Myanmar: Crimes Against Humanity Terrorize and Drive Rohingya Out
More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar security forces' targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet of the ongoing crisis.
WASHINGTON
More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar security forces' targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet of the ongoing crisis.
'My World Is Finished': Rohingya Targeted in Crimes against Humanity in Myanmar describes how Myanmar's security forces are carrying out a systematic, organized and ruthless campaign of violence against the Rohingya population as a whole in northern Rakhine State, after a Rohingya armed group attacked around 30 security posts on 25 August.
Dozens of eyewitnesses to the worst violence consistently implicated specific units, including the Myanmar Army's Western Command, the 33rd Light Infantry Division, and the Border Guard Police.
"In this orchestrated campaign, Myanmar's security forces have brutally meted out revenge on the entire Rohingya population of northern Rakhine State, in an apparent attempt to permanently drive them out of the country. These atrocities continue to fuel the region's worst refugee crisis in decades," said Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International.
"Exposing these heinous crimes is the first step on the long road to justice. Those responsible must be held to account; Myanmar's military can't simply sweep serious violations under the carpet by announcing another sham internal investigation. The Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, must take immediate action to stop his troops from committing atrocities."
Crimes against humanity
Witness accounts, satellite imagery and data, and photo and video evidence gathered by Amnesty International all point to the same conclusion: hundreds of thousands of Rohingya women, men, and children have been the victims of a widespread and systematic attack, amounting to crimes against humanity.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists 11 types of acts which, when knowingly committed during such an attack, constitute crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has consistently documented at least six of these amid the current wave of violence in northern Rakhine State: murder, deportation and forcible displacement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhumane acts such as denying food and other life-saving provisions.
This conclusion is based on testimonies from more than 120 Rohingya men and women who have fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks, as well as 30 interviews with medical professionals, aid workers, journalists and Bangladeshi officials.
Amnesty International's experts corroborated many witness accounts of the Myanmar security forces' crimes by analysing satellite imagery and data, as well as verifying photographs and video footage taken inside Rakhine State. The organization has also requested access to Rakhine State to investigate abuses on the ground, including by members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya armed group. Amnesty International continues to call for unfettered access to the UN Fact-Finding Mission and other independent observers.
Murder and massacres
In the hours and days following the ARSA attacks on 25 August, the Myanmar security forces, sometimes joined by local vigilantes, surrounded Rohingya villages throughout the northern part of Rakhine State. As Rohingya women, men, and children fled their homes, the soldiers and police officers often opened fire, killing or seriously injuring at least hundreds of people.
Survivors described running to nearby hills and rice fields, where they hid until the forces left. The elderly and people with disabilities were often unable to flee, and burned to death in their homes after the military set them alight.
This pattern was replicated in dozens of villages across Maungdaw, Rathedaung, and Buthidaung townships. But the security forces, and in particular the Myanmar military, appear to have unleashed their most lethal response in specific villages near where ARSA carried out its attacks.
Amnesty International documented events in five such villages where at least a dozen people were killed: Chein Kar Li, Koe Tan Kauk, and Chut Pyin, all in Rathedaung Township; and Inn Din and Min Gyi, in Maungdaw Township. In Chut Pyin and Min Gyi, the death toll was particularly high, with at least scores of Rohingya women, men, and children killed by Myanmar security forces.
Amnesty International interviewed 17 survivors of the massacre in Chut Pyin, six of whom had gunshot wounds. Almost all had lost at least one family member, with some losing many. They consistently described the Myanmar military, joined by Border Guard Police and local vigilantes, surrounding Chut Pyin, opening fire on those fleeing, and then systematically burning Rohingya houses and buildings.
Fatima, 12, told Amnesty International that she was at home with her parents, eight siblings, and grandmother when they saw fire rising from another part of their village. As the family ran out of their house, she said men in uniform opened fire on them from behind. She saw both her father and 10-year-old sister get shot, then Fatima was also hit in the back of her right leg, just above the knee.
"I fell down, but my neighbour grabbed me and carried me," she recalled. After a week on the run, she finally received treatment in Bangladesh. Her mother and older brother were also killed in Chut Pyin.
Amnesty International sent photographs of Fatima's wound to a forensic medical expert, who said it was consistent with a bullet wound that "would have entered the thigh from behind." Medical professionals in Bangladesh described treating many wounds that appeared to have been caused by gunshots fired from behind -matching consistent witness testimony that the military fired on Rohingya as they tried to run away.
In Chein Kar Li and Koe Tan Kauk, two neighbouring villages, Amnesty International documented the same pattern of attack by the Myanmar military.
Sona Mia, 77, said he was at home in Koe Tan Kauk when Myanmar soldiers surrounded the village and opened fire on 27 August. His 20-year-old daughter, Rayna Khatun, had a disability that left her unable to walk or speak. One of his sons put her on his shoulders, and the family slowly made its way toward the hill on the village's edge. As they heard the shooting get closer and closer, they decided they had to leave Rayna in a Rohingya house that had been abandoned.
"We didn't think we'd be able to make it," Sona Mia recalled. "I told her to sit there, we'd come back... After arriving on the hill, we spotted the house where we left her. It was a bit away, but we could see. The soldiers were burning [houses], and eventually we saw that house, it was burned too."
After the military left the village in the late afternoon, Sona Mia's sons went down and found Rayna Khatun's burnt body among the torched house. They dug a grave at the edge of that house's courtyard, and buried her there.
Rape and other sexual violence
Amnesty International interviewed seven Rohingya survivors of sexual violence committed by the Myanmar security forces. Of those, four women and a 15-year-old girl had been raped, each in a separate group with between two and five other women and girls who were also raped. The rapes occurred in two villages that the organization investigated: Min Gyi in Maungdaw Township and Kyun Pauk in Buthidaung Township.
As previously documented by Human Rights Watch and The Guardian, after entering Min Gyi (known locally as Tula Toli) on the morning of 30 August, Myanmar soldiers pursued Rohingya villagers who fled down to the riverbank and then separated the men and older boys from the women and younger children.
After opening fire on and executing at least scores of men and older boys, as well as some women and younger children, the soldiers took women in groups to nearby houses where they raped them, before setting fire to those houses and other Rohingya parts of the village.
S.K., 30, told Amnesty International that after watching the executions, she and many other women and younger children were taken to a ditch, where they were forced to stand in knee-deep water:
"They took the women in groups to different houses. ...There were five of us [women], taken by four soldiers [in military uniform]. They took our money, our possessions, and then they beat us with a wooden stick. My children were with me. They hit them too. Shafi, my two-year-old son, he was hit hard with a wooden stick. One hit, and he was dead... Three of my children were killed. Mohamed Osman (10) [and] Mohamed Saddiq (five) too. Other women [in the house] also had children [with them] that were killed.
"All of the women were stripped naked...They had very strong wooden sticks. They first hit us in the head, to make us weak. Then they hit us [in the vagina] with the wooden sticks. Then they raped us. A different soldier for each [woman]."
After raping women and girls, the soldiers set fire to the houses, killing many of the victims inside.
Deliberate, organized village burnings
On 3 October, the UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) reported that it had identified 20.7 square kilometres of buildings destroyed by fire in Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships since 25 August. Even that likely underestimated the overall scale of destruction and burning, as dense cloud cover affected what the satellites were able to detect.
Amnesty International's own review of fire data from remote satellite sensing indicates at least 156 large fires in northern Rakhine State since 25 August, also likely to be an underestimate. In the previous five years, no fires were detected during the same period, which is also the monsoon season, strongly indicating that the burning has been intentional.
Before and after satellite images strikingly illustrate what witnesses also consistently told Amnesty International - that the Myanmar security forces only burned Rohingya villages or areas. For example, satellite images of Inn Din and Min Gyi show large swathes of structures razed by fire virtually side by side with areas that were left untouched. Distinct features of the untouched areas, combined with accounts from Rohingya residents as to where they and other ethnic communities lived in those villages, indicate that only Rohingya areas were razed.
Amnesty International has noted a similar pattern in at least a dozen more villages where Rohingya lived in close proximity to people from other ethnicities.
"Given their ongoing denials, Myanmar's authorities may have thought they would literally get away with murder on a massive scale. But modern technology, coupled with rigorous human rights research, have tipped the scales against them," said Tirana Hassan.
"It is time for the international community to move beyond public outcry and take action to end the campaign of violence that has driven more than half the Rohingya population out of Myanmar. Through cutting off military cooperation, imposing arms embargoes and targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for abuses, a clear message must be sent that the military's crimes against humanity in Rakhine State will not be tolerated.
"The international community must ensure that the ethnic cleansing campaign does not achieve its unlawful, reprehensible goal. To do so, the international community must combine encouraging and supporting Bangladesh in providing adequate conditions and safe asylum to Rohingya refugees, with ensuring that Myanmar respects their human right to return safely, voluntarily and with dignity to their country and insisting that it ends, once and for all, the systematic discrimination against the Rohingya and other root causes of the current crisis."
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
"Now that Vought is officially running the show, he'll be able to unleash his radical agenda across the federal government. And if the courts stop him, he's got a billionaire friend with the government's keys and checkbook: Elon Musk."
In a party-line vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate confirmed right-wing extremist and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the White House budget office as the Trump administration works to unilaterally dismantle entire federal agencies and choke off funding already approved by Congress.
Vought's confirmation, backed only by Republican votes in the Senate, comes after the chamber's Democrats used up all 30 hours of debate on his nomination to warn of the damage he could inflict as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Lawmakers and progressive activists echoed those warnings in the wake of his confirmation. Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement that "Vought's fingerprints are all over last week's illegal funding freeze."
"Halting funding for Americans' healthcare, childcare, and food assistance wasn't a bug," said Jacquez. "It was by design, and Project 2025 is the blueprint. Now that Vought is officially running the show, he'll be able to unleash his radical agenda across the federal government. And if the courts stop him, he's got a billionaire friend with the government's keys and checkbook: Elon Musk."
During his confirmation process, Vought expressed agreement with Trump's view that the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (ICA)—a law passed in response to former President Richard Nixon's refusal to spend congressionally approved funds on programs he opposed—is unconstitutional, a view that Musk has also expressed.
Politicoreported Thursday that Vought "is expected to soon press his theory on impoundments, the idea that the president can ignore congressional spending edicts." Analysts have argued that even without the ICA, unilateral impoundments of the kind the Trump White House is expected to pursue in the coming months and years would still be unconstitutional.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Thursday that "in confirming Vought, Republicans have put their stamp of approval on ending American democracy—built on three co-equal branches of government—and on creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires."
"Our nation is facing an extraordinary crisis," said DeLauro. "Donald Trump is attempting to claim absolute power for the presidency. The chaos, confusion, and flagrantly unconstitutional actions of the early days of this administration are largely of Vought's design and doing. With Vought's encouragement, the administration has taken the groundless position—and demonstrated—that they believe the White House has the absolute power to determine spending, and that they can choose to simply not fund programs and services that Congress has promised to the American people. This could not be further from the truth."
"The Constitution empowers Congress, not the president, with the power of the purse," DeLauro continued. "The president is not a king who can pick and choose which laws to follow and which laws to ignore. But the president is relying on the guidance and counsel of Russ Vought to do just that."
In one of his appearances before the Senate last month, Vought told lawmakers that he views the Clinton-era welfare reform law that doubled extreme poverty as a crowning achievement and declared that "we need to go after the mandatory programs," which include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
"Vought is an extremist who has made clear he'll ignore our nation's laws, cut funding that helps people across the country, and give Trump unprecedented and unconstitutional power," warned Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, following Vought's confirmation. "There will be consequences."
"Great fucking job, NCAA. You're now a part of Donald Trump's anti-trans hate machine seeking to push trans people out of public life and make their lives as difficult as possible," said one critic.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association
announced Thursday that its board of governors voted to update the NCAA's participation policy for transgender student-athletes in response to Republican U.S. President Donald Trumpsigning an executive order intended to ban trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams
The NCAA is a nonprofit that regulates sports for 1,100 colleges and universities that collectively enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes. Its new policy says that "regardless of sex assigned at birth or gender identity, a student-athlete may participate (practice and compete) with a men's team, assuming they meet all other NCAA eligibility requirements."
However, the policy says, student-athletes who were assigned male at birth or assigned female at birth and have begun hormone therapy such as testosterone can continue to practice with women's teams but cannot compete with them.
According to The Hill, "Previously, the NCAA policy said transgender participation in each sport depended on guidelines set by the sport’s national or international governing body." NCAA president Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, recently told Congress that fewer than 10 trans athletes competed across the organization's three divisions.
Baker claimed in a Thursday statement that "President Trump's order provides a clear, national standard," and the organization's new policy "follows through on the NCAA's constitutional commitment to deliver intercollegiate athletics competition and to protect, support, and enhance the mental and physical health of student-athletes."
While Trump
celebrated the policy update on social media Thursday, advocates for LGBTQ+ rights have forcefully criticized both the NCAA and the Republican president.
Responding to the NCAA's decision on the social media site Bluesky,
Law Dork's Chris Geidner decried the "unbelievable depths of spinelessness with such cruel, unnecessary ramifications."
"Great fucking job, NCAA. You're now a part of Donald Trump's anti-trans hate machine seeking to push trans people out of public life and make their lives as difficult as possible," he added. "Charlie Baker, this is on you."
Jack Turban said on Bluesky that he was resigning from the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports. The doctor told
The Hill that he and other panel members were not notified of the board's vote before the public statement.
"Trump and Republicans are picking out a tiny portion of the population, vilifying them, and stoking fear. That's dangerous and has real consequences,"
said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on social media Thursday afternoon. "I want to be clear: Americans do have concerns about fairness in sports, and it's important that we have those conversations and educate people about the facts. But actions like Trump's are not the answer."
"We should be focusing on the real obstacles that female athletes face, like a lack of financial resources and vulnerability to abuse. Instead, Republicans are attacking a group that represents less than a fraction of 1% of student-athletes," said Jayapal, who has a
trans daughter. "This is a manufactured crisis—one that serves to distract you from the fact that Trump and Republicans ran on raising wages and lowering costs, but have no real solutions to help you build a better life."
"They are trying to get you to look the other way. Don't," she added. "And to the trans community—I know this is all incredibly difficult. I'm so sorry that you have to go through this, but please know that I see you, I stand with you, and I will NEVER stop fighting for you. That's a promise."
The president's order is already having an impact beyond the NCAA policy change. As
The Washington Postreported Thursday:
Trump's executive order directs the Department of Education to inform schools they will be violating Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, if they allow transgender athletes to compete in girls' or women's sports. Under the law, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
In response, the Department of Education earlier Thursday
announced investigations into the University of Pennsylvania, San José State University, and a Massachusetts high school athletic association over reported Title IX violations. Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association are targeted for allowing transgender students to play on a women's swimming team and girls' high school basketball team, respectively. Several opponents of the San José State women's volleyball team forfeited games this fall because the Spartans purportedly had a transgender athlete on its roster.
The newspaper noted that the NCAA's decision came two days after former teammates of swimmer Lia Thomas filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court claiming Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League, and the NCAA violated Title IX by allowing Thomas to compete in 2022 championships.
"And in the context of a genocide... it will strengthen the complicity in the crimes that Israel has been committing over the past 15 months and before."
Francesca Albanese—the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories—on Wednesday denounced President Donald Trump's proposed U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip and expulsion of most of its native inhabitants as something "worse" than ethnic cleansing.
"President Trump, oh, where to start?" Albanese said in Copenhagen on Wednesday, calling the Republican president's plan "utter nonsense."
"And it's unlawful, what he proposes," she continued. "People talk of ethnic cleansing. No, it's worse... it's inciting to commit forced displacement, which is an international crime."
"And in the context of a genocide... it will strengthen the complicity in the crimes that Israel has been committing over the past 15 months and before," Albanese added.
— (@)
The special rapporteur's condemnation came in response to Trump's Tuesday remarks during a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, which Trump sanctioned on Thursday. The president asserted that "the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip" after emptying the enclave of most of its native Palestinian population.
"We'll own it," Trump said, adding that "we're going to develop it" and turn Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Palestinians roundly rejected and derided Trump's proposal, while Netanyahu said Israel would study the plan.
"It's unlawful, immoral, and irresponsible," Albanese said Wednesday. "It will make the regional crisis even worse."
Trump doubled down on his proposal in an early Thursday morning post on his Truth Social website.
"The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting," he said. "The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free."
It is not clear what Trump's reference to the Democratic U.S. senator from New York meant.
Israel—which was founded 77 years ago largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians—has been accused of seeking to permanently remove Gazans, most of whom are descendants of survivors of the 1948 expulsions, to make way for the renewed Jewish colonization of the coastal enclave.
"No one has the right to say how Gaza will be rebuilt other than the Palestinians."
Trump has proposed relocating Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention rejected by Palestinians, Egyptians, and Jordanians alike.
While ethnic cleansing, a term coined during the Balkan wars of the late 20th century, is not explicitly a crime under any international law, the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice accuses the U.S.-backed nation of offenses including the forced displacement of around 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
"This is a population of genocide survivors and they need to be rescued before thinking of who's going to rebuild Gaza," Albanese said in Copenhagen. "No one has the right to say how Gaza will be rebuilt other than the Palestinians."