Army completes ‘clearance operation’ which UN says has caused 69,000 people to flee to Bangladesh

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This article is more than 2 years old

Myanmar’s military has ended a clearance operation in the country’s troubled Rakhine state, government officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

The security operation began in October when nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.

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The government has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a lawful counter-insurgency campaign.

“The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilised. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace,” newly appointed national security adviser Thaung Tun was quoted as saying in a statement released by state counsellor’s office late on Wednesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugees gather for aid supplies in Chittagong. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

“There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses,” he told a group of diplomats and UN representatives in a meeting, according to the statement.

Two senior officials from Myanmar’s president office and the ministry of information confirmed that the army operation in northern Rakhine had ended but said the military force remained in the region to maintain “peace and security”.

Myanmar military did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugees unpack relief supplies at the Leda Rohingya refugee camp in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

The military and police have set up a team to investigate alleged crimes after Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of atrocities against the Muslim minority.

More than 1,000 Rohingyas may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence told Reuters last week.

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A Myanmar presidential spokesman has said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights and some 1.1 million of them live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.</s>Myanmar says military operation in troubled Rakhine has ended

Myanmar's military has ended a clearance operation in the country's troubled Rakhine State, government officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing</s>Myanmar’s military has ended a clearance operation in the country’s troubled Rakhine State, government officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing. The security operation had been under way since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border on Oct. 9. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.

The government led by Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.

“The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilised. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace,” newly-appointed national security advisor Thaung Tun was quoted as saying in a statement released by State Counselor’s Office late on Wednesday.

“There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses,” he told a group of diplomats and U.N. representatives in a meeting, according to the statement.

Two senior officials from Myanmar’s President Office and the Ministry of Information confirmed that the army operation in northern Rakhine had ended but said the military force remained in the region to maintain “peace and security”.

Myanmar military did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The military and police have separately set up a team to investigate alleged crimes after Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of atrocities against the Muslim minority.

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence told Reuters last week.

A Myanmar presidential spokesman has said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights and some 1.1 million of them live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.</s>Myanmar has tightened security in the disturbed Rakhine state to ensure the sovereignty and safety of the area, Ministry of Home Affairs Deputy Minister Major General Aung Soe said on Wednesday (15 February). The development comes after a four-month military operation in the area was called off.

The Ministry of Home Affairs together with the Myanmar Armed Forces cleared security for several areas in Rakhine State, Myanmar Times reported.

The sweeping operation had been under way in the troubled state since 9 October when nine policemen were killed in attacks by 250 armed men on security posts near the Bangladesh border. It was alleged that the Rohingya Muslims were behind the attack.

Since then, at least 69,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, according to the UN.

"The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilized. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace," newly-appointed national security adviser Thaung Tun said in a statement released by the State Counselor's Office.

"There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses," he added, while addressing a group of diplomats and UN representatives in a meeting on Wednesday.

Ethnic Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have reportedly been victimised over the past few years as they are considered a stateless minority and termed illegal immigrants in the Buddhist-majority country.

In 2012, violent clashes erupted between Rohingyas and the military, in which hundreds of people died while over 100,000 were left homeless.

However, the recent spurt in violence was the result of the October attack on three security posts.

The Burmese government has always maintained that it was conducting counter-terrorism operations in the state and denied reports of killing innocent people or abusing them.

The military and police had even separately set up a team to investigate alleged crimes after the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims.</s>YANGON: Myanmar is to investigate whether police have committed abuses against Rohingya Muslims, the government has said, after officials promised that allegations of atrocities against members of the Muslim minority would be looked into.

The UN human rights office said in a report this month Myanmar’s security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burnt their villages since October in a campaign that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in northern Rakhine State, where many Rohingya live, and says a lawful counterinsurgency campaign has been under way since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border on Oct. 9.

The military said last week it was setting up a team to investigate alleged atrocities by the security forces and the interior ministry followed that up on the weekend with a promise to investigate police.

The Home Ministry said in a statement a “departmental inquiry” would be conducted “to find out whether the police forces have committed illegal actions including violations of human rights during their area clearance operations”.

The ministry, which is controlled by the military, said action would be taken against personnel “who failed to follow instructions”.

“The UN report provides many detailed accounts of what allegedly happened, and that’s why an investigation committee was set up to respond to the report with evidence,” Police Colonel Myo Thu Soe told Reuters on Monday.

“The UN report includes very serious human rights abuses allegations against police in Myanmar including rape. But as we know, it did not happen,” he said.

Separately, five policemen have been sentenced to two months detention after a video appeared online showing them abusing Muslims during an operation aimed at rooting out suspected militants in Rakhine State, Myo Thu Soe said.

In addition, three senior police officers involved in the case have been demoted, he added.

It is rare in Myanmar for security forces to be held accountable for abuses, or for such allegations to be investigated transparently, rights groups say.

Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since the security force sweep was launched in October, according to UN estimates.

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence said last week.

A Myanmar presidential spokesman said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya have faced discrimination in Myanmar for generations. They are not classified as a distinct group under citizenship laws and are regarded instead as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights.

About 1.1 million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.</s>Government officials in Myanmar say the army has ended the “clearance operations” in the country’s troubled Rakhine State, where a four-month, all-out military crackdown targeted ethnic Rohingya Muslims.

“The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilized. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace,” Myanmar’s newly-appointed national security adviser Thaung Tun said in a statement on Wednesday.

He did not explain, however, whether the military had also lifted the siege that had been laid on the state in October last year. Two officials with Myanmar’s presidential office also said military forces had remained in the region to maintain “peace and security.”

It was also not clear why the government had decided to end the military operations. While there had for some time been massive international outcry over the abuses that went on against the Muslims in Rakhine, officials had displayed little regard, carrying on with the crackdown.

Hundreds of people from the ethnic Rohingya minority are thought to have lost their lives and almost 70,000 to have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since the military crackdown began late last year, when an attack on the country’s border guards was blamed on the Rohingya.

Thaung, the national security adviser, further said, “There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses.”

But his claim that the government would act to counter abuse contradicted its record. The numerous reports of abuse against the Rohingya by the military forces have in the past months either gone uninvestigated or been completely rejected at the end of government probes.

This is while there have been countless eyewitness accounts of summary executions, rapes, and arson attacks against the Rohingya by security forces.

At least 30,000 Rohingya have been internally displaced in Rakhine, while thousands of others have tried to reach Bangladesh over the last months to seek refuge among the Rohingya refugee population that already lives there.

Bangladesh has also started to crack down on the incoming refugees by either preventing them at border transit points or confining them to refugee camps.

Rakhine, home to around 1.1 million members of the minority Rohingya Muslim community, has been the scene of violence against the ethnic Muslims since 2012. Before the military assaults, extremist Buddhists would routinely attack the minority Muslims.

Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been hailed by some as a “democracy icon” and has been awarded the Nobel peace prize, has remained largely silent on the plight of the refugees. She has also overseen investigations into claims of abuse that have concluded by denying violations all together.</s>YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar’s national security adviser says the military has ended its four-month counterinsurgency operation in troubled Rakhine state, where it had been accused of rape, torture and other abuses against Muslim Rohingya minority residents.

A statement issued Thursday by the office of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi quoted newly appointed national security adviser Thaung Tan saying the situation in northern Rakhine had stabilized, so that only a police presence was needed to keep the peace.

The army’s operation began in early October after nine police officers at three outposts on the border with Bangladesh were killed by insurgents.

Human rights groups charged that the army crackdown included burning down more than 1,000 homes and killing an unknown number of civilians, possibly several hundred.</s>Some 89 people have been killed in clashes between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingyas in western Myanmar in the past 10 days, according to the latest official toll.

"This situation must not become an opportunity to permanently remove an unwelcome community," said a joint statement issued by Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar, and independent experts on minority issues and the internally displaced.

They voiced their "deep concern about the assertion of the government and others that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants and stateless persons".

"If the country is to be successful in the process of democratic transition, it must be bold in addressing the human rights challenges that exist," Ojea Quintana said.

"In the case of Rakhine State, this involves addressing the long-standing endemic discrimination against the Rohingya community that exists within sections of local and national government as well as society at large."

The Rohingyas say their homes were burned down by Rakhines armed with slingshots, wooden staves, knives and gasoline.

The United Nations says more than 97 percent of the 28,108 people who have fled the violence are Muslims, mostly stateless Rohingya. Many now live in camps, joining 75,000 mostly Rohingya displaced in June after a previous explosion of sectarian violence killed at least 80 people.

Fearful Buddhists and Muslims are arming themselves with homemade weapons, testing the reformist government's resolve to prevent a new wave of violence.

Rita Izsak, U.N. independent expert on minority issues, said the Rohingya constituted a minority which must be protected according to international minority rights standards.

"The government must take steps to review relevant laws and procedures to provide equal access by the Rohingya community to citizenship and promote dialogue and reconciliation between communities," she said.

The U.N. refugee agency has called on authorities to restore law and order so as to prevent further bloodshed and displacement. An estimated 6,000 people are stranded on boats or on islets along Myanmar's western coast, it said on Tuesday.

"We are appealing to neighbouring countries, Bangladesh being very much one of them, to keep borders open. It is clearly important that people do have access to safe haven," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing on Tuesday. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Martin Petty in Rakhine; editing by Andrew Roche)</s>YANGON: Myanmar's army has halted "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine, a senior official said on Wednesday (Feb 15), ending a four-month crackdown by security forces the UN has warned may amount to crimes against humanity.

Hundreds from the Muslim minority are thought to have died and almost 70,000 have fled to Bangladesh since the military launched a campaign to find militants who attacked police border posts.

Escapees have given harrowing accounts of how security forces raped, killed and tortured Rohingya and burnt their houses to the ground during the four-month operation.

A UN report based on accounts from refugees in Bangladesh said troops had carried out a "calculated policy of terror" that probably amounted to crimes against humanity.

For months Myanmar has dismissed similar testimony gathered by foreign media and rights groups as fabricated and curtailed access to the region.

But the UN allegations have piled pressure on Myanmar's civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to rein in the military, which still controls key levers of power.

Late Wednesday her office said the troops had ended their campaign and left the locked-down area under police control.

"The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilised," newly appointed National Security Advisor Thaung Tun was quoted as saying in a statement.

"The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace."

The government has tasked a state-backed commission led by former military man turned Vice President Myint Swe with investigating the allegations in the UN report.

"We have shown that we are ready to act when there is clear evidence of abuses," Thaung Tun added in the statement.

More than a million Rohingya Muslims live in Rakhine state, where they are treated as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denied citizenship. Vicious communal conflict between Buddhists and Rohingya in 2012 drove tens of thousands of them into camps, where they live today in conditions rights groups have compared to apartheid.

Suu Kyi has been criticised for not speaking out against the recent crackdown, which has sapped the goodwill she built up during years fighting for democracy under the former military government.

Last week Pope Francis weighed in, saying Rohingya had been tortured and killed "simply because they wanted to live their culture and Muslim faith".

Suu Kyi's power is curtailed by a junta-era constitution that gives the military control of key ministries, including defence, and a quarter of parliamentary seats.</s>India and other South Asian nations should be unambiguous in their condemnation of Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya.

Even by the standards of a region that has seen more than its fair share of xenophobic violence, forced migrations and displacements, the grim plight of the Rohingya of Myanmar stands out as an abomination of the worst sort.

Here are a people who have lived for generations on what are now the borderlands of Myanmar and Bangladesh, both of which, in their present national forms, are relatively recent historical creations.

The Rohingya have been hounded out of the former, rendered non-citizens through legal machinations and treated poorly by the latter, which either tries to "push them back" or corrals them into ramshackle camps with poor accommodation, hygiene and little access to healthcare or education for children.

There are now resurrected plans, denounced by Human Rights Watch as "cruel and unworkable", to relocate them to Thengar Char, an undeveloped coastal island that floods regularly.

The Rohingya, whose very existence has been denied by the Myanmar state, have also sought - and been refused - shelter in Southeast Asian countries, after risking dangerous journeys on the high seas, which many did not survive.

Some of the leaders of these nations rightly identify Islamophobia as a contributing factor to the Rohingya's misery, but are less eager to offer refuge. Only a small number have been accommodated in India.

A United Nations report, which came out earlier this month, offers a scathing indictment of all concerned, noting, perhaps with a touch of understatement, the "devastating cruelty" to which the Rohingya people, children in particular, have been subjected (PDF).

Whole areas of Rohingya habitation have been burned to the ground, while women have been gang-raped by Myanmar's security forces as well as Rakhine civilian vigilantes.

The Rohingya have been subjected to regular massacres, including of their babies. Their mobility has been severely restricted and severe malnourishment is rife.

They have also been subjected to draconian marriage and childbearing regulations intended to curb their numbers. The word "persecution" is wholly inadequate to describing a population which is clearly being targeted for systematic elimination from the body politic of Myanmar.

While Desmond Tutu has already called the situation a "slow genocide", and the Simon-Skjodt Centre for Prevention of Genocide has raised the alarm, noting carefully that "many preconditions for genocide are already in place", big global actors have steadfastly refused to use the term, which would then trigger the international Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.

It is fair to say that a world, which was riveted by the spectacle of a beautiful woman under long years of house arrest in that country, has chosen to discreetly avert its eyes from the ongoing systematic persecution, and, barring a few retaliatory actions, one-sided bloodshed.

Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi herself, who is now Myanmar's elected civilian leader, has either remained silent on the worsening situation or - scandalously and unforgivably - participated in official denials issued from the military, charging critics with focusing on the "negative side".

We rightly denounce those who deny past genocides, yet surely those in a position to observe and act but still deny the fact of ongoing ethnic cleansing accompanied by stigmatisation and dehumanising laws are even more culpable?

No religion, of course, would admit to violence being sanctioned in its scriptures but there is something especially depraved about Buddhist monks inciting violence, manifestly violating the Buddha's unambiguous repudiation of hatred as a form of relating to others.

Ashin Wirathu, the rabid hate preacher who has repeatedly incited attacks on the Rohingya, can plausibly be listed as one of the world's great terrorists.

What of the land of the Buddha's birth? India, the major South Asian player, critical of Myanmar's military junta in the past, now chooses to undertake a "pragmatic engagement" with it, which includes selling military hardware.

India certainly has one eye on Myanmar's considerable oil and natural gas reserves as well as its expanding market, but its softly-softly approach in the face of impending genocide is heavily tied up with the fear of the increasing influence in the region of China, not a nation known for an interest in human rights.

The two countries are involved in a race for resources and markets while the Indian state seeks bulwarks against China's militarisation of the Indian Ocean. There is reason to fear what may turn out to be a competitive regional and global silence on the fate of the Rohingya.

India has suggested that the matter is an "internal affair" for Myanmar, the stock phrase that has enabled it to refuse international scrutiny of some of its own more questionable policies.

Setting aside the question of whether anything can be strictly an "internal" affair in these global times, there is one important historical strand that India should not ignore: the stigmatisation and rejection of the Rohingya and the attempts to push them westwards into the Indian subcontinent draws on anti-Indian racism - a long-standing hatred and sanctioned racism against those perceived to be of Indian descent, disliked for being favoured by the British colonial rulers. Vilified in explicitly racist terms as "dark-skinned" Bengalis, the Rohingya are falsely described as post-Independence migrants from East Bengal who should be returned there.

Of course, the stark fact is that the Rohingya - a term that Myanmar refuses to use as part of denying them legitimacy - are explicitly persecuted as a Muslim minority. For the current Indian regime, with its heavily Hindu support base, there is little to gain by coming to the vocal defence of adherents of Islam.

This is in obvious contrast to its vocal calls for protection for Hindu minorities targeted by Islamists and majoritarians in Bangladesh, and the manifestly politicised moves to offer Indian citizenship to Pakistani minorities. 

 

 However, now that the danger of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group preying on the situation to establish a base in South Asia has been raised, there are stirrings in the Indian media, with editorials calling for more attention to be paid to the Rohingya situation as a security problem.

Last October, insurgents alleged to be Rohingya managed to kill nine Myanmar border guards, an act that has brought an even more vigorous and brutal counterinsurgency or "clearance" operation to the area.

The danger of Islamist radicalisation on its doorstep has certainly garnered more interest in India than the ongoing scandal of systematic ethnic cleansing.

IN PICTURES: Rohingya - Chased from Myanmar, unwelcome in Bangladesh

If it continues to espouse any formal commitment to democracy and pluralism, India cannot remain silent on what is happening in West Myanmar or simply treat it as a strategic concern. A persecuted, effectively stateless and hounded people like the Rohingya make moral claims on all of us.

Rather than just pandering to the manifestly brutal and authoritarian military, India - and other South Asian nations - should be unambiguous in their condemnation of the bloodletting and ravaging being visited upon an entire population.

Above all it is time for India, along with other international players, to engage more robustly with Suu Kyi and put enormous pressure on her to undertake her primary duty: bringing the people of Myanmar back on to the true democratic path - and the only genuinely Buddhist one - of humane co-existence.

For in the misery of the Rohingya is writ large the great battle of our times: that between the lethal forces of populist bigotry and the lifegiving ones of actual democracy.

Priyamvada Gopal teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge University. She is the author of two books, Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence, and The Indian Novel in English. She is currently working on a book called Insurgent Empire: Anti-Colonialism in the Making of Britain.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
According to Myanmar's military, it has ended its "clearance operation" against the country's Rohingya minority in Rakhine State, which the United Nations says may amount to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.