It marks the anniversary of the 2017 genocidal campaign by the Myanmar military. Babies and young children were thrown into fires. Women and young girls were systematically gang-raped and mutilated.
Entire families were slaughtered as they fled. Others were trapped inside their homes and burned alive. More than 700,000 of our people were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
The Rohingya, who are an ethnic Muslim-majority group who speak their own language from the Indo-Aryan family, have long faced discrimination and persecution in Myanmar. Today, about 1.2 million Rohingya remain trapped in camps in Bangladesh, while a new wave of persecution is forcing more Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine state. Others are risking their lives at sea in a desperate search for safety.
In this desperate situation, there is a ray of hope raised by international justice proceedings in Argentina and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Still, the international community is falling short in fulfilling its commitments to ensure accountability and protect the Rohingya. Over the past two years, the balance of power in Rakhine has dramatically changed.
The Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, now controls most of the state, including the main Rohingya areas in the north. But the brutality and persecution Rohingya face have not ended. As the AA has consolidated its control, evidence has mounted of mass killings and targeted attacks on civilians, documenting what Rohingya communities have been warning of.
Rohingya also face forced recruitment, forced labour, detention and severe restrictions on movement. Sexual violence, a hallmark of the Rohingya genocide, is continuing under AA authority. Rohingya in Rakhine report that the violence and oppression they now face from the AA is just as brutal as the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing in 2017.
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