Stories of shattered communities, lost livelihoods, and broken bodies of Rohingya civilians have garnered worldwide attention over last 14 months – a period when two campaigns of killing, forced displacement, and sexual violence perpetrated by Myanmar’s armed forces have driven nearly 700,000 members of the Muslims minority out of the country. But the events of the last 14 months are, in reality, just the latest iteration of a process that has been carried out by Myanmar governments for decades with the aim of pushing the Rohingya to the brink of survival, a new report from Amnesty International argues.

The new report, titled “Caged without a roof,” says this process is carried out through an “institutionalized system of segregation and discrimination” against the Rohingya that “legally constitutes apartheid, a crime against humanity under international law.”

The report is based on a two-year investigation into the social, economic, and political restrictions imposed specifically on the Rohingya – restrictions that have confined them to a “ghetto-like existence” that has intensified since 2012.

“The Myanmar authorities are keeping Rohingya women, men, and children segregated and cowed in a dehumanizing system of apartheid. Their rights are violated daily, and the repression has only intensified in recent years,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty International’s senior director for research.

“This system appears designed to make Rohingyas’ lives as hopeless and humiliating as possible. The security forces’ brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the past three months is just another extreme manifestation of this appalling attitude.”

While these root causes of the current crisis are less visible than the displacement campaigns that began in October 2016 and August 2017, they must be addressed in order to restore the rights and dignity to which the Rohingya are entitled under international law and norms, the report asserts.

An open-air prison

At the heart of Myanmar’s apartheid system are severe restrictions on the movement of Rohingya. Amnesty’s report describes an intricate web of laws and local policies that require “foreigners” and “Bengalis” to have special permits to travel between townships, and sometimes even between Rohingya villages.

These travel restrictions date back to 2012, when communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State. During that time, tens of thousands of Rohingya were driven from urban areas such as Sittwe and confined to IDP camps. To travel beyond the barbed and barricaded boundaries of the camps, Rohingya must apply for permission from local officials, and even then, in some places, they are still prohibited from using public roads and must travel by sea. Even when they can use roads, they are at the mercy of the Border Guard Police (BGP), who regularly harass Rohingya travelers and extract bribes from them.

One Rohingya man described a bus ride to Amnesty: “There were four police in total, two of them beat the guys with a cane on their backs, shoulders, and thighs. Another slapped the lady four or five times with his hand. […] After that, they took them to the police station.”

During its research, Amnesty staff also witnessed a border guard kicking a Rohingya man at a checkpoint and documented at least one case of an extrajudicial execution, when BGP officers shot dead a 23-year-old man traveling during curfew hours.

These restrictions on movement also bar Rohingya from receiving treatment at government hospitals in all but the most serious cases, leaving many with no choice but to seek treatment in Bangladesh, which requires a long and expensive journey. As such, the restrictions are at the heart of Myanmar’s effort to strip the Rohingya of human dignity and hope for a better future.

A Rohingya in his 50s told Amnesty: “I wanted to go to Sittwe hospital for medical treatment, but it’s forbidden. The hospital staff told me I couldn’t go to there for my own safety and said I needed to go to Bangladesh for treatment. It cost a lot of money. My brother has many paddy fields and oxen, and he had to sell some of these to pay for the travel. I was lucky… most people cannot afford this, so they just end up dying.”

“Denying Rohingya access to medical care is abhorrent – we spoke to women who said they would rather give birth at home in unsanitary conditions than risk abuse and extortion at hospitals,” said Anna Neistat.

Restrictions on movement also prevent Rohingya from seeking education and job opportunities. Government schools have been segregated since 2012, and few non-Rohingya teachers are willing to work in Rohingya areas. Routes to markets, farms, and fishing areas are blocked by checkpoints. Poverty and malnutrition are rampant in the areas affected by these restrictions.

“It is very challenging at the moment because we don’t have enough to eat. We would be better in jail or prison because at least, then, we would have food regularly. It is like we live in a prison anyway,” said one 25-year-old Rohingya man.

No citizenship

An even deeper root of the historic persecution of the Rohinya is the 1982 Citizenship Law, which effectively stripped the Rohingya of citizenship by not listing them among Myanmar’s “national races” and by convincing Rohingya citizens to give up their proof of citizenship in the hope of receiving new documentation.

For thousands, that new documentation never came, and the old papers were not returned. The Myanmar government effectively deletes evidence of the existence of Rohingya people and places upon them the burden of proof that they have roots in Myanmar.

Without proper identification, Rohingya are socially and politically excluded and unable to advocate for themselves. Many of the 700,000 Rohingya displaced in the most recent military campaigns will be barred from returning from their homes.

At the report’s launch event in Bangkok this morning, Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher Laura Haigh said: “These policies are designed to deprive the Rohingya of hope.”

The report calls for an international arms embargo on Myanmar and targeted sanctions against Myanmar’s leaders. It also calls on international donors to Myanmar to ensure that “international aid, development projects, or financial assistance in Rakhine State are explicitly and specifically conditioned on non-discrimination, non-segregation and equality.”