Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Poppy McPherson, Simon Lewis, Thu Thu Aung, Shoon Naing, Zeba
Siddiqui-DECEMBER 18, 2018
The areas where the Rohingya lived in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State
before the army ousted them are being dramatically transformed. The
northern reaches of this region were once a Muslim-majority enclave in the
overwhelmingly Buddhist nation.
Hundreds of new houses are now being built in villages where the Rohingya
resided, satellite images show. Many of these villages were burned, then
flattened and scraped by bulldozers. The new homes are being occupied
mainly by Buddhists, some from other parts of Rakhine. The security forces
are also building new facilities in these areas.
A clear picture of the changes on the ground has been elusive, however,
because of restrictions on travel to the region. To document Myanmar’s plans
for the Rohingya, Reuters analyzed satellite photographs of construction work
in the region from the past year and an unpublished resettlement map drafted
by the government. Reporters also interviewed national and state-level
government officials in charge of resettlement policy, aid workers, refugees in
the camps in Bangladesh, and Rohingya still living in northern Rakhine.
The government is both building some of the new homes and helping to
facilitate the Buddhist resettlement push, according to local officials and new
settlers. The campaign is being spearheaded by Buddhist nationalists who
want to establish a Buddhist majority in the area.
Many of the Rohingya who stayed behind say conditions are growing
intolerable. A scattered community of more than 200,000 Rohingya remains
in northern Rakhine, according to an internal U.N. document reviewed by
Reuters. More than two dozen people who recently fled to Bangladesh told
Reuters they faced intimidation and beatings by security forces, as well as
curfews and travel restrictions that made it difficult to work or obtain food.
The result is a continued flow of Rohingya into Bangladesh. Almost 15,000
have fled so far this year, according to the United Nations.
Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said
the Reuters findings showed the actions of the authorities in Myanmar were
making the expulsion of the Rohingya irreversible. The aim, she said, is to
change the terrain by removing “any remnants” of Rohingya villages. “For
people to go back to their places of origin, identify landmarks to go back to,
it’s become impossible.”
The Myanmar authorities "wanted to get everyone out," she added. "Now
they've got them out, they sure aren't going to give it back to the Rohingya."
Myanmar has been ready to take back the refugees since January, the
Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement said in reply to questions
from Reuters. The government was investing “all physical (efforts) and
wisdom to overcome the challenges that we faced in Rakhine State,” it said in
a statement.
REMAKING RAKHINE
Aung San Suu Kyi told an audience in Singapore in August that Myanmar is
pursuing “the voluntary, safe and dignified return” of the displaced
Rohingya. A return of some refugees is possible, to be sure, as Myanmar tries
to ease international pressure over the crisis.
Hussein Ahmed says if he can’t recover his land, there’s no point returning.
Sitting in a shack in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, he examines
satellite photos of Inn Din, the village where he was born 73 years ago and fled
during the army crackdown last year.
It’s almost unrecognizable. All the Muslim homes are gone. The Buddhist
homes remain. Hussein Ahmed points to where his once stood, a newly built
two-story structure. In its place, there’s a long, red-roofed building.
“This was my village,” says Hussein Ahmed, who was the village chairman in
Inn Din. “All our homes were burned,” he said. “The army has occupied our
land. So I don’t think we’ll get it back.”
Myanmar was ruled for half a century by a succession of repressive military
leaders. The junta yielded in 2011 to a nominally civilian government, now led
by the National League for Democracy of Suu Kyi. The military retains great
power, however, and the generals and Suu Kyi’s cabinet have shown a united
front on Rohingya policy.
Northern Rakhine is home to multiple ethnic groups. The two largest are the
Rohingya and a Buddhist people, the Rakhine, who share the name of the
state. The junta tried for decades to alter the population balance by bolstering
the number of Buddhists there. The aim was to stop “an incursion of people,”
said Sai Tun Nyo, a spokesman for the military-controlled Ministry of Border
Affairs, referring to Muslims. “We need a human fence to stop it.”
The Rohingya trace their roots back centuries in the Rakhine area, a reading
of history supported by independent scholars. Buddhist nationalists see the
Rohingya as Muslim interlopers who invented an ethnic identity after
migrating from the Indian sub-continent. They want to curb the number of
Muslims in northern Rakhine.
The expulsion of the Rohingya on Suu Kyi’s watch has gone a long way to
achieving that goal. There is now more or less numerical parity between
Buddhists and Muslims in northern Rakhine, according to the internal U.N.
document.
The Rohingya exodus has produced the world’s biggest refugee camp, the
result of “ethnic cleansing” with “genocidal intent,” according to the United
Nations. An offensive by Myanmar security forces last year in northern
Rakhine that has driven out more than 730,000 Rohingya included mass
killings and gang rapes, the United Nations said. Myanmar rejects these
accusations, saying the crackdown was a legitimate response to “terrorism.”
With many of the villages still smoldering, the government signaled its intent
to reshape northern Rakhine.
These Rohingya homes in northern Rakhine were burned to the ground
during the military-led offensive last year. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun
Win Myat Aye, the minister responsible for resettlement, invoked a law on
natural disasters under which, he said, “burnt land becomes government-
managed land,” according to state media.
Within a few months, the government sent in bulldozers to flatten what was
left of Rohingya homes, mosques and other buildings in dozens of villages,
satellite images showed. In aerial photographs taken over northern Rakhine
in February, scrape marks in the sand from the bulldozers are visible.
An area where the Rohingya lived that was flattened. The pictures were taken
by a person who flew over the region in February.
One of those villages is Inn Din, the site of a massacre of 10 Muslim men amid
the 2017 offensive that was reported by Reuters this February. The 6,000
Rohingya who lived there, almost 90 percent of the population, are all gone.
So are their homes.
INN DIN
Satellite images of Inn Din (See the images https://reut.rs/2A6ozUK) reveal that
more than a dozen rectangular, red-roofed buildings have been built on land
where thatch-roofed Rohingya homes and at least one mosque stood. Visitors
to the village said the new structures are a border police facility.
The road running through Inn Din has been widened. Satellite images show
new roads and infrastructure are being built across northern Rakhine.
The Rakhine state government is building 100 new homes in the village for
Buddhists, according to local officials.
More new dwellings in Inn Din, also earmarked for Buddhists, have been built
by a group called the Ancillary Committee for the Reconstruction of Rakhine
National Territory in the Western Frontier. The group, made up of Buddhist
nationalists, has resettled more than 130 families from elsewhere in Rakhine.
These families are now in Inn Din and Koe Tan Kauk, another village that
also had a large Muslim majority until the Rohingya fled.
“Muslims are a worldwide disease. Anyone who says different is lying,” said
Than Tun, one of the group’s founders. “My desire, and what any Rakhine
would say, if I’m not being diplomatic, is that we only want Rakhines.”
Than Tun is one of many Rakhine Buddhist leaders who strongly oppose any
repatriation of Rohingya to Inn Din and the surrounding coastal region along
the Bay of Bengal. They say it is a strategically important part of northern
Rakhine - a buffer separating Muslim-majority Bangladesh and Myanmar’s
Buddhist heartland.
Kyaw Soe Moe, Inn Din’s administrator, said he was helping newly arrived
Buddhists to settle on what he said was “vacant land” in the village.
Across the Bangladeshi border in Kutupalong refugee camp, Noor Islam lives
with 20 members of his extended family in a shack. He said he carried his 90-
year-old mother for much of the journey to Bangladesh.
In Rakhine, he used to own several pharmacies. “My shops were filled with
medicines when I fled,” he said.
His home was Taung Bazar, a cluster of hamlets named after a “mountain
market” that once drew large crowds.
This is what the village looked like before the Rohingya fled
The village was home to both Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who
were the majority.
FILE PHOTO: Noor Islam, from Taung Bazar village in Buthidaung
township, poses for a picture with a satellite image of his burnt village in
Myanmar, at the Kutupalong camp in Cox's Bazar,
More Buddhist homes have been built on the banks of the Mayu River
running through the village.
After many residents fled, a Buddhist village administrator began selling off
the riverfront land to Buddhist families, starting early this year, according to
three Rohingya villagers on the ground who spoke by phone.
Maung Lone, the village administrator, said the riverfront land belonged to
the Rakhine Buddhist community. He helped Buddhists move into the new
homes there, he said, and also allowed them to live temporarily in empty
Rohingya homes. He did not take any money for this, he said.
REMAPPING RAKHINE
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said her country is committed to the
return of the Rohingya. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
In her speech in Singapore in August, Suu Kyi said her government had
“mapped out potential sites for the resettlement of returnees.” Bangladeshi
officials told Reuters her remark contradicted an agreement they had signed
with Myanmar for the repatriation of the Rohingya. That deal stipulated that
the Rohingya could return to their homes or nearby places of their choosing.
The plan flagged by Suu Kyi is moving forward, however. Officials in the
ministry responsible for resettlement, at the behest of the minister, showed
Reuters a map that plots the location of new settlements that will be built for
returning refugees. The ministry says there will be 42 of these settlements.
Refugees whose houses were destroyed would be given the option of living in a
“temporary tent” at one of the resettlement sites while building their own
homes as part of a “cash-for-work” program, the ministry for resettlement
said in a statement to Reuters.
Asked whether the Rohingya could return to their old villages, Win Myat Aye
replied: “If their house is still there and if they want to go, they can.”
Many villagers won’t have that option. In Inn Din, for example, all the
Muslim homes were burned down, and the map shows no resettlement site is
planned in the village.
The map also reveals the government doesn’t plan any resettlement sites for
Rohingya in Rathedaung, one of the three townships that make up northern
Rakhine. It was home to tens of thousands of Muslims before they fled. Only a
few Rohingya villages remain now.
Myo Nyunt, the ruling party spokesman, said the reconstruction push in
northern Rakhine has been driven by “security and administrative” needs.
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Dozens of refugees told Reuters they want to return to the homes they left.
Many expressed the fear that the new settlements are part of a government
plan to control their movements and will become de-facto internment camps.
The government has pledged to close the camps, but most remain open. The
Rohingya refer to them as “open-air prisons.” Residents are barred from
leaving, conditions are squalid, and inhabitants have limited access to
education and healthcare.
Near the village of Gu Dar Pyin, authorities have begun building new houses
for Muslims on a river bank, according to Rohingya residents and a Buddhist
elder. The work is moving ahead, they said, despite protests from the 76
Rohingya families still living in the village who didn’t want to move.
In the five decades the generals ruled Myanmar, they increasingly tied
citizenship to ethnicity and race. Today, Suu Kyi’s government adheres to a
list of 135 “national races” - a legacy of the junta period - in determining who
counts as a citizen. The Rohingya aren’t on the list.
Their status has eroded over time. In 2015, the quasi-civilian government then
ruling Myanmar stripped the Rohingya of their temporary ID documents,
known as “white cards,” depriving them of the right to vote in national
elections that year. Now, the government is urging the Rohingya to accept the
NVC as a “first step” to citizenship.
“How can we accept the NVC?” said Noor Islam, the pharmacist from Taung
Bazar.
He has kept his family’s old identity documents, including the papers of his
father and grandfather, as proof they once shared the same citizenship status
as other Burmese.
"It's as if the student has passed matriculation and he is then asked to go back
to grade one," he said.
More than a dozen recent arrivals at the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar,
Bangladesh, said the official pressure to accept the identity cards was why
they ultimately fled. They gave accounts of being beaten by soldiers and
border police for refusing to accept the cards, and being blocked from
traveling for lack of one.
These restrictions and a nightly curfew mean many Rohingya can’t reach the
fields they till or the markets where they buy food. Four refugees who arrived
in Bangladesh in recent months said they had resorted to begging for food
before they left. Five Rohingya men said they performed forced labor for the
military.
Mohammed Rafiq, 20, who arrived in the camps in September, said he was
forced to work at the barracks of Light Infantry Battalion 565 in Buthidaung
township. He dug holes, cleaned the compound and cut the grass.
“If anyone slacked in their work, the soldiers would aim their guns and
threaten them,” he said. “I thought we could survive there, and things would
improve. But I couldn’t keep doing forced labor. So I came here.”
(Reporting by Poppy McPherson, Simon Lewis, Thu Thu Aung, Shoon Naing
and Zeba Siddiqui. Editing by Peter Hirschberg and Antoni Slodkowski)
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