13/11/2017 Newsnight

The village of Tula Toli,

in Rakhine Province in Mynamar.

On August 30 this year,

a massacre occurred there.

We've pieced together what happened.

It's just one example

of the violence that has led

to a huge exodus of Rohingya

Muslims, out of Myanmar.

The people of Tula Toli had seen

neighbouring villages burn,

but thought they were safe.

It's been called a textbook case

of ethnic cleansing.

When you see the testimony,

you might think it is

rather more than that.

Also tonight, the Brexit

Secretary, David Davis,

promises a Commons vote

on the final deal.

So what happens if the

Government loses that vote?

We're talking crisis for the

Government and an exit with

unless Tory rebels can challenge

Theresa May in one key area.

Hello.

It would be nice to think that

in the modern age ethnic cleansing

and religious massacres

no longer occur.

After all, the world has shrunk.

We all know what's

going on these days.

Despots have fewer secrets

than they used to.

They are surely shamed or scared

by international law from kicking

people out of their homes

or standing by while

they are murdered.

It would also be nice to think that

as democracy spreads, so does

civility and the rule of law.

And that's why events this year

in Myanmar have been such a shock.

Although the country has returned

to a degree of democracy,

since August, 615,000 people

of the Rohingya Muslim minority have

fled the country to Bangladesh.

They come with shocking stories

of the treatment meted out back home

in Myanmar's Rakhine province.

It's no wonder they have left.

The plight of the Rohingya

was highlighted by the Prime

Minister, Theresa May,

in her Mansion House speech tonight.

This is a major humanitarian crisis,

which looks like ethnic cleansing,

and it is something

for which the Burmese authorities

and especially the military must

take full responsibility.

Well, in a moment, we'll see

a deeply disturbing film

from Gabriel Gatehouse on some

of the testimony of the refugees,

on the fate of one

village in Rakhine.

But before we do, let's just

just get some background

to the problems there.

First the numbers:

Myanmar is a country

of 55 million people.

Although ethnically divided,

the Buddhist religion provides some

form of unifying identity

to the bulk of the population -

88% or so.

Muslims are a small minority.

In 2015, there were about a million

Rohingya Muslims, a mere 2%

of the Mynamar population.

But in Rakhine province itself -

or Arakan as it is also known -

if the Rohingya were all allowed

back, they'd probably

be the majority.

The history of ethnic tension

between Rakhine Buddhists

and Rohingya Muslims

goes back centuries,

not improved, by the way,

by British Colonial rule.

Scenes as appalling as any refugee

crisis I've ever witnessed.

In the post-war era,

with Myanmar independent,

there have been sporadic

outbreaks of trouble.

Rohingyas have often aspired

to secede from Myanmar,

but separation is an idea

that was greeted with virulent

hostility by the country's

numerous military rulers.

They stripped the Rohingya

of citizenship in 1982

making them stateless.

The latest trouble dates

back to August 25.

A Rohingya group -

call them militants or insurgents -

attacked police and army posts.

The response has been harsh,

creating the huge exodus

that's occurred this year.

We'll see Gabriel's film

in a moment, but he's with me now.

People will see a film that's

extremely important. Just give us a

little background, tell us about

this one village.

This massacre is a

massacre of such horrifying

proportions, such horrific brutality

that it merits investigation in its

own right. I've reported on Islamic

State in Syria and Iraq, but none of

that really comes close. This is by

far the most disturbing story I've

ever covered. We're talking about

mass murder, mass rape. The killing

of infants and of children. But it's

not an isolated case. This is the

kind of thing that has been going on

throughout northern Rakhine State

since the end of August and indeed

continues in some places to go on to

this day. We're talking about whole

villages being burned, razed, ethnic

cleansing in effect. This is

violence that is perpetrated against

a people who, in any case, have few

of the rights, basic rights that

human beings, normal human beings

would expect, besides being denied

citizenship, they're denied the

right to vote. They're denied decent

health care, decent education.

They're even denied the right to

travel freely inside their own

country. This is violence that's

perpetrated by a government that is

led by somebody who's been awarded

the Nobel Peace Prize. Now it's

difficult to report from inside

Myanmar, the Burmese government

doesn't allow independent access to

the affected areas. Certainly it

would be impossible to get

meaningful access to the village

we're talking about. So we travelled

to Bangladesh and collected

testimony in the camps there, where

the survivors of this massacre have

sought refuge. Just to warn you

again, our report contains extremely

disturbing images, very disturbing

testimony and graphic descriptions

of sexual violence.

These people have just

crossed the border.

They are in no-man's land.

They have been driven

from their homes in Myanmar,

now they are waiting for permission

to enter Bangladesh.

The Rohingya are a people that

neither country wants.

What happened in your village?

They just burned our houses.

These are some of the survivors,

they are hungry, they are sick,

and they are scared.

Across the river, there

is a deliberate campaign

of terror going on.

A campaign from

which no-one is safe.

We don't know how many

people have been killed,

but we do have some idea of how many

have been burnt and chased out

of their homes, these are just

the tiny fraction of the hundreds

and hundreds of thousands

of people, who have fled.

In our investigation,

we are going to focus

on the events of one day,

of one massacre, in one village.

Its name is Tula Toli.

Since August, more than 600,000

people have sought refuge

in the camps in Bangladesh.

People who brought little with them,

but the nightmarish memories

of their experiences at the hands

of the Burmese military.

We have come here, to find survivors

of the Tula Toli massacre.

We have spoken to six of them,

we have cross references

their testimony with video evidence.

Absolutely horrific pictures.

With maps of the local area,

as well as with interviews collected

by human rights organisations.

What emerges is a picture

of systematic violence.

Violence that has been described

as a text book example

of ethnic cleansing.

Using a satellite photograph

of the area, a Rohingya elder

showed me how the massacre unfolded.

The village of Tula Toli consists

of a number of settlements

surrounded on three sides

by the meandering flow of a river.

In previous days soldiers set

fire to other villages

on the opposite bank.

That Wednesday morning, the 30th

August, they crossed into Tula Toli.

There was panic.

Everyone mentions the river.

With the soldiers advancing

from the north-west,

and a police post to the south,

many of the villagers ran east,

they ended up on the river bank.

They were trapped.

And yourself were on the other

side of the river?

This woman showed us

where she and others swam

across the river at a point

downstream where it was

narrow enough to cross.

They used banana trees and plastic

canisters as liferafts.

Did you see this with your own eyes?

From a hill on the opposite bank,

they watched the horror unfold.

The horrific scenes she witnessed,

still give her nightmares.

She watched the bodies

of her neighbour's children wash

up on the river bank,

the scene was filmed

by another villager.

The children's names

were Rashida, five years old,

Kushida, three and Zahidia,

who was 11 months.

Anora Begum, her husband

and her four children all managed

to escape with their lives.

Mohammed was not so fortunate.

He and his youngest daughter

survived but three of her

sisters were killed,

and so was their mother.

The violence began five days before

the massacre at Tula Toli,

on the 25th August, when members

of a Rohingya militant group

attacked a number of police posts

inside Myanmar, killing 12.

In response, the Burmese military

began what they called

clearance operations.

Boats filled with refugees have

been coming ever since.

It's two month since the terrible

incidents that we have been looking

at and these people are saying

it is still going on.

Some have accused the Burmese

Government of using the attacks

by the militants as a pretext

for a vicious and indiscrimate

crackdown against civilians.

Bangladeshi authorities monitor

what goes on on the other

side of the border.

And I have been told that

from the beginning of August,

so about three weeks before

the violence started,

they noticed an increase in military

activity on the Myanmar side.

Now, if that is true, that would

suggest an element of preparation

for the violence that followed.

And this is the suggestion

that we have heard corroborated

by some of the witnesses we have

spoken to as well.

We were told an an incident that

happened nearly two weeks before

the massacre at Tula Toli.

Also, before the attacks

by the militant group known

as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation

Army.

Which sparked the response

by the Burmese military.

Were they trying to recruitment

people in the village,

was there some truth to that?

Witnesses said the policemen

were called in by the village

administrator, a local

Buddhist Government official.

A few days later that same

official called a meeting.

Elders from both communities

were asked to sign

a kind of peace treaty.

Was that unusual to be asked to do

something like that?

The Rohingya of Tula Toli saw that

document as an explicit

guarantee of their safety.

It's because of this they stayed

in their homes even when they saw

other villages being burned.

Now they believe the administrator

double crossed them.

Almost everyone we spoke

to mentioned this village

administrator, the local

Government representative.

His name is Singh.

He would accuse the villagers

of supporting the militants some

said, others that he tried to force

them to register as foreigners.

Another village elder,

told me before the massacre

he and Mr Singh had been

in regular contact.

Do you have his phone

number, can you call him?

Human rights investigators

and journalists have been trying

to talk to this man for months.

None have managed to

contact him, until now.

Mr Hussein lost a son and three

grandchildren in the attack.

Now, over a crackly phone line

he accuses the village administrator

of complicity in the massacre.

At the end of the conversation,

Mr Hussein seems unconvinced.

Do you believe him?

The majority of Myanmar's Rohingya

Muslims have by now already fled.

Dispossessed and stateless,

the mud soaked camps

of Bangladesh are what they must,

for now, call home.

The Burmese Government

says its military operation

are a response to attacks

by militants from the

Arakan Rohingya Salvation

Army on 25th August.

But what about those reports

of troop movements weeks earlier?

Well, we are on our way now to meet

an officer in the Bangladeshi border

guard who might know more about this

and might be willing to talk to us.

Hello, Major.

How's it going.

Fine.

Good.

The major said he wasn't authorised

to speak to the BBC on camera

but we did have a conversation off

camera and he said I could quote him

with the following.

They saw from around 5th August

a huge concentration,

his words of Myanmar military

in the border area.

his words, of Myanmar

military in the border area.

He said apart from burning

people's homes they extorted

valuables, took their money.

I asked him what the purpose

of all of this was, he said

they are trying to make the state

Rohingya free.

By late morning on the 30th August,

on the river bank at Tula Toli,

dozens of people had

already been murdered.

But it wasn't over yet.

Some villagers had escaped

by swimming across the river,

but many remained behind,

especially younger women

who had been separated

from the rest by the soldiers.

Those who survived endured an ordeal

of almost unimaginable horror.

Severely burned and wounded,

Mumtaz managed to crawl to safety

and eventually escape under

cover of darkness.

She came to Bangladesh

with her seven-year-old daughter.

Her daughter was beaten

by the soldiers, but survived,

the others did not.

One of her children, she said,

was burned to death.

At least one other survivor

of the Tula Toli massacre has

reported her young child was thrown

into a fire.

Others had infants

torn from their arms.

Mumtaz is only 30 years old.

The men who raped her, who killed

her children, were soldiers.

But she, like others,

told us that non-Rohingya civilians

took part in the attack that day

as well, demanding

money and valuables.

I wondered about the Buddhist

village administrator,

no-one we spoke to said

he personally took part

in the attack, and it seems unlikely

a local civilian official could have

stopped the powerful Burmese

military, but still it felt

like he had questions to answer.

Hello sir, it is the BBC here, just

to say we are recording this call,

can I ask you why did you not warn

the villagers that the army

was going to come in?

The people here say that you wanted

the Rohingya out of the village,

The Burmese Government doesn't

regard the Rohingya Muslims

as citizens of Myanmar.

Stark in the camps in Bangladesh

without official status it will be

hard for them to return home,

even if they felt

it was safe to do so.

The United Nations has called

this ethnic cleansing.

Others prefer the term genocide.

By whatever name you call it,

the massacre at Tula Toli

was a monstrous crime.

A crime that the Burmese Government

is not investigating.

Every evening on the border,

more people try to cross

to safety in Bangladesh,

new arrivals say the villages

are still being burned.

That they are still being chased

and terrorised from their homes.

If it continues like this

there won't be many

Rohingya left in Myanmar.

Gabriel Gatehouse reporting.

And making that film with him,

were producer, James Clayton,

and camerman, Jack Garland.

We did contact the Myanmar embassy

last week to get more

on their side of the story,

but we have not had a response.

And one post script,

to date the UK - that is DFID

using the aid budget -

has committed £47 million to help

ease the situation there.

On Brexit we had an apparent

concession to MPs from

the Government today.

Yes, they'll get a vote

on any Brexit deal.

It'll be in legislation,

enshrined in a Withdrawal Agreement

and Implementation Bill.

The debate now is whether that is

the so-called meaningful vote that

numerous MPs had sought or whether

it is a fake meaningful vote.

Our political editor,

Nick Watt, is with me.

Is that meaningful vote? It guess it

depen on what happened if they vote

no

I think I will give you a yes,

but answer, it is meaningful because

we are talking about legislation,

ledge laying could be amended and it

will contrast with the earlier vote

the Government's proposed which is

is a vote on a motion that would

take place on the deal before the

European Parliament gets its vote.

But this piece of legislation would

be like a treaty, there will be a

treaty with the EU, you can't really

amend treaty, because it has been

done. And also David Davis said this

evening if you vote this bill down,

you are voting for a no deal, and

crucially, the pro European Tories

would have lost the one bit of

leverage they would have, if the

Government succeeds in getting on to

the face of the bill, its own amend,

which is to name the date of Brexit.

So that is...

That happens unless

you change it

They would not be able

to say can we extend.

So it is vote

for the Deal or No Deal. Doesn't it

mean that the only way the rebels

can change the Government's mind is

to vote the Government down, is to

treat it as a confidence motion?

Will they treat it as a confidence

motion sand say if this fails the

Government goes?

Where we are now

that is the on the way they could do

it. At the moment the Tory rebels

haven't got the numbers, there are

five or six Labour people, MPs who

will vote with the Government, the

Government has a majority of ten. So

the Tory rebels have to be in double

figure, will they be there? I'm not

sure, that is just to amend the

legislation. Bringing down the

Government? They would have to go in

the division lobbies with Jeremy

Corbyn, win a vote of no confidence

and what? Give him two weeks to try

and form a government. I don't think

any Tory MP would do that.

Last one,

if it is not impossible that we will

be often a take it or leave it deal

by the EU at the end of it all and

the Government will say we want the

leave it, it is a bad deal. Is there

any way MPs can say hang on a

minute, you can't say no, we would

like to say yes to that deal. Can

they kind of, can the EU reach over

the head of Government to give our

MPs a deal that the Government don't

want. ?

Remember that the Government

controls the legislative time

Northern Ireland Assembly the House

of Commons, and this is a minority

Conservative administration but they

do have the support of the DUP. Ten

votes in the bag because the DUP do

not want to see Jeremy Corbyn as

Prime Minister, buzz you have right,

the EU is thinking of doing that,

because they are sensing weakness.

Often on programmes like this,

we talk about the world

as if it is a rational place.

We query policy decisions as though

people have thought about them

logically.

Often they have, but in

the last few decades,

we have more than ever come

to realise that human thought is far

from rational and is subject

to all sorts of human error.

We have cognitive biases

that sway our thinking,

just as Spock used to

tell us in Star Trek.

Apart from him, it was two Israeli

psychologists who worked

together in the '70s and '80s,

who did more than anyone

to promote our understanding

of our irrational side.

And their collaboration

makes a fascinating

story in its own right.

It's been told in a book called

The Undoing Project by the acclaimed

US writer Michael Lewis,

the man behind the Big Short and

Moneyball among other blockbusters.

I met up with him this morning,

to talk about the world today,

cognitive biases, and those two

Israeli psychologists who most

people have probably not heard of.

So I forgive people

who haven't heard of them,

because I hadn't heard of them.

Danny would be best known for having

one won the noble prize

in economics in 2002.

Despite not being an economist.

There were two psychologists,

who met in the late 60s,

in Jerusalem and though

they were seen by the people

round them as complete

opposite, total odd couple.

One was neurotic an depressed

an artistic and imaginative

and the other was this very up beat

logician, but who was kind

of everybody could see his genius,

they came together to do work

that was unlike any work that had

been done in psychology,

they explored scientifically how

the mind worked, and specifically,

they went looking for the errors

the mind make, and found kind

of systematic errors that the mind

makes and this had implications

for all kinds of fields,

you name the field I can

give you an implication,

but medicine, in law,

and their work spawned the field

of behavioural economics.

The partnership between them

was fantastically productive,

and as you say, sort

of revolutionised the way

we think about thinking,

And then they didn't quite hold it

together at the end.

Oh no.

They busted up like a pair of loves

who were upset with each other.

The relationship, the relationship

had exactly the ark of a romantic

affair, they met each other,

they fell in love with each

other's minds, they had

ten spectacular year,

the sex was the ideas,

the children were the result.

Give us an example of your favourite

cognitive error we make

You have a simple one to describe,

the way totally irrelevant

information can distort a decision,

they call it anchoring,

so they brought people into a room,

they gave, put them with a wheel

of fortune that had numbers 0

to 99 on it.

They had them spin the wheel

of fortune, and it would come up

on a number, they would ask them

after this what percentage

of the countries in the United

Nations are in from Africa.

And the people who had spun a high

number would guess a higher number

and the people who spun allow number

would guess a low number.

America's in a peculiar place

at the moment, isn't it?

Have you found this cognitive

bias framework useful

in thinking about Trump,

the election, the way

the voters have behaved?

The joy of this is that you can

filter almost anything through it,

you can certainly filter

the election through it.

The first thing their work would say

is wasn't it incredible,

after the election, how an event

that nobody saw coming,

all of a sudden, starts to get

explained in all kinds of ways that

suggests it was predictable.

Their point would be

it wasn't predictable.

There's a lot of

randomness in elections.

You hold the election

one day versus another

you get a different result.

Who shows up that day,

so on and so forth.

Where do you think it's going to go?

I still hold out hope for a comic

ending, rather than a tragic one.

He has no idea what he's doing.

He's surrounding himself largely,

often with people who have no

idea, who are ill suited

to the role they're playing.

He's trying to mobilise

ugly forces in society.

I don't think there's

enough of it to sustain.

If I had to bet what happens, I'd

bet he's out of office in a year.

I mean it does seem like American

checks and balances have stopped him

doing very much, right?

He hasn't actually,

look at what he's done,

he's basically tweeted a lot.

He's appointed some judges.

They're going to be

there for a long time.

He's made a lot of people unhappy.

He's stopped some refugees

from coming into the country.

He's made people very unsettled

about their health care.

What he's done is change

everybody's mood.

Quite likely what's going to happen

is it's going to get worse.

His presence in the office

is weakening his party.

The way he's reacting

to the Muller investigation he's

behaving exactly as a man

would on whom Russia had something.

I mean, the only way to explain

the tone of his behaviour is he's

afraid of what Russia might

do to him.

Michael Lewis, thank you very much.

Thank you.

How can we protect rhinos?

There are only about

28,000 in the wild,

and a new film invites us to wonder

whether hunting them,

or allowing trade in their horns,

can actually be good

for the species.

I am paying for this hunt, people

are employed because we are hunting.

If there is no value

and we can't hunt these animals,

they will be extinct.

The commodification

of wildlife, what a vision

of nature that would be.

They like to talk

about conservation,

they are just brainwashing.

They enjoy killing.

The change is coming.

We're going to put it into this.

Surely we want our world to survive.

We have to keep this fight going.

This is my trophy, and there's not

any bureaucrat that can

take it away from me.

Now - that's the taster

of the film Trophy -

which is in cinemas and downloadable

later this week.

It looks at the money that can be

raised and the habitat protected

by allowing some commercial hunting.

Or more intriguingly,

the idea of farming rhino in order

to sell their ivory.

Clearly, this has not been

the traditional approach

to animal protection.

Well, joining me are John Hume,

who claims to be the world's biggest

private rhino breeder.

He features in the film,

and wants to sell ivory

that is humanely taken

from the animals.

Also with me is Tania McCrea-Steele

from the International Fund

for Animal Welfare.

Very good evening to you both. John,

tell us what you do - you've got how

many rhino on your ranch?

I have

1,538 as of today.

You breed them?

I

breed rhinos and I believe that I

have the recipe to save them from

extinction.

Which is?

Breeding

better, protecting better.

Right.

And the crucial bit that you want,

which is you basically take off

their horns. You don't kill them to

take off their horns.

No, you only

take off their horns, like you take

off your nails. Cutting it off on

the dead part that's not alive. So

we trim their horns and the day

after we've trimmed them, it's worth

so much less to the poacher.

Because

the rhino hasn't got much horn left.

It's worth so much left for him to

kill and steal the horn. It's

necessary to make it less attractive

to the poacher, when he's still got

the same amount of risk, the same

amount of work but much less we

regard.

Crucial -- reward. Crucially

you want the money from selling the

horn to pay for the whole operation.

Exactly. Having removed some of the

horn, by the horn trimming

procedure, it is dangerous to store

it and expensive to store it. So why

don't we use the money from the horn

to save the lives of the rest of the

rhino.

Let me put that question to

Tanya. We get the business model.

Yeah.

What is wrong with that as a

business model?

I understand that

John is a businessman and trading in

rhino horn, let's face it, is

profitable. That's what is

motivating all these criminals to

change their criminal syndicates and

focus on illegal trade in rhino

horn. What we'll see with the sale

going ahead is actually the demand

for rhino horn being stoked. We'll

see an increase in appetite for the

trade in rhino horn. What we really

need to do is we need to suppress

that demand -

You're legitimising a

market, basically.

Yeah, then it

makes it nigh on impossible for both

consumers who might buy into the

green washing, but for enforcers to

tell the difference between illegal

rhino horn and legal horn. If you're

buying a piece of rhino horn, find

me one customer that's going to DNA

test it.

The crucial issue is

whether a market in rhino horns

legitimises the illegal market in

rhino horns?

No banning has ever

worked in the world. America learned

that lesson by trying to ban

alcohol. We have given the market to

the poachers. We've given them carte

blanche. They've got no competition.

All the business has gone to them.

Because we've kept it away from the

legal suppliers of rhino horn. My

rhinos will all be dead in ten years

if I don't finance keeping them

alive.

That's simply not true. Back

in the 80s we saw an ivory ban come

into effect. We saw ivory poaching

massively decrease. Then we saw a

case being made for putting legal

ivory back into circulation and what

we saw after that, which we

prophesised, which was there would

be a spike in poaching. That's

exactly what's happened. This has

played out before with elephants. We

need to make sure it doesn't happen

again with rhinos. We're reaching a

tipping point where we're getting

the political momentum to tackle

this problem. This is going to

really be a backward step because

we're on the verge of bidding the

network to break a network.

There

are elephant experts in Africa who

will completely disagree with that

and tell you a one-off sale is not

the way to go, not in ivory or rhino

horn. Obviously, I'm here to argue

for the life of my rhinos.

The

interesting thing is that some say

if you can let people make money out

a big mammal, the big mammals will

survive. If you make money by

killing big mammals they will be

extinct in a few generations.

It's a

lovely idea in an ideal world. But

this is the real world. This isn't

just about the rhinos, this is about

the lives of the people standing

between the rhinos and poachers to

protect them because they want

rhinos to be around for their

children. They don't want to see

them go the way of the dinosaurs.

What we're doing at the

international fund for animal

welfare is working with local

communities to make sure that they

can benefit from wildlife thriving

on their doorstep and working on

tangible solutions.

The film is

called Trophy, thank you both very

much indeed.

That's all we have time for.

I'm back tomorrow.

Till then, goodnight.