Human rights violations come to the fore

The report interviewed more than 90 Rohingya men and women in Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, many of whom fled the country between 2012 and 2014. 

Fortify Rights concluded in its report that Myanmar state security forces are complicit in and profiting from the increasingly lucrative maritime human trafficking and smuggling of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Since 2012, Myanmar state security forces in Rakhine State have collected payments from Rohingya asylum seekers fleeing Myanmar by ships operated by transnational criminal syndicates, according to information obtained by Fortify Rights. In some cases, the Myanmar Navy escorted boats operated by criminal gangs out to international waters.

“Not only are the authorities making life so intolerable for Rohingya that they’re forced to flee, but they’re also profiting from the exodus,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights. “This is a regional crisis that’s worsening while Myanmar authorities are treating it like a perverse payday.”

The report furthered that local Rohingya brokers mostly deliver payments to members of the Lon Thein riot police, Myanmar Police Department, Navy, and Army in amounts ranging from Ks 500,000 (US$500) to Ks 600,000 ($600) per shipload of Rohingya asylum seekers in exchange for passage out to sea. In one case documented by Fortify Rights, the Myanmar Navy demanded Ks 7 million ($7,000) from a criminal gang operating a ship filled with Rohingya fleeing to Malaysia. In other cases, members of the Myanmar Police Department took up to Ks 15,000 ($15) per person directly from individual Rohingya passengers.

On the same day, Thai police rounded up 78 Rohingya people at a remote seaside spot in Sooksamrarn district in Ranong. They told police that paid between Bt35,000 to Br45,000 to a boat to take them to the spot waiting for another boat to take to Malaysia where they want to find a job.

They said they travelled about 25 days in the sea and there were about 600 Rohingya people on the boat. Once they arrived Ranong, they scattered to hide on various islands, pending transit to Malaysia.

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya rights group, told AFP last month that a climate of fear in Myanmar's Rakhine state is pushing stateless Rohingya Muslims to flee in "unprecedented" numbers, with over 10,000 people taking to boats in the region. A surge in boats leaving from northern Rakhine, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in isolated communities, has seen around 900 people a day making the perilous journey by sea.

"This is very unprecedented, it's such a massive number," Lewa told AFP.

In his radio broadcast on November 5, President Thein Sein told his citizens that not only in Rakhine state but throughout the country, it is important that each individual enjoys basic human rights and is treated with dignity regardless of ethnicity, religion or even citizenship status. 

“My government is also laying down the plans to prevent future conflict. We have to handle it very delicately, owing especially to the heightened tensions and emotions between the two communities. That said, we will take full actio allowed under the law against those who instigate conflict or commit crimes. I would also like to add that we are also implementing precautionary measures to prevent future conflict from occurring,” he said.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom urged US President Barack Obama to meet Rohingya Muslims and other minorities while he is in Myanmar. It also urged the US to continue to use sanctions against officials and individuals in Myanmar responsible for religious persecution and consider a binding agreement with the government linking the lifting of sanctions to rights reform.

 Fortify Rights’ Smith suggested the US and regional governments should work with Myanmar to end its persecution of the Rohingya and combat trafficking in a rights-respecting way.

According to the group, tens of thousands of Rohingya in Rakhine State are now preparing to board 50-to-100-person occupancy boats on the western coast of Myanmar. These boats transport Rohingya asylum seekers to larger ships in the Bay of Bengal that hold as many as 1,000 people. The vast majority of Rohingya who depart by sea soon find themselves in the custody of abusive human trafficking and smuggling gangs, who detain them in conditions of enslavement and exploitation.

In 2012, civilians and state security forces razed Muslim villages in 13 of 17 townships in Rakhine State. More than 300,000 people - predominantly Rohingya Muslims - are now in need of humanitarian aid in the state, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid. That includes 70,000 “food insecure” people, 50,000 living in isolated villages, 50,000 in “host communities,” and approximately 140,000 Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims living in more than 80 internally displaced person (IDP) camps. More than 100,000 Rohingya reportedly fled the country by sea in the last two years. Rakhine Buddhists also endured casualties and displacement in Rakhine State in 2012 on a lesser scale.

In June 2014, Myanmar maintained its place on the United States Department of State’s tier-two watch list in the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. 

Fortify Rights urged the government to end persecution, to acknowledge the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity. Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law denies Rohingya equal access to citizenship and effectively renders most Rohingya stateless, it said.

According to the UN, almost 140,000 people are still displaced in Rakhine State.

On Friday, based on a four-year investigation by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, also implicated three commanders who continue to serve at the highest levels of the country’s government.

It implicated three generals in international crimes as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Major General Ko Ko, the current Home Affairs Minister; Brigadier General Khin Zaw Oo, the current commander of the Bureau of Special Operations 4; and General Maung Maung Aye, most recently the Naypyidaw Regional Commander. Through more than 150 interviews with eyewitnesses, it documented how soldiers fired mortars at villages; opened fire on fleeing villagers; destroyed homes, crops, and food stores; laid landmines in civilian locations; forced civilians to work and porter; and captured and executed civilians.

“These are serious allegations that demand a determined, good faith response by the Myanmar government and military,” said Tyler Giannini, Co-Director of the Clinic. “The abuses perpetrated by the military have been too widespread, too persistent, and too grave to be ignored.”