Since the Myanmar military’s purported discovery of 45 Hindu bodies in northern Rakhine State on Sunday and Monday, the government has been pushing accusations across state-run and social media that Rohingya insurgents were responsible for the killings.
Hours after the bodies were unearthed, the Office of the Commander-in-Chief declared the victims to be “Hindus who were cruelly and violently killed by ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists.”
These accusations have been echoed by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s Information Committee.
The government’s quick conclusion about the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s involvement, according to Human Rights Watch’s South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly, “contrasts sharply with its own unwillingness to credibly investigate countless alleged crimes committed by its own forces against Rohingya Muslims.”
This hypocrisy, she wrote yesterday, suggests that the government’s is “playing politics with the dead.”
The Myanmar government has been actively obstructing the free flow of information out of Rakhine State since the current conflagration began on August 25, resulting in the mass exodus of over 500,000 Rohingyas from the country.
In June, the foreign affairs ministry, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, ordered a visa ban on the members of a UN fact-finding mission appointed to investigate the Myanmar military’s alleged human rights abuses around the country.
On Wednesday, Myanmar authorities put on a stage-managed tour to the Hindu village near the mass graves, as well as to Rohingya villages unaffected by the recent violence. They have not, however, allowed independent monitors to inspect the mass graves or any other parts of Rakhine State.
Another government-organized tour of the area was scheduled for foreign diplomats and UN officials yesterday, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to “bad weather.” The trip has been rescheduled for Monday.
The government has even been complicit in the dissemination of fake news about the conflict. Earlier this month, State Counsellor Office deputy director general Zaw Htay tweeted a series of photos claiming they depicted Rohingyas burning their own homes. The photos were quickly proven to have been staged, and the so-called Rohingyas were actually Hindu residents of northern Rakhine State. Even after netizens notified him that his claims were false, he doubled down on them, saying he had been in touch with an “anonymous person” who took the photos.
The testimonies of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh give us an idea of what the Myanmar government is trying to conceal. They have described horrific accounts of soldiers conducting summary executions, burning people alive, and rampant sexual violence. Many refugees bear injuries from attacks with spades, machetes, or guns. Human Rights Watch has labeled Myanmar’s actions against the Rohingya as “crimes against humanity.”
Hindu refugees in Bangladesh, moreover, have attributed the killings of their relatives and neighbors to black-clad, masked attackers and said they were targeted for being Hindu, though they have stopped short of blaming ARSA.
Myanmar must allow the UN fact-finding mission to investigate all alleged crimes in Rakhine State, Ganguly writes, rather than sloppily pinning the violence exclusively on the Rohingya.
“If indeed ARSA responsibility is impartially and credibly established, those responsible should be held to account.”
