SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
China says its funding helps Africa develop, not stack up debt
Ben Blanchard, Christian Shepherd
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is helping Africa develop, not pile up debt, a top Chinese official said on Tuesday, as the government pushes back against criticism it is loading the continent with an unsustainable burden during a major summit in Beijing.
President Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion to African nations at Monday’s opening of a China-Africa forum on cooperation, matching the size of funds offered at the last summit in Johannesburg in 2015.
A wave of African nations seeking to restructure their debt with China has served as a reality check for Beijing’s ties with the continent, though most of its countries still see Chinese lending as the best bet to develop their economies.
“If we take a closer look at these African countries that are heavily in debt, China is not their main creditor,” its special envoy for Africa, Xu Jinghu, told a news conference.
“It’s senseless and baseless to shift the blame onto China for debt problems.”
As it pushes forward with Xi’s pledge, China will use feasibility studies to select projects that help African countries achieve sustainable development and steer clear of debt or financial woes, she added.
“We need to take into account the fluctuations of the international economic situation, which has raised the cost of financing for these African countries, and most of them depend on exporting raw materials, the price of which, on the international market, has been falling,” said Xu, adding that the overall debt burden had built up over a long time.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa attend the 2018 Beijing Summit Of The Forum On China-Africa Cooperation - Round Table Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China September 4, 2018. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS
GRAPHIC: China's trade with Africa - tmsnrt.rs/2PvZkRd
China has denied engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy, and Xi said government debt from Chinese interest-free loans due by year-end would be written off for the poorest African nations.
African countries have also been trying to export more finished goods to China, rather than simply raw materials that China then processes.
China and Africa have agreed to work hard to increase Africa’s value-added exports to China, a development welcomed by Beijing, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
“They would like to see real meaningful trade taking place between Africa and China through value-added goods,” he told reporters.
“FALSE AND SENSATIONAL”
China has strongly and angrily denied its ambitions in Africa have anything other than the best interests of the continent at heart.
Claims that China was an “economic predator” in Africa, pillaging natural resources and dragging it into a debt crisis, were “as false as they are sensational,” the Xinhua official news agency said in a commentary.
“Chinese loans to Africa have a lower interest rate and longer repayment period compared to the market average, and these concessional loans are primarily used to build infrastructure,” it added.
The total value of Xi’s pledge this year matches that of 2015, but it is comprised of a smaller portion of loans and more concessionary assistance than before, said Deborah Brautigam, an expert on China-Africa relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
“(China’s) debt relief polices have not changed,” she said in a note, adding that the write-off covered a modest part of Chinese finance in Africa.
The summit, held as the United States seeks to constrain China, and vilify it as the new colonizer of Africa, shows the Asian nation will rely more on trade with the continent, former deputy commerce minister Wei Jianguo wrote on Tuesday for the China Going Global Thinktank.
“I hope that in the next five years China-Africa economic and trade cooperation will overtake China-U.S. trade,” he said. “This is totally achievable.”
China and the United States are embroiled in an increasingly bitter trade war.
Separately, Xinhua said China and Mauritius had completed talks on a free-trade pact, which would make the island nation the first African country to strike such a deal with Beijing.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd; Additional reporting by Yawen Chen; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Clarence Fernandez
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Bitcoin crash: This man lost his savings when cryptocurrencies plunged - CNN Money
Bitcoin crash: This man lost his savings when cryptocurrencies plunged
by Michael Kaplan @CNNMoneyInvest
September 11, 2018: 7:59 AM ET
He bet on Bitcoin and lost nearly everything
An estimated $400 billion has been wiped off the value of major cryptocurrencies since January.
Sean Russell's life savings were among them.
Russell rarely played the stock market and had little investing experience when he put around $120,000 into bitcoin in November 2017. He was stunned when that turned into $500,000 in just one month.
"I think there was one morning where I woke up, where I made about £12,000 ($15,600) in one morning on my investment and it just kept going," said Russell. "I was thinking, wow, that's mortgages paid, that's holidays that I've always dreamed of."
The dream didn't last for Russell, who works as a property developer in the United Kingdom, buying homes and fixing them up. The price of Bitcoin surpassed $20,000 in December before collapsing. It now trades at $6,300.
Russell attempted to mitigate his losses by shifting money from bitcoin (XBT) to an offshoot called Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies including Ethereum and Ripple. But that didn't work, and Russell says the paper losses on his initial investment have reached 96%.
"It was devastating, quite traumatic, really," Russell said. "I've seen stories on the news of billionaires going bankrupt, and you think how can that be? How on earth did you lose that amount of money? And yet, here I am in that position."
bitcoin victim 1
Sean Russell lost most of his savings when the price of cryptocurrencies plunged.
Russell is not alone.
Michel Rauchs, who researches cryptocurrency and blockchain at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, said the explosive rise in prices in 2017 attracted a wave of inexperienced investors.
"Retail investors, students, housewives, even grandma was driven in by the hype," says Rauchs. "They were told by the media that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. They bought at the top and are now sitting on heavy losses."
The crash has left professional investors and enthusiasts debating where cryptocurrencies go from here.
"Clearly the frenzy that we have seen and the volatility in the price of bitcoin ... resembles a lot of other financial bubbles that happen over and over again in our economic history," said Benedetto De Martino, a behavioral economist at University College London.
The fever that gripped cryptocurrency investors has faded in recent months. JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) have warned investors to stay away from bitcoin.
Last week, bitcoin prices plunged more than 20% in two days after Business Insider reported that investment banking giant Goldman Sachs (GS) may be dropping plans to launch a crypto trading desk.
Goldman Sachs told CNNMoney it hadn't made a firm decision bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission blocked several proposals for bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the past few months, including plans from ETF giants ProShares and Direxion and one backed by the Winklevoss brothers.
Despite the warnings, some cryptocurrency entrepreneurs see the boom and bust as growing pains.
"Markets are cyclical and there's still a lot of opportunity for sophisticated investors," said Benjamin Dives, CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform London Block Exchange.
Before he first invested, Russell spent years tracking bitcoin and studying blockchain, the technology underpinning digital currencies. He said the learning process was like solving the plot of a murder mystery.
Despite the loss, he remains a committed investor.
"I have to be hopeful about something," he said. "I need to keep my mind occupied, because when I just focused on the money I lost, it destroyed me mentally and emotionally."
by Michael Kaplan @CNNMoneyInvest
September 11, 2018: 7:59 AM ET
He bet on Bitcoin and lost nearly everything
An estimated $400 billion has been wiped off the value of major cryptocurrencies since January.
Sean Russell's life savings were among them.
Russell rarely played the stock market and had little investing experience when he put around $120,000 into bitcoin in November 2017. He was stunned when that turned into $500,000 in just one month.
"I think there was one morning where I woke up, where I made about £12,000 ($15,600) in one morning on my investment and it just kept going," said Russell. "I was thinking, wow, that's mortgages paid, that's holidays that I've always dreamed of."
The dream didn't last for Russell, who works as a property developer in the United Kingdom, buying homes and fixing them up. The price of Bitcoin surpassed $20,000 in December before collapsing. It now trades at $6,300.
Russell attempted to mitigate his losses by shifting money from bitcoin (XBT) to an offshoot called Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies including Ethereum and Ripple. But that didn't work, and Russell says the paper losses on his initial investment have reached 96%.
"It was devastating, quite traumatic, really," Russell said. "I've seen stories on the news of billionaires going bankrupt, and you think how can that be? How on earth did you lose that amount of money? And yet, here I am in that position."
bitcoin victim 1
Sean Russell lost most of his savings when the price of cryptocurrencies plunged.
Russell is not alone.
Michel Rauchs, who researches cryptocurrency and blockchain at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, said the explosive rise in prices in 2017 attracted a wave of inexperienced investors.
"Retail investors, students, housewives, even grandma was driven in by the hype," says Rauchs. "They were told by the media that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. They bought at the top and are now sitting on heavy losses."
The crash has left professional investors and enthusiasts debating where cryptocurrencies go from here.
"Clearly the frenzy that we have seen and the volatility in the price of bitcoin ... resembles a lot of other financial bubbles that happen over and over again in our economic history," said Benedetto De Martino, a behavioral economist at University College London.
The fever that gripped cryptocurrency investors has faded in recent months. JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) have warned investors to stay away from bitcoin.
Last week, bitcoin prices plunged more than 20% in two days after Business Insider reported that investment banking giant Goldman Sachs (GS) may be dropping plans to launch a crypto trading desk.
Goldman Sachs told CNNMoney it hadn't made a firm decision bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission blocked several proposals for bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the past few months, including plans from ETF giants ProShares and Direxion and one backed by the Winklevoss brothers.
Despite the warnings, some cryptocurrency entrepreneurs see the boom and bust as growing pains.
"Markets are cyclical and there's still a lot of opportunity for sophisticated investors," said Benjamin Dives, CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform London Block Exchange.
Before he first invested, Russell spent years tracking bitcoin and studying blockchain, the technology underpinning digital currencies. He said the learning process was like solving the plot of a murder mystery.
Despite the loss, he remains a committed investor.
"I have to be hopeful about something," he said. "I need to keep my mind occupied, because when I just focused on the money I lost, it destroyed me mentally and emotionally."
Myanmar Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis - BBC News
Myanmar Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis
24 April 2018
The plight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people is said to be the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.
Risking death by sea or on foot, nearly 700,000 have fled the destruction of their homes and persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma) for neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017.
The United Nations described the military offensive in Rakhine, which provoked the exodus, as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
Myanmar's military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians.
Who are the Rohingya?
The Rohingya, who numbered around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, with the majority living in Rakhine state.
They have their own language and culture and say they are descendants of Arab traders and other groups who have been in the region for generations.
But the government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, denies the Rohingya citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census, refusing to recognise them as a people.
It sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Since the 1970s, Rohingya have migrated across the region in significant numbers. Estimates of their numbers are often much higher than official figures.
In the last few years, before the latest crisis, thousands of Rohingya were making perilous journeys out of Myanmar to escape communal violence or alleged abuses by the security forces.
Why are they fleeing?
The latest exodus began on 25 August 2017 after Rohingya Arsa militants launched deadly attacks on more than 30 police posts.
Rohingyas arriving in an area known as Cox's Bazaar - a district in Bangladesh - say they fled after troops, backed by local Buddhist mobs, responded by burning their villages and attacking and killing civilians.
Rohingya crisis: Refugees tell of 'house by house' killings
At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Amnesty International says the Myanmar military also raped and abused Rohingya women and girls.
The government, which puts the number of dead at 400, claims that "clearance operations" against the militants ended on 5 September, but BBC correspondents have seen evidence that they continued after that date.
At least 288 villages were partially or totally destroyed by fire in northern Rakhine state after August 2017, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Human Rights Watch.
The imagery shows many areas where Rohingya villages were reduced to smouldering rubble, while nearby ethnic Rakhine villages were left intact.
Rakhine: What sparked latest violence?
Who are the Rohingya group behind attacks?
Extent of destruction
Human Rights Watch say most damage occurred in Maungdaw Township, between 25 August and 25 September 2017 - with many villages destroyed after 5 September, when Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said security force operations had ended.
What is the scale of the crisis?
Media captionWatch: Drone footage from the DEC shows the extent of sprawling camps on the Bangladesh border
The UN says the Rohingya's situation is the "world's fastest growing refugee crisis".
Before August, there were already around 307,500 Rohingya refugees living in camps, makeshift settlements and with host communities, according to the UNHCR. A further 687,000 are estimated to have arrived since August 2017.
Most Rohingya refugees reaching Bangladesh - men, women and children with barely any belongings - have sought shelter in these areas, setting up camp wherever possible in the difficult terrain and with little access to aid, safe drinking water, food, shelter or healthcare.
The largest refugee camp is Kutupalong but limited space means spontaneous settlements have sprung up in the surrounding countryside and nearby Balukhali as refugees keep arriving.
While numbers in the Kutupalong refugee camp have reduced from a high of 22,241 to 13,900, the number living in makeshift or spontaneous settlements outside the camp has climbed from 99,495 to more than 604,000.
Most other refugee sites have also continued to expanded - as of mid-April 2018, there were 781,000 refugees living in nine camps and settlements.
There are also around 117, 000 people staying outside the camps in host communities.
What is being done by the international community?
The need for aid is overwhelming. With the monsoon season approaching, work has begun to re-locate some refugees from the camps most at risk of flooding or landslides and in other sites, work has been taking place to improve drainage channels and strengthen shelters.
About 70% of the one million refugees are now receiving food aid, according to the Inter Sector Coordination Group report from mid-April 2018.
Almost 100,000 people have been treated for malnutrition
Large-scale vaccination programmes have been launched to try to minimise the risk of disease. By mid-January 2018, 315,000 children under 15 years of age had received a five-in-one vaccination, including cover for diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
47,639 temporary emergency latrines have been built Bangladesh military
There has been widespread condemnation of the Myanmar government's actions but talk of sanctions has been more muted:
The UN Security Council appealed to Myanmar to stop the violence but no sanctions have been imposed
The UN's human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has said an act of genocide against Rohingya Muslims by state forces in Myanmar cannot be ruled out
The US urged Myanmar's troops to "respect the rule of law, stop the violence and end the displacement of civilians from all communities"
China says the international community "should support the efforts of Myanmar in safeguarding the stability of its national development"
Bangladesh plans to build more shelters in the Cox's Bazaar area but also wants to limit their travel to allocated areas
Myanmar urged displaced people to find refuge in temporary camps set up in Rakhine state. In November Bangladesh signed a deal with Myanmar to return hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, but few details have been released
The UK has pledged £59m in aid to support those fleeing to Bangladesh. UK Prime Minister Theresa May also said the military action in Rakhine had to stop. The UK has suspended training courses for the Myanmar military
24 April 2018
The plight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people is said to be the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.
Risking death by sea or on foot, nearly 700,000 have fled the destruction of their homes and persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma) for neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017.
The United Nations described the military offensive in Rakhine, which provoked the exodus, as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
Myanmar's military says it is fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians.
Who are the Rohingya?
The Rohingya, who numbered around one million in Myanmar at the start of 2017, are one of the many ethnic minorities in the country. Rohingya Muslims represent the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar, with the majority living in Rakhine state.
They have their own language and culture and say they are descendants of Arab traders and other groups who have been in the region for generations.
But the government of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, denies the Rohingya citizenship and even excluded them from the 2014 census, refusing to recognise them as a people.
It sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Since the 1970s, Rohingya have migrated across the region in significant numbers. Estimates of their numbers are often much higher than official figures.
In the last few years, before the latest crisis, thousands of Rohingya were making perilous journeys out of Myanmar to escape communal violence or alleged abuses by the security forces.
Why are they fleeing?
The latest exodus began on 25 August 2017 after Rohingya Arsa militants launched deadly attacks on more than 30 police posts.
Rohingyas arriving in an area known as Cox's Bazaar - a district in Bangladesh - say they fled after troops, backed by local Buddhist mobs, responded by burning their villages and attacking and killing civilians.
Rohingya crisis: Refugees tell of 'house by house' killings
At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Amnesty International says the Myanmar military also raped and abused Rohingya women and girls.
The government, which puts the number of dead at 400, claims that "clearance operations" against the militants ended on 5 September, but BBC correspondents have seen evidence that they continued after that date.
At least 288 villages were partially or totally destroyed by fire in northern Rakhine state after August 2017, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Human Rights Watch.
The imagery shows many areas where Rohingya villages were reduced to smouldering rubble, while nearby ethnic Rakhine villages were left intact.
Rakhine: What sparked latest violence?
Who are the Rohingya group behind attacks?
Extent of destruction
Human Rights Watch say most damage occurred in Maungdaw Township, between 25 August and 25 September 2017 - with many villages destroyed after 5 September, when Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said security force operations had ended.
What is the scale of the crisis?
Media captionWatch: Drone footage from the DEC shows the extent of sprawling camps on the Bangladesh border
The UN says the Rohingya's situation is the "world's fastest growing refugee crisis".
Before August, there were already around 307,500 Rohingya refugees living in camps, makeshift settlements and with host communities, according to the UNHCR. A further 687,000 are estimated to have arrived since August 2017.
Most Rohingya refugees reaching Bangladesh - men, women and children with barely any belongings - have sought shelter in these areas, setting up camp wherever possible in the difficult terrain and with little access to aid, safe drinking water, food, shelter or healthcare.
The largest refugee camp is Kutupalong but limited space means spontaneous settlements have sprung up in the surrounding countryside and nearby Balukhali as refugees keep arriving.
While numbers in the Kutupalong refugee camp have reduced from a high of 22,241 to 13,900, the number living in makeshift or spontaneous settlements outside the camp has climbed from 99,495 to more than 604,000.
Most other refugee sites have also continued to expanded - as of mid-April 2018, there were 781,000 refugees living in nine camps and settlements.
There are also around 117, 000 people staying outside the camps in host communities.
What is being done by the international community?
The need for aid is overwhelming. With the monsoon season approaching, work has begun to re-locate some refugees from the camps most at risk of flooding or landslides and in other sites, work has been taking place to improve drainage channels and strengthen shelters.
About 70% of the one million refugees are now receiving food aid, according to the Inter Sector Coordination Group report from mid-April 2018.
Almost 100,000 people have been treated for malnutrition
Large-scale vaccination programmes have been launched to try to minimise the risk of disease. By mid-January 2018, 315,000 children under 15 years of age had received a five-in-one vaccination, including cover for diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
47,639 temporary emergency latrines have been built Bangladesh military
There has been widespread condemnation of the Myanmar government's actions but talk of sanctions has been more muted:
The UN Security Council appealed to Myanmar to stop the violence but no sanctions have been imposed
The UN's human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has said an act of genocide against Rohingya Muslims by state forces in Myanmar cannot be ruled out
The US urged Myanmar's troops to "respect the rule of law, stop the violence and end the displacement of civilians from all communities"
China says the international community "should support the efforts of Myanmar in safeguarding the stability of its national development"
Bangladesh plans to build more shelters in the Cox's Bazaar area but also wants to limit their travel to allocated areas
Myanmar urged displaced people to find refuge in temporary camps set up in Rakhine state. In November Bangladesh signed a deal with Myanmar to return hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, but few details have been released
The UK has pledged £59m in aid to support those fleeing to Bangladesh. UK Prime Minister Theresa May also said the military action in Rakhine had to stop. The UK has suspended training courses for the Myanmar military
Myanmar's jailed reporters and Suu Kyi's silence - BBC News
Myanmar's jailed reporters and Suu Kyi's silence
5 September 2018
The verdict against Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo (R) has been widely condemned
The jailing of two Reuters reporters in Myanmar has left the journalism community asking whether their former rights champion has turned her back on a free press, writes the BBC's Nick Beake in Yangon.
For the journalists of Yangon this is personal.
Many were close friends of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. And many now feel one false move and they could be joining them in the notorious Insein prison here in Myanmar's former capital.
"Insane" is how the jail is pronounced, and for many in the press, it reflects a chaotic legal farce which has played out over the past nine months - one that's culminated in two young journalists being found to have been useful to "enemies of the state" and handed a seven year prison sentence.
Reuters journalists jailed over secrets act
Not that their wives regret their choice of careers. Not for one moment.
"I'm so proud of my husband", Kyaw Soe Oo's wife, Chit Su Win, told a packed press conference in a downtown hotel on Tuesday.
"I am proud that I am the wife of a journalist."
The wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spoken out.
But what about those in Myanmar who agree with the judge that they harmed the country by seeking sensitive, security information?
Pan Ei Mon, who gave birth to her first child last month while her husband Wa Lone was in jail awaiting trial replied: "People are entitled to their own opinions. They have never gone through what we're going through. I just hope it never happens to them."
And how about Aung San Suu Kyi? The Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader had accused the pair of breaking the Official Secrets Act before the verdict had even been delivered.
Aung San Suu Kyi has also been accused of ignoring violence against the Rohingya
"I loved and respected her so much," Pan Ei Mon said. "But she said our husbands were not reporters because they violated the nation's secrets, and I am very devastated by that."
Reporters held 'for investigating killings'
What next for Myanmar after damning report?
Seeing through the official story in Myanmar
Ms Suu Kyi used to champion the rights of journalists. She certainly benefited from their coverage of her long fight for democracy while she suffered years of house arrest.
When it was time for my own question to the wives, I asked what their message to Ms Suu Kyi would be - as someone who the Burmese authorities had also kept apart from the man she loved (her late British husband Michael Aris).
Chit Su Win fights back tears as she hugs her daughter, Moe Thin Wai Zan
Chit Su Win told me she'd rather address her mother to mother.
"My daughter asks me - doesn't daddy love me anymore? Doesn't daddy live with us anymore?"
"As a mother, I feel devastated. I tell her daddy is working. I try to be strong for my daughter. I feel very depressed, but I steel myself, because if I am depressed, who will care for my daughter?"
'All of you are at risk'
As the mother of the nation, Ms Suu Kyi generated huge hope when her National League for Democracy (NLD) party triumphed in free elections in 2012, after five decades of brutal military rule.
Reuters journalists spoke out after the jailing of two journalists who investigated a mass killing.
History will judge how misplaced that hope may have been. What's for sure in 2018, hope is a commodity that's fading fast.
Not least because of the chorus of international condemnation of Myanmar over the army's persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state - the very story the Reuters pair were investigating at the time of their arrest.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo's report: Massacre in Myanmar
They continue to argue they were framed because they were getting dangerously close to the truth of a massacre of 10 Rohingya men in the village of Inn Din.
These are the men whose deaths the Reuters journalists were investigating
One of the many painful ironies of this case is that the army later admitted its soldiers were culpable.
The military's wider crackdown on what it called Bengali "terrorists" last autumn - following attacks on security posts - forced three quarters of a million Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh. They remain there in the sprawling and depressing camps of Cox's Bazaar.
Who are the Rohingya?
The story not being talked about in Myanmar
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled violence in Myanmar in the last year
Last week in a blistering assessment, UN inspectors said the top generals should stand trial for genocide and accused Ms Suu Kyi of failing to use her "moral authority" to stop the violence.
Myanmar rejects UN 'genocide' accusation
Blow by blow: How a 'genocide' was investigated
Now Ms Suu Kyi's accused of failing to stand up for reporters, as well as the Rohingya.
"All of you are at risk," Khin Maung Zaw, the leading lawyer for the Reuters pair told the hushed room of journalists back at the press conference.
He declared the verdict a black day for Myanmar and a major setback for a free press and the country's transition to democracy.
The 7Day Daily paper printed a black front page after the journalists verdict was announced
Many wonder who will be next.
Aung Naing Soe is one Burmese journalist who knows what it's like to feel the heat of the regime in the new Suu Kyi era. Earlier this year he served a two month sentence for operating a drone near the parliament in the capital, Naypyidaw.
Aung Naing Soe says the jailing of the Reuters journalist was "personal"
"It's really heartbreaking for us to come and cover this kind of event" he tells me.
"I do not want to see tears from the wives of these journalists anymore. We have covered a lot of heartbreaking things but this is more personal. They are my colleagues, my friends."
Suu Kyi 'should have resigned' on Rohingya
He's worried that the public has been poisoned against journalists by online campaigns which characterise them as "betrayers of the state" and that there will be no popular backlash against any further attacks on the freedom of the press.
In some countries, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo would have been given a prize for their investigative journalism. Not here. Not in Suu Kyi's Myanmar.
Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo have continually maintained their innocence
As state counsellor, a role she created for herself because the 2008 Constitution denies her the presidency, Ms Suu Kyi runs Myanmar's NLD civilian government.
She has the power to issue a pardon and set these journalists free. If she's even considering that, she certainly hasn't shown it.
Su Myat Mon is a reporter who focuses on women's rights and social affairs.
Su Myat Mon says being a journalist in today's Myanmar does frighten her
"I was extremely disappointed with the verdict and with the NLD too. They're a democratic government. They used to believe the media was for something, that it did something positive for democracy."
Is she scared to be a journalist in Myanmar now?
"It does make me frightened," she replies.
"I can be arrested at any time if the government doesn't like my reports. This verdict affects me: my emotions and the work I do."
Would she consider giving up the job, I venture? Su Myat Mon looks at me straight in the eye:.
"I love this job. I may fear being arrested, but I still have my spirit. And, don't forget, there's nothing wrong with being a journalist. It is not a crime."
5 September 2018
The verdict against Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo (R) has been widely condemned
The jailing of two Reuters reporters in Myanmar has left the journalism community asking whether their former rights champion has turned her back on a free press, writes the BBC's Nick Beake in Yangon.
For the journalists of Yangon this is personal.
Many were close friends of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. And many now feel one false move and they could be joining them in the notorious Insein prison here in Myanmar's former capital.
"Insane" is how the jail is pronounced, and for many in the press, it reflects a chaotic legal farce which has played out over the past nine months - one that's culminated in two young journalists being found to have been useful to "enemies of the state" and handed a seven year prison sentence.
Reuters journalists jailed over secrets act
Not that their wives regret their choice of careers. Not for one moment.
"I'm so proud of my husband", Kyaw Soe Oo's wife, Chit Su Win, told a packed press conference in a downtown hotel on Tuesday.
"I am proud that I am the wife of a journalist."
The wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spoken out.
But what about those in Myanmar who agree with the judge that they harmed the country by seeking sensitive, security information?
Pan Ei Mon, who gave birth to her first child last month while her husband Wa Lone was in jail awaiting trial replied: "People are entitled to their own opinions. They have never gone through what we're going through. I just hope it never happens to them."
And how about Aung San Suu Kyi? The Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader had accused the pair of breaking the Official Secrets Act before the verdict had even been delivered.
Aung San Suu Kyi has also been accused of ignoring violence against the Rohingya
"I loved and respected her so much," Pan Ei Mon said. "But she said our husbands were not reporters because they violated the nation's secrets, and I am very devastated by that."
Reporters held 'for investigating killings'
What next for Myanmar after damning report?
Seeing through the official story in Myanmar
Ms Suu Kyi used to champion the rights of journalists. She certainly benefited from their coverage of her long fight for democracy while she suffered years of house arrest.
When it was time for my own question to the wives, I asked what their message to Ms Suu Kyi would be - as someone who the Burmese authorities had also kept apart from the man she loved (her late British husband Michael Aris).
Chit Su Win fights back tears as she hugs her daughter, Moe Thin Wai Zan
Chit Su Win told me she'd rather address her mother to mother.
"My daughter asks me - doesn't daddy love me anymore? Doesn't daddy live with us anymore?"
"As a mother, I feel devastated. I tell her daddy is working. I try to be strong for my daughter. I feel very depressed, but I steel myself, because if I am depressed, who will care for my daughter?"
'All of you are at risk'
As the mother of the nation, Ms Suu Kyi generated huge hope when her National League for Democracy (NLD) party triumphed in free elections in 2012, after five decades of brutal military rule.
Reuters journalists spoke out after the jailing of two journalists who investigated a mass killing.
History will judge how misplaced that hope may have been. What's for sure in 2018, hope is a commodity that's fading fast.
Not least because of the chorus of international condemnation of Myanmar over the army's persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state - the very story the Reuters pair were investigating at the time of their arrest.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo's report: Massacre in Myanmar
They continue to argue they were framed because they were getting dangerously close to the truth of a massacre of 10 Rohingya men in the village of Inn Din.
These are the men whose deaths the Reuters journalists were investigating
One of the many painful ironies of this case is that the army later admitted its soldiers were culpable.
The military's wider crackdown on what it called Bengali "terrorists" last autumn - following attacks on security posts - forced three quarters of a million Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh. They remain there in the sprawling and depressing camps of Cox's Bazaar.
Who are the Rohingya?
The story not being talked about in Myanmar
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled violence in Myanmar in the last year
Last week in a blistering assessment, UN inspectors said the top generals should stand trial for genocide and accused Ms Suu Kyi of failing to use her "moral authority" to stop the violence.
Myanmar rejects UN 'genocide' accusation
Blow by blow: How a 'genocide' was investigated
Now Ms Suu Kyi's accused of failing to stand up for reporters, as well as the Rohingya.
"All of you are at risk," Khin Maung Zaw, the leading lawyer for the Reuters pair told the hushed room of journalists back at the press conference.
He declared the verdict a black day for Myanmar and a major setback for a free press and the country's transition to democracy.
The 7Day Daily paper printed a black front page after the journalists verdict was announced
Many wonder who will be next.
Aung Naing Soe is one Burmese journalist who knows what it's like to feel the heat of the regime in the new Suu Kyi era. Earlier this year he served a two month sentence for operating a drone near the parliament in the capital, Naypyidaw.
Aung Naing Soe says the jailing of the Reuters journalist was "personal"
"It's really heartbreaking for us to come and cover this kind of event" he tells me.
"I do not want to see tears from the wives of these journalists anymore. We have covered a lot of heartbreaking things but this is more personal. They are my colleagues, my friends."
Suu Kyi 'should have resigned' on Rohingya
He's worried that the public has been poisoned against journalists by online campaigns which characterise them as "betrayers of the state" and that there will be no popular backlash against any further attacks on the freedom of the press.
In some countries, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo would have been given a prize for their investigative journalism. Not here. Not in Suu Kyi's Myanmar.
Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo have continually maintained their innocence
As state counsellor, a role she created for herself because the 2008 Constitution denies her the presidency, Ms Suu Kyi runs Myanmar's NLD civilian government.
She has the power to issue a pardon and set these journalists free. If she's even considering that, she certainly hasn't shown it.
Su Myat Mon is a reporter who focuses on women's rights and social affairs.
Su Myat Mon says being a journalist in today's Myanmar does frighten her
"I was extremely disappointed with the verdict and with the NLD too. They're a democratic government. They used to believe the media was for something, that it did something positive for democracy."
Is she scared to be a journalist in Myanmar now?
"It does make me frightened," she replies.
"I can be arrested at any time if the government doesn't like my reports. This verdict affects me: my emotions and the work I do."
Would she consider giving up the job, I venture? Su Myat Mon looks at me straight in the eye:.
"I love this job. I may fear being arrested, but I still have my spirit. And, don't forget, there's nothing wrong with being a journalist. It is not a crime."
Massacre in Myanmar A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT - BBC News
Sept. 13, 2018.
Massacre in Myanmar
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
How Myanmar forces burned, looted and killed in a remote village
On Sept. 2, Buddhist villagers and Myanmar troops killed 10 Rohingya men in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state. Reuters uncovered the massacre and has pieced together how it unfolded. During the reporting of this article, two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar police.
By WA LONE, KYAW SOE OO, SIMON LEWIS and ANTONI SLODKOWSKI Filed Feb. 8, 2018, 10 p.m. GMT
INN DIN, Myanmar – Bound together, the 10 Rohingya Muslim captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a shallow grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by Myanmar troops, two of the gravediggers said.
“One grave for 10 people,” said Soe Chay, 55, a retired soldier from Inn Din’s Rakhine Buddhist community who said he helped dig the pit and saw the killings. The soldiers shot each man two or three times, he said. “When they were being buried, some were still making noises. Others were already dead.”
The killings in the coastal village of Inn Din marked another bloody episode in the ethnic violence sweeping northern Rakhine state, on Myanmar’s western fringe. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh since August. None of Inn Din’s 6,000 Rohingya remained in the village as of October.
The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings aimed at rubbing them out of existence in this mainly Buddhist nation of 53 million. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide; the United States has called the action ethnic cleansing. Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most Burmese consider them to be unwanted immigrants from Bangladesh; the army refers to the Rohingya as “Bengalis.” In recent years, sectarian tensions have risen and the government has confined more than 100,000 Rohingya in camps where they have limited access to food, medicine and education.
Reuters has pieced together what happened in Inn Din in the days leading up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school students in their late teens.
Until now, accounts of the violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been provided only by its victims. The Reuters reconstruction draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims.
This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel themselves. Members of the paramilitary police gave Reuters insider descriptions of the operation to drive out the Rohingya from Inn Din, confirming that the military played the lead role in the campaign.
The slain men’s families, now sheltering in Bangladesh refugee camps, identified the victims through photographs shown to them by Reuters. The dead men were fishermen, shopkeepers, the two teenage students and an Islamic teacher.
Three photographs, provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder, capture key moments in the massacre at Inn Din, from the Rohingya men’s detention by soldiers in the early evening of Sept. 1 to their execution shortly after 10 a.m. on Sept. 2. Two photos – one taken the first day, the other on the day of the killings – show the 10 captives lined up in a row, kneeling. The final photograph shows the men’s bloodied bodies piled in the shallow grave.
The Reuters investigation of the Inn Din massacre was what prompted Myanmar police authorities to arrest two of the news agency’s reporters. The reporters, Burmese citizens Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were detained on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents relating to Rakhine.
Then, on Jan. 10, the military issued a statement that confirmed portions of what Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo and their colleagues were preparing to report, acknowledging that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in the village. It confirmed that Buddhist villagers attacked some of the men with swords and soldiers shot the others dead.
The statement coincided with an application to the court by prosecutors to charge Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act, which dates back to the time of colonial British rule. The charges carry a maximum 14-year prison sentence.
But the military’s version of events is contradicted in important respects by accounts given to Reuters by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses. The military said the 10 men belonged to a group of 200 “terrorists” that attacked security forces. Soldiers decided to kill the men, the army said, because intense fighting in the area made it impossible to transfer them to police custody. The army said it would take action against those involved.
Buddhist villagers interviewed for this article reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din. And Rohingya witnesses told Reuters that soldiers plucked the 10 from among hundreds of men, women and children who had sought safety on a nearby beach.
Scores of interviews with Rakhine Buddhist villagers, soldiers, paramilitary police, Rohingya Muslims and local administrators further revealed:
• The military and paramilitary police organized Buddhist residents of Inn Din and at least two other villages to torch Rohingya homes, more than a dozen Buddhist villagers said. Eleven Buddhist villagers said Buddhists committed acts of violence, including killings. The government and army have repeatedly blamed Rohingya insurgents for burning villages and homes.
• An order to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets was passed down the command chain from the military, said three paramilitary police officers speaking on condition of anonymity and a fourth police officer at an intelligence unit in the regional capital Sittwe. Security forces wore civilian clothes to avoid detection during raids, one of the paramilitary police officers said.
• Some members of the paramilitary police looted Rohingya property, including cows and motorcycles, in order to sell it, according to village administrator Maung Thein Chay and one of the paramilitary police officers.
• Operations in Inn Din were led by the army’s 33rd Light Infantry Division, supported by the paramilitary 8th Security Police Battalion, according to four police officers, all of them members of the battalion.
The killings in Inn Din
Michael G. Karnavas, a U.S. lawyer based in The Hague who has worked on cases at international criminal tribunals, said evidence that the military had organized Buddhist civilians to commit violence against Rohingya “would be the closest thing to a smoking gun in establishing not just intent, but even specific genocidal intent, since the attacks seem designed to destroy the Rohingya or at least a significant part of them.”
Evidence of the execution of men in government custody also could be used to build a case of crimes against humanity against military commanders, Karnavas said, if it could be shown that it was part of a “widespread or systematic” campaign targeting the Rohingya population. Kevin Jon Heller, a University of London law professor who served as a legal associate for convicted war criminal and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, said an order to clear villages by military command was “unequivocally the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.”
In December, the United States imposed sanctions on the army officer who had been in charge of Western Command troops in Rakhine, Major General Maung Maung Soe. So far, however, Myanmar has not faced international sanctions over the violence. Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions. They had hoped the election of her National League for Democracy party in 2015 would bring democratic reform and an opening of the country. Instead, critics say, Suu Kyi is in thrall to the generals who freed her from house arrest in 2010.
Asked about the evidence Reuters has uncovered about the massacre, government spokesman Zaw Htay said, “We are not denying the allegations about violations of human rights. And we are not giving blanket denials.” If there was “strong and reliable primary evidence” of abuses, the government would investigate, he said. “And then if we found the evidence is true and the violations are there, we will take the necessary action according to our existing law.”
When told that paramilitary police officers had said they received orders to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets, he replied, “We have to verify. We have to ask the Ministry of Home Affairs and Myanmar police forces.” Asked about the allegations of looting by paramilitary police officers, he said the police would investigate.
He expressed surprise when told that Buddhist villagers had confessed to burning Rohingya homes, then added, “We recognize that many, many different allegations are there, but we need to verify who did it. It is very difficult in the current situation.”
Zaw Htay defended the military operation in Rakhine. “The international community needs to understand who did the first terrorist attacks. If that kind of terrorist attack took place in European countries, in the United States, in London, New York, Washington, what would the media say?”
NEIGHBOR TURNS ON NEIGHBOR
Inn Din lies between the Mayu mountain range and the Bay of Bengal, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe. The settlement is made up of a scattering of hamlets around a school, clinic and Buddhist monastery. Buddhist homes cluster in the northern part of the village. For many years there had been tensions between the Buddhists and their Muslim neighbors, who accounted for almost 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 people in the village. But the two communities had managed to co-exist, fishing the coastal waters and cultivating rice in the paddies.
In October 2016, Rohingya militants attacked three police posts in northern Rakhine – the beginning of a new insurgency. After the attacks, Rohingya in Inn Din said many Buddhists stopped hiring them as farmhands and home help. The Buddhists said the Rohingya stopped showing up for work.
On Aug. 25 last year, the rebels struck again, hitting 30 police posts and an army base. The closest attack was just 4 km to the north. In Inn Din, several hundred fearful Buddhists took refuge in the monastery in the center of the village, more than a dozen of their number said. Inn Din’s Buddhist night watchman San Thein, 36, said Buddhist villagers feared being “swallowed up” by their Muslim neighbors. A Buddhist elder said all Rohingya, “including children,” were part of the insurgency and therefore “terrorists.”
On Aug. 27, about 80 troops from Myanmar’s 33rd Light Infantry Division arrived in Inn Din, nine Buddhist villagers said. Two paramilitary police officers and Soe Chay, the retired soldier, said the troops belonged to the 11th infantry regiment of this division. The army officer in charge told villagers they must cook for the soldiers and act as lookouts at night, Soe Chay said. The officer promised his troops would protect Buddhist villagers from their Rohingya neighbors. Five Buddhist villagers said the officer told them they could volunteer to join security operations. Young volunteers would need their parents’ permission to join the troops, however.
DETAINED: Reuters journalists Wa Lone (foreground) and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents related to Rakhine. Here they are seen arriving for a court hearing in Yangon earlier this month. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
The army found willing participants among Inn Din’s Buddhist “security group,” nine members of the organization and two other villagers said. This informal militia was formed after violence broke out in 2012 between Rakhine’s Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, sparked by reports of the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Myanmar media reported at the time that the three were sentenced to death by a district court.
Inn Din’s security group built watch huts around the Buddhist part of the village, and its members took turns to stand guard. Its ranks included Buddhist firefighters, school teachers, students and unemployed young men. They were useful to the military because they knew the local geography, said Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay.
Most of the group’s 80 to 100 men armed themselves with machetes and sticks. They also had a handful of guns, according to one member. Some wore green fatigue-style clothing they called “militia suits.”
In the days that followed the 33rd Light Infantry’s arrival, soldiers, police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said.
Two of the paramilitary police officers, both members of the 8th Security Police Battalion, said their battalion raided Rohingya hamlets with soldiers from the newly arrived 33rd Light Infantry. One of the police officers said he received verbal orders from his commander to “go and clear” areas where Rohingya lived, which he took to mean to burn them.
The second police officer described taking part in several raids on villages north of Inn Din. The raids involved at least 20 soldiers and between five and seven police, he said. A military captain or major led the soldiers, while a police captain oversaw the police team. The purpose of the raids was to deter the Rohingya from returning.
“If they have a place to live, if they have food to eat, they can carry out more attacks,” he said. “That’s why we burned their houses, mainly for security reasons.”
AFTERMATH: Reuters obtained this picture of the slain Rohingya men from a Buddhist elder. The image is deliberately blurred here; click on the arrow to view at full resolution. Reuters shared the photo with Luis Fondebrider, a forensic anthropologist. He said injuries on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp.”
“I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in the future.”
A Rakhine Buddhist elder, explaining why he chose to speak to Reuters about the killings
Soldiers and paramilitary police wore civilian shirts and shorts to blend in with the villagers, according to the second police officer and Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay. If the media identified the involvement of security personnel, the police officer explained, “we would have very big problems.”
A police spokesman, Colonel Myo Thu Soe, said he knew of no instances of security forces torching villages or wearing civilian clothing. Nor was there any order to “go and clear” or “set fire” to villages. “This is very much impossible,” he told Reuters. “If there are things like that, it should be reported officially, and it has to be investigated officially.”
“As you’ve told me about these matters now, we will scrutinize and check back,” he added. “What I want to say for now is that as for the security forces, there are orders and instructions and step-by-step management, and they have to follow them. So, I don’t think these things happened.”
The army did not respond to a request for comment.
A medical assistant at the Inn Din village clinic, Aung Myat Tun, 20, said he took part in several raids. “Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof,” he said. “The village elders put monks’ robes on the end of sticks to make the torches and soaked them with kerosene. We couldn’t bring phones. The police said they will shoot and kill us if they see any of us taking photos.”
The night watchman San Thein, a leading member of the village security group, said troops first swept through the Muslim hamlets. Then, he said, the military sent in Buddhist villagers to burn the houses.
“We got the kerosene for free from the village market after the kalars ran away,” he said, using a Burmese slur for people from South Asia.
A Rakhine Buddhist youth said he thought he heard the sound of a child inside one Rohingya home that was burned. A second villager said he participated in burning a Rohingya home that was occupied.
Soe Chay, the retired soldier who was to dig the grave for the 10 Rohingya men, said he participated in one killing. He told Reuters that troops discovered three Rohingya men and a woman hiding beside a haystack in Inn Din on Aug. 28. One of the men had a smartphone that could be used to take incriminating pictures.
RETICENT: Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions in Rakhine. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
The soldiers told Soe Chay to “do whatever you want to them,” he said. They pointed out the man with the phone and told him to stand up. “I started hacking him with a sword, and a soldier shot him when he fell down.”
Similar violence was playing out across a large part of northern Rakhine, dozens of Buddhist and Rohingya residents said.
Data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme shows scores of Rohingya villages in Rakhine state burned in an area stretching 110 km. New York-based Human Rights Watch says more than 350 villages were torched over the three months from Aug. 25, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.
In the village of Laungdon, some 65 km north of Inn Din, Thar Nge, 38, said he was asked by police and local officials to join a Buddhist security group. “The army invited us to burn the kalar village at Hpaw Ti Kaung,” he said, adding that four villagers and nearly 20 soldiers and police were involved in the operation. “Police shot inside the village so all the villagers fled and then we set fire to it. Their village was burned because police believed the villagers supported Rohingya militants – that’s why they cleaned it with fire.”
A Buddhist student from Ta Man Tha village, 15 km north of Laungdon, said he too participated in the burning of Rohingya homes. An army officer sought 30 volunteers to burn “kalar” villages, said the student. Nearly 50 volunteered and gathered fuel from motorbikes and from a market.
“They separated us into several groups. We were not allowed to enter the village directly. We had to surround it and approach the village that way. The army would shoot gunfire ahead of us and then the army asked us to enter,” he said.
“Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof.”
Buddhist villager Aung Myat Tun
After the Rohingya had fled Inn Din, Buddhist villagers took their property, including chickens and goats, Buddhist residents told Reuters. But the most valuable goods, mostly motorcycles and cattle, were collected by members of the 8th Security Police Battalion and sold, said the first police officer and Inn Din village administrator Maung Thein Chay. Maung Thein Chay said the commander of the 8th Battalion, Thant Zin Oo, struck a deal with Buddhist businessmen from other parts of Rakhine state and sold them cattle. The police officer said he had stolen four cows from Rohingya villagers, only for Thant Zin Oo to snatch them away.
Reached by phone, Thant Zin Oo did not comment. Colonel Myo Thu Soe, the police spokesman, said the police would investigate the allegations of looting.
By Sept. 1, several hundred Rohingya from Inn Din were sheltering at a makeshift camp on a nearby beach. They erected tarpaulin shelters to shield themselves from heavy rain.
Among this group were the 10 Rohingya men who would be killed the next morning. Reuters has identified all of the 10 by speaking to witnesses among Inn Din’s Buddhist community and Rohingya relatives and witnesses tracked down in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Five of the men, Dil Mohammed, 35, Nur Mohammed, 29, Shoket Ullah, 35, Habizu, 40, and Shaker Ahmed, 45, were fishermen or fish sellers. The wealthiest of the group, Abul Hashim, 25, ran a store selling nets and machine parts to fishermen and farmers. Abdul Majid, a 45-year-old father of eight, ran a small shop selling areca nut wrapped in betel leaves, commonly chewed like tobacco. Abulu, 17, and Rashid Ahmed, 18, were high school students. Abdul Malik, 30, was an Islamic teacher.
According to the statement released by the army on Jan. 10, security forces had gone to a coastal area where they “were attacked by about 200 Bengalis with sticks and swords.” The statement said that “as the security forces opened fire into the sky, the Bengalis dispersed and ran away. Ten of them were arrested.”
Three Buddhist and more than a dozen Rohingya witnesses contradict this version of events. Their accounts differ from one another in some details. The Buddhists spoke of a confrontation between a small group of Rohingya men and some soldiers near the beach. But there is unanimity on a crucial point: None said the military had come under a large-scale attack in Inn Din.
Government spokesman Zaw Htay referred Reuters to the army’s statement of Jan. 10 and declined to elaborate further. The army did not respond to a request for comment.
The Rohingya witnesses, who were on or near the beach, said Islamic teacher Abdul Malik had gone back to his hamlet with his sons to collect food and bamboo for shelter. When he returned, a group of at least seven soldiers and armed Buddhist villagers were following him, these witnesses said. Abdul Malik walked towards the watching Rohingya Muslims unsteadily, with blood dripping from his head. Some witnesses said they had seen one of the armed men strike the back of Abdul Malik’s head with a knife.
Then the military beckoned with their guns to the crowd of roughly 300 Rohingya to assemble in the paddies, these witnesses said. The soldiers and the Rohingya, hailing from different parts of Myanmar, spoke different languages. Educated villagers translated for their fellow Rohingya.
“I could not hear much, but they pointed toward my husband and some other men to get up and come forward,” said Rehana Khatun, 22, the wife of Nur Mohammed, one of the 10 who were later slain. “We heard they wanted the men for a meeting. The military asked the rest of us to return to the beach.”
Soldiers held and questioned the 10 men in a building at Inn Din’s school for a night, the military said. Rashid Ahmed and Abulu had studied there alongside Rakhine Buddhist students until the attacks by Rohingya rebels in October 2016. Schools were shut temporarily, disrupting the pair’s final year.
“I just remember him sitting there and studying, and it was always amazing to me because I am not educated,” said Rashid Ahmed’s father, farmer Abdu Shakur, 50. “I would look at him reading. He would be the first one in the family to be educated.”
A photograph, taken on the evening the men were detained, shows the two Rohingya students and the eight older men kneeling on a path beside the village clinic, most of them shirtless. They were stripped when first detained, a dozen Rohingya witnesses said. It isn’t clear why. That evening, Buddhist villagers said, the men were “treated” to a last meal of beef. They were provided with fresh clothing.
On Sept. 2, the men were taken to scrubland north of the village, near a graveyard for Buddhist residents, six Buddhist villagers said. The spot is backed by a hill crested with trees. There, on their knees, the 10 were photographed again and questioned by security personnel about the disappearance of a local Buddhist farmer named Maung Ni, according to a Rakhine elder who said he witnessed the interrogation.
Reuters was not able to establish what happened to Maung Ni. According to Buddhist neighbors, the farmer went missing after leaving home early on Aug. 25 to tend his cattle. Several Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya villagers told Reuters they believed he had been killed, but they knew of no evidence connecting any of the 10 men to his disappearance. The army said in its Jan. 10 statement that “Bengali terrorists” had killed Maung Ni, but did not identify the perpetrators.
Two of the men pictured behind the Rohingya prisoners in the photograph taken on the morning of Sept. 2 belong to the 8th Security Police Battalion. Reuters confirmed the identities of the two men from their Facebook pages and by visiting them in person.
One of the two officers, Aung Min, a police recruit from Yangon, stands directly behind the captives. He looks at the camera as he holds a weapon. The other officer, police Captain Moe Yan Naing, is the figure on the top right. He walks with his rifle over his shoulder.
The day after the two Reuters reporters were arrested in December, Myanmar’s government also announced that Moe Yan Naing had been arrested and was being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act.
Aung Min, who is not facing legal action, declined to speak to Reuters.
Three Buddhist youths said they watched from a hut as the 10 Rohingya captives were led up a hill by soldiers towards the site of their deaths.
One of the gravediggers, retired soldier Soe Chay, said Maung Ni’s sons were invited by the army officer in charge of the squad to strike the first blows.
The first son beheaded the Islamic teacher, Abdul Malik, according to Soe Chay. The second son hacked another of the men in the neck.
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“After the brothers sliced them both with swords, the squad fired with guns. Two to three shots to one person,” said Soe Chay. A second gravedigger, who declined to be identified, confirmed that soldiers had shot some of the men.
In its Jan. 10 statement, the military said the two brothers and a third villager had “cut the Bengali terrorists” with swords and then, in the chaos, four members of the security forces had shot the captives. “Action will be taken against the villagers who participated in the case and the members of security forces who broke the Rules of Engagement under the law,” the statement said. It didn’t spell out those rules.
Tun Aye, one of the sons of Maung Ni, has been detained on murder charges, his lawyer said on Jan. 13. Contacted by Reuters on Feb. 8, the lawyer declined to comment further. Reuters was unable to reach the other brother.
In October, Inn Din locals pointed two Reuters reporters towards an area of brush behind the hill where they said the killings took place. The reporters discovered a newly cut trail leading to soft, recently disturbed earth littered with bones. Some of the bones were entangled with scraps of clothing and string that appeared to match the cord that is seen binding the captives’ wrists in the photographs. The immediate area was marked by the smell of death.
Reuters showed photographs of the site to three forensic experts: Homer Venters, director of programs at Physicians for Human Rights; Derrick Pounder, a pathologist who has consulted for Amnesty International and the United Nations; and Luis Fondebrider, president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, who investigated the graves of those killed under Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. All observed human remains, including the thoracic part of a spinal column, ribs, scapula, femur and tibia. Pounder said he couldn’t rule out the presence of animal bones as well.
The Rakhine Buddhist elder provided Reuters reporters with a photograph which shows the aftermath of the execution. In it, the 10 Rohingya men are wearing the same clothing as in the previous photo and are tied to each other with the same yellow cord, piled into a small hole in the earth, blood pooling around them. Abdul Malik, the Islamic teacher, appears to have been beheaded. Abulu, the student, has a gaping wound in his neck. Both injuries appear consistent with Soe Chay’s account.
Fondebrider reviewed this picture. He said injuries visible on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp that was applied on the throat.”
Some family members did not know for sure that the men had been killed until Reuters returned to their shelters in Bangladesh in January.
“I can’t explain what I feel inside. My husband is dead,” said Rehana Khatun, wife of Nur Mohammed. “My husband is gone forever. I don’t want anything else, but I want justice for his death.”
In Inn Din, the Buddhist elder explained why he chose to share evidence of the killings with Reuters. “I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in future.”
Massacre in Myanmar
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
How Myanmar forces burned, looted and killed in a remote village
On Sept. 2, Buddhist villagers and Myanmar troops killed 10 Rohingya men in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state. Reuters uncovered the massacre and has pieced together how it unfolded. During the reporting of this article, two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar police.
By WA LONE, KYAW SOE OO, SIMON LEWIS and ANTONI SLODKOWSKI Filed Feb. 8, 2018, 10 p.m. GMT
INN DIN, Myanmar – Bound together, the 10 Rohingya Muslim captives watched their Buddhist neighbors dig a shallow grave. Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept. 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by Myanmar troops, two of the gravediggers said.
“One grave for 10 people,” said Soe Chay, 55, a retired soldier from Inn Din’s Rakhine Buddhist community who said he helped dig the pit and saw the killings. The soldiers shot each man two or three times, he said. “When they were being buried, some were still making noises. Others were already dead.”
The killings in the coastal village of Inn Din marked another bloody episode in the ethnic violence sweeping northern Rakhine state, on Myanmar’s western fringe. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh since August. None of Inn Din’s 6,000 Rohingya remained in the village as of October.
The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings aimed at rubbing them out of existence in this mainly Buddhist nation of 53 million. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide; the United States has called the action ethnic cleansing. Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.
Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most Burmese consider them to be unwanted immigrants from Bangladesh; the army refers to the Rohingya as “Bengalis.” In recent years, sectarian tensions have risen and the government has confined more than 100,000 Rohingya in camps where they have limited access to food, medicine and education.
Reuters has pieced together what happened in Inn Din in the days leading up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school students in their late teens.
Until now, accounts of the violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been provided only by its victims. The Reuters reconstruction draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims.
This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel themselves. Members of the paramilitary police gave Reuters insider descriptions of the operation to drive out the Rohingya from Inn Din, confirming that the military played the lead role in the campaign.
The slain men’s families, now sheltering in Bangladesh refugee camps, identified the victims through photographs shown to them by Reuters. The dead men were fishermen, shopkeepers, the two teenage students and an Islamic teacher.
Three photographs, provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder, capture key moments in the massacre at Inn Din, from the Rohingya men’s detention by soldiers in the early evening of Sept. 1 to their execution shortly after 10 a.m. on Sept. 2. Two photos – one taken the first day, the other on the day of the killings – show the 10 captives lined up in a row, kneeling. The final photograph shows the men’s bloodied bodies piled in the shallow grave.
The Reuters investigation of the Inn Din massacre was what prompted Myanmar police authorities to arrest two of the news agency’s reporters. The reporters, Burmese citizens Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were detained on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents relating to Rakhine.
Then, on Jan. 10, the military issued a statement that confirmed portions of what Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo and their colleagues were preparing to report, acknowledging that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in the village. It confirmed that Buddhist villagers attacked some of the men with swords and soldiers shot the others dead.
The statement coincided with an application to the court by prosecutors to charge Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act, which dates back to the time of colonial British rule. The charges carry a maximum 14-year prison sentence.
But the military’s version of events is contradicted in important respects by accounts given to Reuters by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses. The military said the 10 men belonged to a group of 200 “terrorists” that attacked security forces. Soldiers decided to kill the men, the army said, because intense fighting in the area made it impossible to transfer them to police custody. The army said it would take action against those involved.
Buddhist villagers interviewed for this article reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din. And Rohingya witnesses told Reuters that soldiers plucked the 10 from among hundreds of men, women and children who had sought safety on a nearby beach.
Scores of interviews with Rakhine Buddhist villagers, soldiers, paramilitary police, Rohingya Muslims and local administrators further revealed:
• The military and paramilitary police organized Buddhist residents of Inn Din and at least two other villages to torch Rohingya homes, more than a dozen Buddhist villagers said. Eleven Buddhist villagers said Buddhists committed acts of violence, including killings. The government and army have repeatedly blamed Rohingya insurgents for burning villages and homes.
• An order to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets was passed down the command chain from the military, said three paramilitary police officers speaking on condition of anonymity and a fourth police officer at an intelligence unit in the regional capital Sittwe. Security forces wore civilian clothes to avoid detection during raids, one of the paramilitary police officers said.
• Some members of the paramilitary police looted Rohingya property, including cows and motorcycles, in order to sell it, according to village administrator Maung Thein Chay and one of the paramilitary police officers.
• Operations in Inn Din were led by the army’s 33rd Light Infantry Division, supported by the paramilitary 8th Security Police Battalion, according to four police officers, all of them members of the battalion.
The killings in Inn Din
Michael G. Karnavas, a U.S. lawyer based in The Hague who has worked on cases at international criminal tribunals, said evidence that the military had organized Buddhist civilians to commit violence against Rohingya “would be the closest thing to a smoking gun in establishing not just intent, but even specific genocidal intent, since the attacks seem designed to destroy the Rohingya or at least a significant part of them.”
Evidence of the execution of men in government custody also could be used to build a case of crimes against humanity against military commanders, Karnavas said, if it could be shown that it was part of a “widespread or systematic” campaign targeting the Rohingya population. Kevin Jon Heller, a University of London law professor who served as a legal associate for convicted war criminal and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, said an order to clear villages by military command was “unequivocally the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.”
In December, the United States imposed sanctions on the army officer who had been in charge of Western Command troops in Rakhine, Major General Maung Maung Soe. So far, however, Myanmar has not faced international sanctions over the violence. Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions. They had hoped the election of her National League for Democracy party in 2015 would bring democratic reform and an opening of the country. Instead, critics say, Suu Kyi is in thrall to the generals who freed her from house arrest in 2010.
Asked about the evidence Reuters has uncovered about the massacre, government spokesman Zaw Htay said, “We are not denying the allegations about violations of human rights. And we are not giving blanket denials.” If there was “strong and reliable primary evidence” of abuses, the government would investigate, he said. “And then if we found the evidence is true and the violations are there, we will take the necessary action according to our existing law.”
When told that paramilitary police officers had said they received orders to “clear” Inn Din’s Rohingya hamlets, he replied, “We have to verify. We have to ask the Ministry of Home Affairs and Myanmar police forces.” Asked about the allegations of looting by paramilitary police officers, he said the police would investigate.
He expressed surprise when told that Buddhist villagers had confessed to burning Rohingya homes, then added, “We recognize that many, many different allegations are there, but we need to verify who did it. It is very difficult in the current situation.”
Zaw Htay defended the military operation in Rakhine. “The international community needs to understand who did the first terrorist attacks. If that kind of terrorist attack took place in European countries, in the United States, in London, New York, Washington, what would the media say?”
NEIGHBOR TURNS ON NEIGHBOR
Inn Din lies between the Mayu mountain range and the Bay of Bengal, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe. The settlement is made up of a scattering of hamlets around a school, clinic and Buddhist monastery. Buddhist homes cluster in the northern part of the village. For many years there had been tensions between the Buddhists and their Muslim neighbors, who accounted for almost 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 people in the village. But the two communities had managed to co-exist, fishing the coastal waters and cultivating rice in the paddies.
In October 2016, Rohingya militants attacked three police posts in northern Rakhine – the beginning of a new insurgency. After the attacks, Rohingya in Inn Din said many Buddhists stopped hiring them as farmhands and home help. The Buddhists said the Rohingya stopped showing up for work.
On Aug. 25 last year, the rebels struck again, hitting 30 police posts and an army base. The closest attack was just 4 km to the north. In Inn Din, several hundred fearful Buddhists took refuge in the monastery in the center of the village, more than a dozen of their number said. Inn Din’s Buddhist night watchman San Thein, 36, said Buddhist villagers feared being “swallowed up” by their Muslim neighbors. A Buddhist elder said all Rohingya, “including children,” were part of the insurgency and therefore “terrorists.”
On Aug. 27, about 80 troops from Myanmar’s 33rd Light Infantry Division arrived in Inn Din, nine Buddhist villagers said. Two paramilitary police officers and Soe Chay, the retired soldier, said the troops belonged to the 11th infantry regiment of this division. The army officer in charge told villagers they must cook for the soldiers and act as lookouts at night, Soe Chay said. The officer promised his troops would protect Buddhist villagers from their Rohingya neighbors. Five Buddhist villagers said the officer told them they could volunteer to join security operations. Young volunteers would need their parents’ permission to join the troops, however.
DETAINED: Reuters journalists Wa Lone (foreground) and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on Dec. 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents related to Rakhine. Here they are seen arriving for a court hearing in Yangon earlier this month. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
The army found willing participants among Inn Din’s Buddhist “security group,” nine members of the organization and two other villagers said. This informal militia was formed after violence broke out in 2012 between Rakhine’s Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, sparked by reports of the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men. Myanmar media reported at the time that the three were sentenced to death by a district court.
Inn Din’s security group built watch huts around the Buddhist part of the village, and its members took turns to stand guard. Its ranks included Buddhist firefighters, school teachers, students and unemployed young men. They were useful to the military because they knew the local geography, said Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay.
Most of the group’s 80 to 100 men armed themselves with machetes and sticks. They also had a handful of guns, according to one member. Some wore green fatigue-style clothing they called “militia suits.”
In the days that followed the 33rd Light Infantry’s arrival, soldiers, police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said.
Two of the paramilitary police officers, both members of the 8th Security Police Battalion, said their battalion raided Rohingya hamlets with soldiers from the newly arrived 33rd Light Infantry. One of the police officers said he received verbal orders from his commander to “go and clear” areas where Rohingya lived, which he took to mean to burn them.
The second police officer described taking part in several raids on villages north of Inn Din. The raids involved at least 20 soldiers and between five and seven police, he said. A military captain or major led the soldiers, while a police captain oversaw the police team. The purpose of the raids was to deter the Rohingya from returning.
“If they have a place to live, if they have food to eat, they can carry out more attacks,” he said. “That’s why we burned their houses, mainly for security reasons.”
AFTERMATH: Reuters obtained this picture of the slain Rohingya men from a Buddhist elder. The image is deliberately blurred here; click on the arrow to view at full resolution. Reuters shared the photo with Luis Fondebrider, a forensic anthropologist. He said injuries on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp.”
“I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in the future.”
A Rakhine Buddhist elder, explaining why he chose to speak to Reuters about the killings
Soldiers and paramilitary police wore civilian shirts and shorts to blend in with the villagers, according to the second police officer and Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay. If the media identified the involvement of security personnel, the police officer explained, “we would have very big problems.”
A police spokesman, Colonel Myo Thu Soe, said he knew of no instances of security forces torching villages or wearing civilian clothing. Nor was there any order to “go and clear” or “set fire” to villages. “This is very much impossible,” he told Reuters. “If there are things like that, it should be reported officially, and it has to be investigated officially.”
“As you’ve told me about these matters now, we will scrutinize and check back,” he added. “What I want to say for now is that as for the security forces, there are orders and instructions and step-by-step management, and they have to follow them. So, I don’t think these things happened.”
The army did not respond to a request for comment.
A medical assistant at the Inn Din village clinic, Aung Myat Tun, 20, said he took part in several raids. “Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof,” he said. “The village elders put monks’ robes on the end of sticks to make the torches and soaked them with kerosene. We couldn’t bring phones. The police said they will shoot and kill us if they see any of us taking photos.”
The night watchman San Thein, a leading member of the village security group, said troops first swept through the Muslim hamlets. Then, he said, the military sent in Buddhist villagers to burn the houses.
“We got the kerosene for free from the village market after the kalars ran away,” he said, using a Burmese slur for people from South Asia.
A Rakhine Buddhist youth said he thought he heard the sound of a child inside one Rohingya home that was burned. A second villager said he participated in burning a Rohingya home that was occupied.
Soe Chay, the retired soldier who was to dig the grave for the 10 Rohingya men, said he participated in one killing. He told Reuters that troops discovered three Rohingya men and a woman hiding beside a haystack in Inn Din on Aug. 28. One of the men had a smartphone that could be used to take incriminating pictures.
RETICENT: Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has disappointed many former supporters in the West by not speaking out against the army’s actions in Rakhine. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
The soldiers told Soe Chay to “do whatever you want to them,” he said. They pointed out the man with the phone and told him to stand up. “I started hacking him with a sword, and a soldier shot him when he fell down.”
Similar violence was playing out across a large part of northern Rakhine, dozens of Buddhist and Rohingya residents said.
Data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme shows scores of Rohingya villages in Rakhine state burned in an area stretching 110 km. New York-based Human Rights Watch says more than 350 villages were torched over the three months from Aug. 25, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.
In the village of Laungdon, some 65 km north of Inn Din, Thar Nge, 38, said he was asked by police and local officials to join a Buddhist security group. “The army invited us to burn the kalar village at Hpaw Ti Kaung,” he said, adding that four villagers and nearly 20 soldiers and police were involved in the operation. “Police shot inside the village so all the villagers fled and then we set fire to it. Their village was burned because police believed the villagers supported Rohingya militants – that’s why they cleaned it with fire.”
A Buddhist student from Ta Man Tha village, 15 km north of Laungdon, said he too participated in the burning of Rohingya homes. An army officer sought 30 volunteers to burn “kalar” villages, said the student. Nearly 50 volunteered and gathered fuel from motorbikes and from a market.
“They separated us into several groups. We were not allowed to enter the village directly. We had to surround it and approach the village that way. The army would shoot gunfire ahead of us and then the army asked us to enter,” he said.
“Muslim houses were easy to burn because of the thatched roofs. You just light the edge of the roof.”
Buddhist villager Aung Myat Tun
After the Rohingya had fled Inn Din, Buddhist villagers took their property, including chickens and goats, Buddhist residents told Reuters. But the most valuable goods, mostly motorcycles and cattle, were collected by members of the 8th Security Police Battalion and sold, said the first police officer and Inn Din village administrator Maung Thein Chay. Maung Thein Chay said the commander of the 8th Battalion, Thant Zin Oo, struck a deal with Buddhist businessmen from other parts of Rakhine state and sold them cattle. The police officer said he had stolen four cows from Rohingya villagers, only for Thant Zin Oo to snatch them away.
Reached by phone, Thant Zin Oo did not comment. Colonel Myo Thu Soe, the police spokesman, said the police would investigate the allegations of looting.
By Sept. 1, several hundred Rohingya from Inn Din were sheltering at a makeshift camp on a nearby beach. They erected tarpaulin shelters to shield themselves from heavy rain.
Among this group were the 10 Rohingya men who would be killed the next morning. Reuters has identified all of the 10 by speaking to witnesses among Inn Din’s Buddhist community and Rohingya relatives and witnesses tracked down in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Five of the men, Dil Mohammed, 35, Nur Mohammed, 29, Shoket Ullah, 35, Habizu, 40, and Shaker Ahmed, 45, were fishermen or fish sellers. The wealthiest of the group, Abul Hashim, 25, ran a store selling nets and machine parts to fishermen and farmers. Abdul Majid, a 45-year-old father of eight, ran a small shop selling areca nut wrapped in betel leaves, commonly chewed like tobacco. Abulu, 17, and Rashid Ahmed, 18, were high school students. Abdul Malik, 30, was an Islamic teacher.
According to the statement released by the army on Jan. 10, security forces had gone to a coastal area where they “were attacked by about 200 Bengalis with sticks and swords.” The statement said that “as the security forces opened fire into the sky, the Bengalis dispersed and ran away. Ten of them were arrested.”
Three Buddhist and more than a dozen Rohingya witnesses contradict this version of events. Their accounts differ from one another in some details. The Buddhists spoke of a confrontation between a small group of Rohingya men and some soldiers near the beach. But there is unanimity on a crucial point: None said the military had come under a large-scale attack in Inn Din.
Government spokesman Zaw Htay referred Reuters to the army’s statement of Jan. 10 and declined to elaborate further. The army did not respond to a request for comment.
The Rohingya witnesses, who were on or near the beach, said Islamic teacher Abdul Malik had gone back to his hamlet with his sons to collect food and bamboo for shelter. When he returned, a group of at least seven soldiers and armed Buddhist villagers were following him, these witnesses said. Abdul Malik walked towards the watching Rohingya Muslims unsteadily, with blood dripping from his head. Some witnesses said they had seen one of the armed men strike the back of Abdul Malik’s head with a knife.
Then the military beckoned with their guns to the crowd of roughly 300 Rohingya to assemble in the paddies, these witnesses said. The soldiers and the Rohingya, hailing from different parts of Myanmar, spoke different languages. Educated villagers translated for their fellow Rohingya.
“I could not hear much, but they pointed toward my husband and some other men to get up and come forward,” said Rehana Khatun, 22, the wife of Nur Mohammed, one of the 10 who were later slain. “We heard they wanted the men for a meeting. The military asked the rest of us to return to the beach.”
Soldiers held and questioned the 10 men in a building at Inn Din’s school for a night, the military said. Rashid Ahmed and Abulu had studied there alongside Rakhine Buddhist students until the attacks by Rohingya rebels in October 2016. Schools were shut temporarily, disrupting the pair’s final year.
“I just remember him sitting there and studying, and it was always amazing to me because I am not educated,” said Rashid Ahmed’s father, farmer Abdu Shakur, 50. “I would look at him reading. He would be the first one in the family to be educated.”
A photograph, taken on the evening the men were detained, shows the two Rohingya students and the eight older men kneeling on a path beside the village clinic, most of them shirtless. They were stripped when first detained, a dozen Rohingya witnesses said. It isn’t clear why. That evening, Buddhist villagers said, the men were “treated” to a last meal of beef. They were provided with fresh clothing.
On Sept. 2, the men were taken to scrubland north of the village, near a graveyard for Buddhist residents, six Buddhist villagers said. The spot is backed by a hill crested with trees. There, on their knees, the 10 were photographed again and questioned by security personnel about the disappearance of a local Buddhist farmer named Maung Ni, according to a Rakhine elder who said he witnessed the interrogation.
Reuters was not able to establish what happened to Maung Ni. According to Buddhist neighbors, the farmer went missing after leaving home early on Aug. 25 to tend his cattle. Several Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya villagers told Reuters they believed he had been killed, but they knew of no evidence connecting any of the 10 men to his disappearance. The army said in its Jan. 10 statement that “Bengali terrorists” had killed Maung Ni, but did not identify the perpetrators.
Two of the men pictured behind the Rohingya prisoners in the photograph taken on the morning of Sept. 2 belong to the 8th Security Police Battalion. Reuters confirmed the identities of the two men from their Facebook pages and by visiting them in person.
One of the two officers, Aung Min, a police recruit from Yangon, stands directly behind the captives. He looks at the camera as he holds a weapon. The other officer, police Captain Moe Yan Naing, is the figure on the top right. He walks with his rifle over his shoulder.
The day after the two Reuters reporters were arrested in December, Myanmar’s government also announced that Moe Yan Naing had been arrested and was being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act.
Aung Min, who is not facing legal action, declined to speak to Reuters.
Three Buddhist youths said they watched from a hut as the 10 Rohingya captives were led up a hill by soldiers towards the site of their deaths.
One of the gravediggers, retired soldier Soe Chay, said Maung Ni’s sons were invited by the army officer in charge of the squad to strike the first blows.
The first son beheaded the Islamic teacher, Abdul Malik, according to Soe Chay. The second son hacked another of the men in the neck.
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“After the brothers sliced them both with swords, the squad fired with guns. Two to three shots to one person,” said Soe Chay. A second gravedigger, who declined to be identified, confirmed that soldiers had shot some of the men.
In its Jan. 10 statement, the military said the two brothers and a third villager had “cut the Bengali terrorists” with swords and then, in the chaos, four members of the security forces had shot the captives. “Action will be taken against the villagers who participated in the case and the members of security forces who broke the Rules of Engagement under the law,” the statement said. It didn’t spell out those rules.
Tun Aye, one of the sons of Maung Ni, has been detained on murder charges, his lawyer said on Jan. 13. Contacted by Reuters on Feb. 8, the lawyer declined to comment further. Reuters was unable to reach the other brother.
In October, Inn Din locals pointed two Reuters reporters towards an area of brush behind the hill where they said the killings took place. The reporters discovered a newly cut trail leading to soft, recently disturbed earth littered with bones. Some of the bones were entangled with scraps of clothing and string that appeared to match the cord that is seen binding the captives’ wrists in the photographs. The immediate area was marked by the smell of death.
Reuters showed photographs of the site to three forensic experts: Homer Venters, director of programs at Physicians for Human Rights; Derrick Pounder, a pathologist who has consulted for Amnesty International and the United Nations; and Luis Fondebrider, president of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, who investigated the graves of those killed under Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. All observed human remains, including the thoracic part of a spinal column, ribs, scapula, femur and tibia. Pounder said he couldn’t rule out the presence of animal bones as well.
The Rakhine Buddhist elder provided Reuters reporters with a photograph which shows the aftermath of the execution. In it, the 10 Rohingya men are wearing the same clothing as in the previous photo and are tied to each other with the same yellow cord, piled into a small hole in the earth, blood pooling around them. Abdul Malik, the Islamic teacher, appears to have been beheaded. Abulu, the student, has a gaping wound in his neck. Both injuries appear consistent with Soe Chay’s account.
Fondebrider reviewed this picture. He said injuries visible on two of the bodies were consistent with “the action of a machete or something sharp that was applied on the throat.”
Some family members did not know for sure that the men had been killed until Reuters returned to their shelters in Bangladesh in January.
“I can’t explain what I feel inside. My husband is dead,” said Rehana Khatun, wife of Nur Mohammed. “My husband is gone forever. I don’t want anything else, but I want justice for his death.”
In Inn Din, the Buddhist elder explained why he chose to share evidence of the killings with Reuters. “I want to be transparent on this case. I don’t want it to happen like that in future.”
Aung San Suu Kyi defends verdict against Reuters journalists - BBC News
Sept. 13, 2018.
Aung San Suu Kyi defends verdict against Reuters journalists
Aung San Suu Kyi said their conviction had "nothing to do with freedom of expression at all"
Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists, despite international condemnation.
She said Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had broken the law and their conviction had "nothing to do with freedom of expression at all".
The two were sentenced for possession of police documents while investigating the killing of Rohingya Muslims.
Ms Suu Kyi also said her government could in hindsight have handled the Rohingya situation differently.
Since last year, at least 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar, also known as Burma, after the army launched a brutal crackdown in response to attacks by a Rohingya militant group.
The UN has called for top military figures to be investigated for genocide.
What did Suu Kyi say?
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate - who is Myanmar's de facto leader - had been under intense pressure to comment on both the Rohingya crisis and more recently the journalists, following their jailing earlier this month.
This week, a UN rights body accused Myanmar of "waging a campaign against journalists" and the verdict has sparked criticism internationally, including from US Vice President Mike Pence.
Has Suu Kyi turned her back on free press?
The country where Facebook posts whipped up hate
Could Aung San Suu Kyi face Rohingya genocide charges?
Breaking her silence on Thursday in response to a question at an international economics conference in Vietnam, Ms Suu Kyi said the case against the international news agency journalists upheld the rule of law.
She suggested that many critics had not actually read the verdict, saying: "They were not jailed because they were journalists, they were jailed because... the court has decided that they have broken the Official Secrets Act."
The two, she added, had "every right to appeal the judgement and to point out why the judgement was wrong".
The wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spoken out.
What was the case against the reporters?
The Reuters pair were sentenced to seven years in prison on 3 September for violating the state secrets act while investigating a massacre of Rohingya men by the military at a village called Inn Din in Rakhine state.
The two Myanmar nationals had been arrested while carrying official documents which had just been given to them by police officers in a restaurant.
They said they were set up by police, a claim backed by a police witness in the trial.
Image copyrightEPA
Image caption
The verdict against Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo (R) has been widely condemned
The Burmese authorities later launched their own investigation into what happened at Inn Din, and jailed seven soldiers for their involvement in the killings of 10 Rohingya Muslim men there.
It was a rare admission of wrongdoing - the military has exonerated itself of blame for the violence and refused to allow journalists and external investigators into Rakhine to look into the allegations of abuses.
The 73-year-old former activist, who spent more than a decade under house arrest during the military junta period, was once seen as a global human rights icon.
But her perceived failure to stop the rape and killing of Rohingyas has sullied her international reputation and several honours have been withdrawn.
However, she remains very popular in Myanmar, where many people see the Rohingya as interlopers from Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch responded to Ms Suu Kyi's comments by saying that she "got it all wrong".
"She fails to understand that real 'rule of law' means respect for evidence presented in court, actions brought based on clearly defined and proportionate laws, and independence of the judiciary from influence by the government or security forces," Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said.
"On all these counts, the trial of the Reuters journalists failed the test."
What's the background to the Rohingya situation?
The Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are denied citizenship.
The latest crisis erupted in August 2017 when a brutal military crackdown was launched in far-western Rakhine state in response to a Rohingya militant group attacking more than 30 police posts.
Last month, a UN report said top military figures in Myanmar must be investigated for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas.
The report describes the army's response - including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, persecution and enslavement - as "grossly disproportionate to actual security threats".
Ms Suu Kyi has not criticised the powerful military but on Thursday admitted that, in hindsight, "the situation could have been handled better" by her government.
"But we believe that for the sake of long-term stability and security we have to be fair to all sides," she said. "We cannot choose and pick who should be protected by the rule of law."
Aung San Suu Kyi defends verdict against Reuters journalists
Aung San Suu Kyi said their conviction had "nothing to do with freedom of expression at all"
Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists, despite international condemnation.
She said Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had broken the law and their conviction had "nothing to do with freedom of expression at all".
The two were sentenced for possession of police documents while investigating the killing of Rohingya Muslims.
Ms Suu Kyi also said her government could in hindsight have handled the Rohingya situation differently.
Since last year, at least 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar, also known as Burma, after the army launched a brutal crackdown in response to attacks by a Rohingya militant group.
The UN has called for top military figures to be investigated for genocide.
What did Suu Kyi say?
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate - who is Myanmar's de facto leader - had been under intense pressure to comment on both the Rohingya crisis and more recently the journalists, following their jailing earlier this month.
This week, a UN rights body accused Myanmar of "waging a campaign against journalists" and the verdict has sparked criticism internationally, including from US Vice President Mike Pence.
Has Suu Kyi turned her back on free press?
The country where Facebook posts whipped up hate
Could Aung San Suu Kyi face Rohingya genocide charges?
Breaking her silence on Thursday in response to a question at an international economics conference in Vietnam, Ms Suu Kyi said the case against the international news agency journalists upheld the rule of law.
She suggested that many critics had not actually read the verdict, saying: "They were not jailed because they were journalists, they were jailed because... the court has decided that they have broken the Official Secrets Act."
The two, she added, had "every right to appeal the judgement and to point out why the judgement was wrong".
The wives of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spoken out.
What was the case against the reporters?
The Reuters pair were sentenced to seven years in prison on 3 September for violating the state secrets act while investigating a massacre of Rohingya men by the military at a village called Inn Din in Rakhine state.
The two Myanmar nationals had been arrested while carrying official documents which had just been given to them by police officers in a restaurant.
They said they were set up by police, a claim backed by a police witness in the trial.
Image copyrightEPA
Image caption
The verdict against Wa Lone (L) and Kyaw Soe Oo (R) has been widely condemned
The Burmese authorities later launched their own investigation into what happened at Inn Din, and jailed seven soldiers for their involvement in the killings of 10 Rohingya Muslim men there.
It was a rare admission of wrongdoing - the military has exonerated itself of blame for the violence and refused to allow journalists and external investigators into Rakhine to look into the allegations of abuses.
The 73-year-old former activist, who spent more than a decade under house arrest during the military junta period, was once seen as a global human rights icon.
But her perceived failure to stop the rape and killing of Rohingyas has sullied her international reputation and several honours have been withdrawn.
However, she remains very popular in Myanmar, where many people see the Rohingya as interlopers from Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch responded to Ms Suu Kyi's comments by saying that she "got it all wrong".
"She fails to understand that real 'rule of law' means respect for evidence presented in court, actions brought based on clearly defined and proportionate laws, and independence of the judiciary from influence by the government or security forces," Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said.
"On all these counts, the trial of the Reuters journalists failed the test."
What's the background to the Rohingya situation?
The Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are denied citizenship.
The latest crisis erupted in August 2017 when a brutal military crackdown was launched in far-western Rakhine state in response to a Rohingya militant group attacking more than 30 police posts.
Last month, a UN report said top military figures in Myanmar must be investigated for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas.
The report describes the army's response - including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, persecution and enslavement - as "grossly disproportionate to actual security threats".
Ms Suu Kyi has not criticised the powerful military but on Thursday admitted that, in hindsight, "the situation could have been handled better" by her government.
"But we believe that for the sake of long-term stability and security we have to be fair to all sides," she said. "We cannot choose and pick who should be protected by the rule of law."
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