How Myanmar covered up ethnic cleansing

bdnews24.com/neighbours/2019/10/16/how-myanmar-covered-up-ethnic-cleansing

>>Adam Dean, The New York Times

Published: 16 Oct 2019 09:32 AM BdST Updated: 16 Oct 2019 09:32 AM BdST

A security base built on the site of a massacre at what once was the Rohingya town of
Rathedaung, Myanmar, on May 29, 2019. The Myanmar government insists that the
ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims never happened.

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 The sites of massacres have been
replaced by security bases.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.
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.

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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
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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.

©2019 The New York Times Company

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