Rohingya Genocide
21st Century Ethnic Cleansing
The army came and burned my house. My father was shot by a soldier with a gun and died. I was also shot, but we couldn’t take care of my wound. I would like to return because my father is there. I want to go to his grave.
Muhammad, aged 11
The raid on our village started at 3am. I saw a child being thrown onto a fire, and my sister was raped. The violence continued for hours. It felt like it would never end.
Husson, aged 30
At least 24,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed by the Myanmar state forces and locals since the ‘clearance operations’ in 2017. More than 34,000 Rohingya were also thrown into fires, while over 114,000 others were violently beaten. As many as 18,000 Rohingya women and girls were raped by the army and police. Over 115,000 Rohingya homes were burned down while 113,000 others were vandalized.
Over 800,000 Rohingya Muslims from the state of Rakhine in Myanmar have had to flee their homes in search of safety and peace. This crisis has been labelled as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing on multiple occasions by the United Nations.
Years of unstopped discrimination and prejudice grew into genocidial violence in which whole communities of innocent Rohingya civilians were completely wiped out. Military bases were built in the ruins of where homes, cemeteries and mosques once stood.
Crimes against humanity were committed on a mass scale. Villages were burned overnight, leaving dwellers either displaced or dead. Acts of abuse, rape and torture were not uncommon and minors were often the target. The distress of witnessing and experiencing such actions create generational impacts which scar and traumatise survivors forever.