Five years have passed since the Myanmar military began a sweeping campaign of massacres, rape, and arson in northern Rakhine State on August 25, 2017, says the Human Rights Watch.
“No one has been held accountable for the crimes against humanity and acts of genocide committed against the Rohingya population,” the rights organization said in a media statement.
On the anniversary of the exodus, Human Rights Watch called upon the concerned governments to hold the Myanmar military accountable and ensure justice and safety for the Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar.
“Governments should mark the five-year anniversary of the devastating campaign against the Rohingya with a coordinated international strategy for accountability and justice that draws on Rohingya input,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“Donors should support Rohingya refugees to study and work freely and safely so they can build independent and self-reliant futures,” she said. 
File photo of a Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar Syed Zakir Hossain
Over 730,000 Rohingya fled to the camps in Bangladesh and around 600,000 are still under an oppressive regime in Myanmar, according to the rights group.
“Myanmar authorities brutalized us,” Abdul Halim, 30, a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh told Human Rights Watch during an interview.
“They burned down our houses, raped our mothers and sisters, burned our children. We took shelter in Bangladesh to escape that brutality. Now I’ve been living in Kutupalong camp for five years.”
Abdul carried his very ill mother on his back when they fled Myanmar in 2017. She died shortly after reaching Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, the Rohingya who remain in Rakhine face systematic abuses that amount to crimes against humanity.
They are confined to camps and villages without freedom of movement and cut off from access to adequate food, health care, education, and livelihoods.
“Since we were children in Myanmar, we never had any freedom,” Abdul said. “They called me ‘nowa kalar’ [a slur for Muslims], to say we are like animals.”
File Photo: People walk through a marketplace at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 Allison Joyce/Dhaka Tribune“In Myanmar, we struggled through life,” Hasina Hatu, 40, said. “When we raised goats, the border guard forces took away the goats. When we raised cattle, they took away the cattle. When we farmed paddy fields, they took away the rice.” Hasina’s father died after falling down a muddy slope as they fled in 2017.
In February 2021, the generals who had orchestrated the atrocities against the Rohingya staged a coup and detained Myanmar’s elected civilian leaders.
The military junta responded to mass demonstrations with a nationwide campaign of mass killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, and indiscriminate attacks that amounted to crimes against humanity and, in conflict areas, war crimes.
Military units that had been implicated in the 2017 atrocities – since sanctioned by the United States and United Kingdom – have been deployed in renewed operations around the country.
Ever since the coup, security forces have arrested an estimated 2,000 Rohingya, hundreds of them children, for “unauthorized travel.” Many have been sentenced to the maximum five years in prison. Increased fighting between the Myanmar military and ethnic Arakan Army has also left Rohingya caught in the middle.
Bangladesh hosts about one million Rohingya refugees in the overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar and the isolated silt island of Bhasan Char.
The government, for the last five years, has respected the international principle of nonrefoulement, the right of refugees not to be returned to a country where their lives or freedom would be threatened.
“However, Bangladesh authorities have recently intensified restrictions on livelihoods, movement, and education that make many refugees feel unwelcome and at risk. Officials have closed community-led schools, arbitrarily destroyed shops, and imposed new obstacles on travel,” Human Rights watch said in its statement.
File Photo: Rohingya refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state wait for aid at Kutupalong refugee camp in the Bangladeshi town of Teknaf on September 5, 2017 AFP“If our children can’t be educated here in Bangladesh either, then anywhere we go, we will still be persecuted,” Abdul said.
The statement said that Bangladesh authorities moved about 28,000 Rohingya to Bhasan Char, where they face severe movement restrictions, food and medicine shortages, and abuses by security forces.
“Despite the involvement of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), many continue to be transferred without full, informed consent and have been prevented from returning to the mainland. Bangladesh authorities should lift the new restrictions and end forced relocations of refugees, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch also called for increased funding from donors including United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia to support the large Rohingya community in Bangladesh.
According to their data, the 2022 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis received only a quarter of its requested US$881 million in funding.
The Bangladesh government and Myanmar junta have renewed discussions around repatriation, announcing in January joint plans to “expeditiously complete the verification process.”
However, Michelle Bachelet, the outgoing UN high commissioner for human rights, announced on August 17: “The current situation across the border means that conditions are not right for returns.”
Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka TribuneMeanwhile, in Malaysia, India, and Thailand, thousands of Rohingya refugees are being held indefinitely in immigration detention sites or living without adequate support and protection, the statement said.
The international response to the 2017 violence was fragmented and halting, with governments favoring quiet diplomacy that achieved little over strategic measures to place real pressure on the military, Human Rights Watch said.
It said that the voluntary, safe, and dignified return of Rohingya refugees will require a cohesive international response to establish rights-respecting rule in Myanmar and achieve justice for the crimes in Rakhine State.
It called on the UN Security Council to “end its inaction borne of anticipated vetoes by China and Russia and urgently negotiate a resolution to institute a global arms embargo on Myanmar, refer the situation to the International Criminal Court, and impose targeted sanctions on the junta and military-owned conglomerates.”
“What are we waiting for?” a US diplomat said in a speech at a Security Council meeting in 2021. “The longer we delay, the more people die. This council is failing in our collective responsibility to safeguard international peace and security. And it is failing the people of Burma.”
The US, UK, EU, and other governments should together strengthen international sanctions to cut off the Myanmar military from the revenue funding its abusive operations, including in Rakhine State.
File photo of Rohingya refugees walk towards a refugee camp after crossing the Myanmar-Bnagladesh border Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka TribuneMoreover, governments should target the junta’s gas revenues, its largest source of foreign income, totaling about $1 billion in annual profits. The EU sanctioned the junta-controlled Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise in February, but other governments have so far failed to follow suit. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should urgently abandon its failed five-point consensus response to the crisis and instead coordinate strong action against the junta’s abuses.
The governments should formally support the case under the Genocide Convention brought by Gambia against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice. Canada and the Netherlands have publicly declared their intention to support the proceedings.
Governments should also actively pursue investigations and prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction, an avenue to justice for crimes so serious that all states have an interest in addressing them.
“The Myanmar junta’s killing of demonstrators, shelling of civilians, and other abuses reflect in large measure the failure to hold the generals accountable for their atrocities of five years ago,” Pearson said. “Influential governments should overcome their past mistakes and take strong measures to sever the flow of arms and revenue underwriting the junta’s ongoing crimes.”
