IF the international community wishes to preserve its humanitarian credentials, then it must seriously examine the bone-chilling testimonies of Myanmar’s Rohingya survivors. Released recently, a report by Doctors Without Borders found that at least 9,000 Rohingya died in Myanmar’s Rakhine state between August and September. Of those, at least 6,700 were killed after being beaten, shot, burnt or sexually assaulted. At least 730 were children below the age of five — 60pc of them died after being shot. Even as conservative estimates, these figures far exceed Myanmar’s official death toll of 400. They also render the repatriation deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh even more disconcerting. Repatriating Rohingya people back to villages burnt to ashes and where entire communities were subjected to a campaign of ethnic cleansing is shockingly inhumane — especially as the current refugee exodus shows no signs of abating. Then, the disappearance of young Rohingya citizen journalists, especially those secretly documenting violence since 2012, has resulted in a complete information blackout — two Reuters journalists were detained recently by the military. On their part, the Myanmar authorities deny involvement in the violence. But failure to allow UN investigators access to Rakhine to assess the state of Rohingya communities clearly points to the government’s complicity. Access for fact-finding missions to check ground realities should serve as a UN precondition for future voluntary repatriation.

With more than 647,000 refugees having fled Myanmar, survivors in Bangladesh’s camps recount being driven out of their villages by bullets, rape and arson. Testimonies of mass gang rape and killings have emerged with survivors describing dead bodies stacked high after villages experienced mass slaughter. These accounts are reminiscent of the suffering of the Yazidi community, many of whose members were killed by the militant Islamic State group, and should prod the international community into taking immediate action. Given the UN’s mandate to protect human life, it must push for investigations into these unforgivable crimes to hold those responsible to account.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2017