools
/in NewsBy SAN YAMIN AUNG 2 July 2018
YANGON — The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) launched a human rights education program for high school students in Mon State on Monday.
During the program, which will be conducted from July 2 to October 7, teenage students from all 127 state high schools of Mon State will be introduced to the history and basics of human rights, respect for differences, the importance of rights and responsibilities, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ko Aung Myo Kyaw of the AAPP, who is also one of the trainers, said the education program aims to stop human rights abuses experienced in past from being repeated.
“Our country has long faced human rights abuses. By understanding human rights, we hope that students – our future leaders – will protect the rights of others,” he said.
AAPP was founded in 2000 by former political prisoners who were jailed for their political activities under the military regime that ruled the country for more than five decades following a coup in 1962.
Ko Aung Myo Kyaw said when the trainers introduced themselves at a school, students asked how [past] human rights violators would be punished.
“This question shocked us. It was unexpected,” he said, replying to the students that instead of seeking revenge, the truth needed to be exposed.
AAPP began teaching human rights classes in high schools in 2016 in Yangon and Bago. In 2017-18, the group conducted the program in 73 schools and a university in Bago and 27 schools in Shan State’s Taunggyi district.
On Monday, about 500 students from No. 6 Basic Education High School in Mawlamyine attended the morning program and 300 students from No. 3 Basic Education High School in Mawlamyine attended the afternoon session at their schools.
The group’s goal is to include human rights lessons as a subject in government’s educational curriculum.
“We will keep pushing to reach this goal together with lawmakers,” he said, adding that until they reach the goal, they will try to continue conducting the program.
Topics: Education, Human Rights, Youth
Irrawaddy News
Inside Insein
/in NewsIll-treatment is rife, the food is bad and hygiene is sub-standard in the infamous Yangon prison that has long been the butt of grim word-play humour about “going insane”.
By OLIVER SLOW | FRONTIER
“There’s only one word for what life was like inside Insein prison – hell.”
U Kyaw Soe Win spent six years in the notorious jail on Yangon’s northern outskirts when Myanmar was under military rule. He was arrested in 1992 for protesting against the National Convention. After what he said was a sham trial lasting a few days, during which he had no access to a lawyer, he was convicted under the Emergency Provisions Act.
“I spent twenty three hours a day inside my cell; I was allowed out just three times a day, for twenty minutes at a time,” said Kyaw Soe Win. “I didn’t experience physical torture, but spending that much time inside your cell without anything to read or write, that is mental torture.”
Asked about the quality of prison food, Kyaw Soe Win laughed.
“It was the lowest quality food, not nutritious at all. Low quality rice, maybe some beans and a bit of vegetable – if you could call it that,” he said.
Ko Letyar Tun, who spent two stints in Insein, including many years on death row, over his involvement in the 1988 national uprising, said the quality of life depended on who was the head jailer.
“If you had a good one, life wasn’t too bad, but if you had a bad one, it was a horrible place to be,” Letyar Tun said. “I don’t remember the name of who was in charge when I arrived, but I can tell you, I will never forget his face,” he said.
Letyar Tun said torture was common in Insein.
“I was beaten by hand, with a stick. They beat you a lot. But it didn’t matter if you told them the truth. They heard what they wanted to hear, and if they didn’t like what you told them, they just carried on beating you,” he said.
Colonial relic
Glance from your plane window as it arrives or takes-off from Yangon International Airport and you might catch a glimpse of Insein, easily identified by its size and distinctive shape.
Insein prison was built by the British in 1887 to relieve overcrowding at Rangoon Central Goal, at the western end of Commissioner’s Road (now Bogyoke Aung San Road).
A scale model of Insein prison at the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners museum in Yangon. (Victoria Milko | Frontier)
Insein is said to have been built in the circular Panopticon design developed by the 18th century British philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham. The design was aimed at enabling a single guard to monitor all inmates without them knowing if they were being watched.
Bentham once said the use of the design for prisons enabled them to function “as a mill for grinding rogues honest”.
Critics of the design said it was inhumane and Insein has acquired an infamous reputation, mainly because of the effect on inmates of a lack of hygiene and the regular use of torture, especially when the country was under military rule.
Over the years, Insein has held thousands of political prisoners, many of them students and other activists arrested during the 1988 national uprising and the monk-led protests in 2007 known as the Saffron Revolution.
Political prisoners continue to be held in Insein.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said the nation’s jails held 36 political prisoners in May, with another 57 in custody awaiting trial and 169 granted bail.
A jailer’s perspective
U Thein Win spent 16 years with the Corrections Department including two stints at Insein, where he began working as a warder in 1975. He later worked as a warder at Myitkyina, Kawthaung and Mandalay prisons, before returning to Insein as chief jailer ahead of the protests in 1988.
Thein Win said he went four days without sleep or food during the height of the unrest, when a constant stream of arrested protesters was being delivered to the prison.
As a prison official, he regularly received death threats and carried a pistol for his protection.
“I didn’t feel pride about my work, but I had a sense of duty,” Thein Win told Frontier. “I felt a big burden, but I had to be loyal to the government. I had to do my job even though we faced death threats.”
Thein Win was vague when asked if he had been involved in torturing inmates but said he had often seen prisoners being beaten. Some of the worst beatings he saw were inflicted on the student leader, Min Ko Naing, and the comedian known as Zarganar.
Photo taken from inside the prison, courtesy of AAPP.
However, it was an incident more than a decade earlier that made a bigger impression on his mind: the execution of student activist Salai Tin Maung Oo, who was hanged at Insein on June 25, 1976.
Tin Maung Oo had gone underground after participating in the student-led protests that erupted after the body of former United Nations secretary-general U Thant was returned to Burma from the United States in December 1974. The activist was arrested in Yangon on March 22, 1976, after returning for celebrations the next day marking the 100th birthday of Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, one of the greatest Burmese poets, writers and nationalist leaders of the early 20th century, who died in July 1964.
Tin Maung Oo, the only student activist to have been formally executed under junta rule, was defiant to the end. The authorities had offered to spare his life if he agreed to abandon political activism and admit that the protests he was involved in were wrong, but he refused.
Tin Maung Oo’s last words to his executioners were: “You can kill my body but you can never kill my beliefs and what I stood for. I will never kneel down to your military boots!”
Speaking more than 40 years later, Thein Win said he could never forget what he saw that morning. As he spoke, tears filled his eyes.
“At about 4am, soldiers came to his cell and began beating him,” he said. “They gagged him and eventually dragged him to the room where he was hanged.”
Thein Win, who held the role of chief jailer for several more years, said the treatment of many prisoners made him feel ashamed.
“At first I was proud to work as a government official, but afterwards I felt ashamed,” he said, although he expressed pride in trying to help many inmates, and said some still came to his house to pay him respect.
A foreigner’s experience
One of Insein’s most high profile foreign inmates in recent years was New Zealander Mr Phil Blackwood, the general manager of a bar in Bahan Township.
Blackwood and two Myanmar colleagues, the bar’s owner, U Tun Thurein, and its manager, Ko Htut Ko Ko Lwin, were arrested in December 2014 and sentenced the following March to two-and-a-half years in prison for insulting religion over the online use of a Buddha image to promote a drinks promotion night. The trio was released from Insein in January 2016.
A family member of a political prisoner demonstrates outside Insein prison in 2016. (Ann Wang | Frontier)
Blackwood’s trial attracted considerable attention, and as a “high priority” prisoner he said he had his own cell.
“The first few months were tense,” Blackwood told Frontier in a recent phone interview from New Zealand, where he lives. “When I first went inside I was told there could be a potential hit on me, so I took that pretty seriously and mostly kept to myself.”
Blackwood said he gradually adjusted to life in prison and his situation became more bearable after he began to form friendships, including with some of the guards.
He was able to spend about eight hours a day outside his cell, in the jail’s exercise yard.
The doors of his cell were opened twice a day, from 7am to 12pm and from 2pm to about 5.30pm. The two hours they were closed were when “high risk” prisoners could go outside, Blackwood said.
Psychological victories helped to keep his spirits up, and one was to refuse to leave his cell as soon as the guards opened it and to return well before he was due to be locked-up again.
“It might seem silly, but that really helped me to feel that they weren’t in control of what I was doing. I felt like I could decide what I was doing,” Blackwood said.
There were dark moments, too. Blackwood said he never saw any inmate being tortured, but he did observe a rapid deterioration in the physical condition of a middle-aged man over about a week that coincided with a visit of a group he labelled the “Gestapo”, after the ruthless secret police of Nazi Germany. Frontier was unable to establish who this group was.
“We really saw him go downhill quickly over that week or so,” Blackwood said. “The guy had been inside for something like 13 years, then suddenly he deteriorated to the point where we heard he had died,” he said.
“It was hard in there, even for someone who, I guess, is in relatively good shape. But this guy didn’t look healthy, and the heat and the stress must have taken a toll.”
Photo taken from inside the prison, courtesy of AAPP.
His family were visiting from New Zealand at the time of the incident, and during a meeting with them he had to ask his wife, siblings and mother to leave the room, so he could speak with his father alone.
“I said to him, look. If anything happens to me in here, just make sure my body goes back to New Zealand,” he said.
“But you get used to anything, I guess.”
Blackwood was contemptuous of the way his trial was conducted.
“If I was to say they would need to change anything, it would be that bit before the prison – the trial, if you can call it that. It’s a shambles, and everyone inside that prison has to go through it,” he said.
The need for reform
For about three months, Blackwood and his co-defendants were ferried between Insein and the Bahan Township court once a week for a trial that attracted considerable media attention.
There’s been greater domestic and foreign media interest in the pre-trial hearings of Reuters reporters Ko Wa Lone and Ko Kyaw Soe Oo, who have regularly been making a shorter journey from Insein to Insein Township court.
They have been in custody since being arrested in Yangon’s northern outskirts on December 12 last year while investigating a massacre of Rohingya in Rakhine State and are accused of breaching the Official Secrets Acts, for which the maximum penalty is 14 years’ imprisonment.
The reporters, who are alleged to have been in possession of confidential documents, have appeared in court more than 20 times since the hearings began. The case has been marked by some dramatic revelations, including testimony by a police officer that their arrest was a set-up.
One issue in dispute is where they were arrested. The prosecution maintains that the documents were found in their possession when they were stopped by a routine police patrol. The reporters have told their families they were arrested soon after leaving a restaurant to which they were invited by police who handed them some documents.
Reuters journalist Ko Wa Lone, who is currently serving time inside Insein prison alongside his colleague Ko Kyaw Soe Oo. (Nyein Su Wai Kyaw Soe | Frontier)
The pre-trial hearings have also been told by an officer involved in the arrest that he burned his notes about the arrest and another prosecution witness said he had written details of the case on his hand because he was “forgetful”.
In April, Police Captain Moe Yan Naing testified that a senior officer had ordered his subordinates to plant confidential documents on Wa Lone to “trap” him. Moe Yan Naing has since been jailed for one year for violating police discipline. The day after he testified, his family was evicted from government housing in Nay Pyi Taw.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have not commented on their treatment in Insein, but Reuters quoted defence lawyer U Than Zaw Aung as asking Police Captain Myint Lwin at a hearing on June 11 if the pair were “not allowed to sleep” while they were under interrogation for three consecutive days after their arrest last December.
Than Zaw Aung also asked the witness if Kyaw Soe Oo was “forced to kneel down” on the floor for more than three hours during questioning.
Myint Lwin denied the reporters were deprived of sleep or made to kneel, saying officers under his command were not allowed to “do such a thing”.
He also denied, under cross-examination, that the reporters were sent to a specialist interrogation facility after their arrests, saying they were initially detained at a police station in northern Yangon.
aappmus_milko-13.jpg
Ko Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner, and founder of AAPP. (Victoria Milko | Frontier)
Reuters reported that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo told reporters outside the court after the hearing that they were questioned every two hours for about three days after their arrests by different officers who asked if they were “spies”.
Wa Lone said it was “completely untrue” that they had remained in a regular police station.
The treatment of the pair was “mental and physical torture,” Khin Maung Zaw told Reuters after the hearing, adding that evidence gathered through such methods was unlawful and should not be presented in court.
Meanwhile, campaigns continue for the release of political prisoners.
“The issue of political prisoners is not finished inside this country,” said U Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and founder of AAPP. “The government needs to do more on this issue,” he said. “Prisoners are human beings; they must have enough space, they must have enough nutrition, they must have enough medication. They must not be dehumanised. The government has responsibility for that.”
Bo Kyi said the penal system urgently needs reform and one of the first measures should be to reduce the prison population by establishing the rule of law and ensuring that anyone charged with an offence receives a fair trial.
“Everything is interlinked, so it has to be holistic. It must include institutional reform, police reform and judicial reform,” he said.
TOP PHOTO: An aerial view of Yangon’s infamous Insein prison. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)
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FRONTIER Myanmar
Seeking justice in Burma (June 2018)
/in Justice NewslettersSeeking justice in Burma
June 2018
Pressure to hold perpetrators of mass human rights violations accountable continues to build; Kachin war commemorations banned and protesters charged; Panglong peace conference gets new date; defamation cases remain common despite reforms; high numbers of landmine fatalities in Shan and Kachin states. Read more
Myanmar: Military top brass must face justice for crimes against humanity targeting Rohingya
/in NewsThe comprehensive report, “We Will Destroy Everything”: Military Responsibility for Crimes against Humanity in Rakhine State, Myanmar, calls for the situation in Myanmar to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation and prosecution.
“The explosion of violence – including murder, rape, torture, burning and forced starvation – perpetrated by Myanmar’s security forces in villages across northern Rakhine State was not the action of rogue soldiers or units. There is a mountain of evidence that this was part of a highly orchestrated, systematic attack on the Rohingya population,” said Matthew Wells, Senior Crisis Adviser at Amnesty International.
“Those with blood on their hands – right up the chain of command to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – must be held to account for their role in overseeing or carrying out crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations under international law.”
Amassing the evidence
In the report, Amnesty International also names nine of the Commander-in-Chief’s subordinates in the Tatmadaw– Myanmar’s armed forces – and three in the Border Guard Police (BGP) for their roles in the ethnic cleansing campaign.
The culmination of nine months of intensive research, including in Myanmar and Bangladesh, the report is Amnesty International’s most comprehensive account yet of how the Myanmar military forced more than 702,000 women, men and children – more than 80% of northern Rakhine State’s Rohingya population when the crisis started – to flee to Bangladesh after 25 August 2017.
The report provides new details about the Myanmar military’s command structure and troop deployments, as well as the security forces’ arrests, enforced disappearances and torture of Rohingya men and boys in the weeks directly before the current crisis unfolded.
It also provides the most detailed information to date about abuses by the armed group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), before and after it launched coordinated attacks on security posts on 25 August 2017. This includes killings of people from different ethnic and religious communities in northern Rakhine State, as well as the targeted killings and abductions of suspected Rohingya informants to the authorities.
Amnesty International has already documented in detail how the Myanmar military’s vicious response to the ARSA attacks came in the context of long-standing institutionalized discrimination and segregation amounting to apartheid and was marked by crimes under international law including murder, rape, torture, targeted large-scale burning of villages, the use of landmines, forced starvation, mass deportation and other serious human rights violations.
Based on more than 400 interviews – as well as reams of corroborating evidence, including satellite imagery, verified photographs and videos, and expert forensic and weapons analysis – the new report goes into harrowing detail about the patterns of violations committed in the military’s “clearance operations” following the ARSA attacks. It also identifies the specific military divisions or battalions involved in many of the worst atrocities. Amnesty International has documented the security forces committing nine out of the 11 types of crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Combat troops deployed to ‘destroy everything’
The report documents how the military’s senior command put some of its fiercest fighting battalions, infamous for violations elsewhere in the country, front and centre in the operations in northern Rakhine State. This had disastrous consequences for the Rohingya population.
In the weeks leading up to 25 August, the Tatmadaw brought in battalions from the 33rd and 99th Light Infantry Divisions (LIDs), two combat divisions that Amnesty International had implicated in war crimes in Kachin and northern Shan State in late 2016 and mid-2017, as part of the ongoing internal armed conflicts there.
In some Rohingya villages, the incoming military commanders made their intentions clear from the start. Around 20 August 2017, five days before the bulk of the violence erupted, a field commander from the 33rd LID met in Chut Pyin, Rathedaung Township, with Rohingya leaders from nearby villages. According to seven people present interviewed separately by Amnesty International, the field commander threatened that if there was ARSA activity in the area, or if villagers did any “wrong,” his soldiers would shoot at the Rohingya directly, without any distinction.
Amnesty International likewise obtained an audio recording in Burmese, which it believes to be authentic, of a telephone call between a Rohingya resident of Inn Din, Maungdaw Township, and a Myanmar military officer based in the area. In the recording, the officer says, “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.”
The ensuing wave of violence, in which the security forces completely or partially burned several hundred Rohingya villages across northern Rakhine State, including almost every Rohingya village in Maungdaw Township, has been well documented by Amnesty International and others. The report goes into additional detail about the widespread as well as systematic attack on the Rohingya population, including in large-scale massacres in each of the three townships – in the villages of Chut Pyin, Min Gyi and Maung Nu. Thousands of Rohingya women, men and children were murdered – bound and summarily executed; shot and killed while running away; or burned to death inside their homes – though it may never be known exactly how many lost their lives as a result of the military operation.
The security forces also raped Rohingya women and girls, both in their villages and as they fled to Bangladesh. Amnesty International interviewed 20 women and two girls who were survivors of rape, 11 of whom were gang raped. The organization documented rape and sexual violence in 16 different locations in all three townships of northern Rakhine State. The practice was widespread and terrorized Rohingya communities, contributing to the campaign to force them out of northern Rakhine State. Some rape victims also had their family members killed in front of them. In at least one village, security forces left rape survivors inside buildings and set them on fire.
Border Guard Police arrests and torture
Amid growing tensions ahead of the 25 August attacks and in the days that followed, Myanmar security forces arrested and arbitrarily detained hundreds of Rohingya men and boys from villages across northern Rakhine State. Amnesty International interviewed 23 men and two boys whom the security forces arrested and tortured or otherwise ill-treated during this period.
The Rohingya men and boys were often severely beaten during the arrest and then taken to Border Guard Police (BGP) bases, where they were held incommunicado for days or even weeks.
BGP officers tortured the detainees to extract information or to force them to confess to involvement with ARSA. Amnesty International documented in detail torture that occurred in two specific BGP bases: one in Taung Bazar, in northern Buthidaung Township; and another in Zay Di Pyin village, in Rathedaung Township. Multiple survivors of torture named BGP officers responsible for the torture at these bases.
Released detainees described torture methods that included severe beatings, burning, waterboarding and rape and other sexual violence. Several Rohingya men who were held at the Taung Bazar BGP base described having their beards burned. Rohingya men and two boys who were detained at the Zay Di Pyin BGP base described being denied food and water; beaten to the point of death; and, in many cases, having their genitals burned until they blistered.
A farmer from a village in Rathedaung Township told Amnesty International: “I was standing with my hands tied behind my head, then they pulled off my longyi [a sarong-like garment] and put a [lit] candle under my penis. [A BGP officer] was holding the candle and [his superior] was giving orders… They were saying, ‘Tell the truth or you will die’.”
Some detainees did die from torture in custody, including a 20-year-old man who was beaten to death with a wooden plank after he asked for water.
To secure their release, detainees were made to pay large bribes and to sign a document stating they had never been abused. Ten months later, the Myanmar authorities have yet to provide information about who remains in detention, where they are being held, and under what charges, if any. These detentions amount to arbitrary detention under international law.
Command responsibility
Amnesty International reviewed confidential documents about the Myanmar military indicating that, during military operations like those in northern Rakhine State, forces on the ground normally operate under the tight control of senior commanders. Combat division units – which committed the vast majority of crimes against the Rohingya – have strict reporting requirements as to their movements, engagements and weapons use, information that senior commanders knew or should have known.
Further, top military commanders, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, actually travelled to northern Rakhine State directly before or during the ethnic cleansing campaign, to oversee parts of the operation.
Senior military officials knew – or should have known – that crimes against humanity were being committed, yet failed to use their command authority to prevent, stop or punish those crimes, and even attempted to whitewash the overwhelming majority of them in the aftermath. Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to require an investigation into whether some or all may have been directly involved in planning, ordering or committing murder, rape, torture and the burning of villages.
Amnesty International’s research identifies 13 individuals with key roles in crimes against humanity. The organization is calling for all those responsible to face justice.
Time for accountability
Faced with mounting international pressure, last month the Myanmar authorities announced the establishment of an “Independent Commission of Enquiry” to investigate allegations of human rights violations. Previous government and military-led investigations into abuses in Rakhine State have only served to whitewash military atrocities.
“The international community should not be fooled by this latest attempt to shield perpetrators from accountability. Instead, it must finally put an end to the years of impunity and ensure that this dark chapter in Myanmar’s recent history is never repeated,” said Matthew Wells.
“The United Nations Security Council must stop playing politics and urgently refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Myanmar and impose targeted financial sanctions against senior officials responsible for serious violations and crimes.
“While building international consensus and support for an ICC referral, the international community should use the UN Human Rights Council to set up a mechanism to collect and preserve evidence for use in future criminal proceedings.
“A failure to act now in light of the overwhelming body of evidence begs the question: what will it take for the international community to take justice seriously?”
AMIESTY International