Myanmar: The Hidden Truth Panorama

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

A humanitarian crisis on an epic scale.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees

driven out of Myanmar by military action.

-TRANSLATION:

-The children, elderly, babies, pregnant women couldn't run

and they were burned.

Tonight on Panorama,

how August's brutal assault on the Rohingya

was the climax of years of persecution

and the result of deliberate military preparation.

-TRANSLATION:

-Local Buddhists from our village

told us they had joined the training.

When the army was burning our houses, torturing us,

they were there.

How months earlier, Aung San Suu Kyi,

winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,

had been warned that atrocities were being committed.

I appealed to her emotional standing -

she is respected in the country -

to do whatever she could to bring this to a close.

To my great regret, it didn't seem to happen.

The world needs to pay attention to what's happening to this.

The world needs to act, because if it doesn't,

these violations are just going to keep happening.

Will 2017 be remembered as a year when the world stood by

while a genocide unfolded?

-TRANSLATION:

-The helicopter landed

in the football ground in our village.

The military surrounded it.

If someone crossed by the football field, they would be killed.

My name is Monzur Ali. I'm 11 years old.

When I came here, I started drawing pictures.

Monzur is the youngest of five children.

-TRANSLATION:

-Our home was burned down on the day we left.

We certainly didn't want to leave my village,

but there was a lot of shooting.

The shooting was near my house.

They also fired a launcher and my house shook.

He and his family escaped over the border to

Bangladesh from Myanmar, the country also known as Burma.

He is one of 650,000 Rohingya people

to have made the journey since the end of August.

-TRANSLATION:

-Older women were stamped on,

and then the soldiers grabbed them by the hair and slaughtered them.

If the women did not die,

the soldiers stamped on their faces with their boots.

Some were killed by breaking their necks

and some were killed after having their arms and feet broken.

Some were killed by cutting their throats.

Because I saw that, I'm drawing this.

The children draw the same things.

Helicopters...

..soldiers...

..dead bodies...

..shooting...

..burning homes.

Here's how camera phones caught the same terrible events.

Since the assaults began in August,

Panorama has been receiving hours of footage

secretly passed out of Myanmar.

It's not possible to independently verify these images,

but there is a pattern.

Thousands were killed in attacks on village after village.

Myo Thu Gyi.

Mi Chaung Zay.

Tula Toli.

It goes on...

..and on.

Their homes destroyed, families now face life in a refugee camp.

-TRANSLATION:

-If I could educate my children, I'd be at peace.

But now, I feel like I'm going crazy.

My head is spinning

because I'm worried about the future of my children.

Many refugees arrived in Bangladesh barefoot,

their shoes lost on the long walk to safety.

At first, refugees built their own shelters in the muddy hills.

There was little fresh water, no sanitation...

..not enough food.

Most had to rely on hand-outs from well-meaning Bangladeshis.

Conditions have improved, but refugees are still arriving.

From the river that divides the two countries,

we can see tents and people still stranded on the beach,

but we're not allowed to film there.

The government will not let us in

to investigate what's been happening,

but we have gathered powerful evidence that shows

just how deliberate this attack on the Rohingya people has been.

The Myanmar government has said military action

was a response to terrorist attacks.

But, in fact, the persecution began years ago,

as the refugees in the camps have told us.

-TRANSLATION:

-They were torturing us

in order to drive us out of the country.

Burma could not be our home and would be taken away from us.

That is what was put into our heads from a very young age.

My name is Senu Ara Begum. I am 30 years old.

I'm Rohingya from Burma.

Now I'm in Bangladesh in a refugee camp.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country

that was once part of the British Empire.

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group from Rakhine State

in the west of the country.

Their right to live in Myanmar has been contested for decades.

Stripped of citizenship in the 1980s,

virtually all aspects of their lives have been restricted -

travel, education, marriage.

It was even difficult to register their babies.

In 2012, things were to get a lot worse.

-TRANSLATION:

-Everything was in flames.

The whole village was burnt to ashes.

Ten Muslims were killed after the murder

and alleged rape of a Buddhist woman.

GLASS SHATTERS

There were Rohingya riots

and Buddhist homes were attacked.

The response of the security forces was swift and deadly.

-TRANSLATION:

-Some people fled.

Then there were others - like the children, the elderly,

babies, pregnant women - who couldn't run,

and then they were burned.

All were burned.

More than 10,000 homes were destroyed and about 140,000 people,

mostly Rohingya, were driven from their homes.

-TRANSLATION:

-The military and the local Buddhists came

and told us to leave the village.

They said, "If you don't go, we will torture and rape you."

Senu Ara and tens of thousands of other Rohingya were

herded into makeshift camps in Myanmar.

But once the violence was over, they were not allowed to return home.

Matthew Smith is a human rights activist

who's worked in Myanmar for more than a decade.

People were corralled into what have essentially become

modern-day concentration camps.

The people who are confined to these camps, they can't move.

They are essentially trapped in these places.

-TRANSLATION:

-We couldn't go to mosque. Our children couldn't study.

We couldn't pray.

They would constantly monitor us.

If they saw children studying religion,

they would take the clerics away and pour boiling water on them.

Outside the camps, identity cards were withdrawn,

most were denied the right to vote.

The oppression intensified.

These are not policies

that are enforced against any other community of people in Myanmar.

These are policies that are specifically designed

and specifically targeted for the Rohingya population.

SOBBING

And the cycle of violence continued.

In 2016, it escalated again.

These women lost their husbands in a brutal assault.

So this is the only picture that you have left.

All the other pictures of your family were destroyed.

This is the only one left.

The only one.

They were married to three brothers.

It's the anniversary of their husbands' murders.

Marijan was pregnant with her third child when her husband was killed.

-TRANSLATION:

-My name is Marijan.

I have three children. The youngest one is only four months old.

His name is Mohammed Anwar.

Our village was very beautiful, with trees and a mosque and a school.

My husband and brothers-in-law used to go fishing and farming,

so we had a nice life there.

But the Rohingya militant movement was growing.

In October 2016, Rohingya militants attacked three border posts,

killing nine security personnel.

The violence that followed was unprecedented,

according to a UN report.

-TRANSLATION:

-It was a Monday. It was eight o'clock.

The local Buddhists came.

They were walking around shooting everyone and burning the houses.

We fled from our homes. They then separated the men and the women.

They took the women inside. We didn't see how they killed the men.

By the time it was 10 or 11 o'clock,

they were all done with their murdering.

This woman fled the village with her children.

We came back one and a half months later and there was nothing left.

We dug three graves. The bodies were unrecognisable, even their faces.

We couldn't organise a proper burial, but we prayed for them all.

Entire villages were destroyed.

The security forces killed babies and children.

There was massive and systematic rape and sexual violence.

These Rohingya refugees offer support to those in the camps

who've been raped and abused.

They all believe they know who is responsible.

If we talk about the crimes, what women had to go through

and the violence,

it's rape, physical assault and also humiliation.

Because we've got lots of cases where girls were raped

in front of their father or in front of their parents.

A UN report said the violence showed total disdain

for the right to life of Rohingyas.

By now, Aung San Suu Kyi was in charge of the civilian government.

Her party had won a landslide victory.

For 15 years, she'd been held under house arrest by the military regime,

becoming the world's most famous political prisoner.

She'd won a Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent struggle

for democracy and human rights.

So, for me,

receiving the Nobel Peace Prize means personally extending

my concern for democracy and human rights beyond national borders.

The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart.

But the door in her heart appears

to have remained closed to the Rohingya.

The UN's human rights chief has told Panorama that in January this year,

he spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi, imploring her to take action.

I appealed to her emotional standing -

she is respected in the country - to do whatever she could

to bring this to a close and, to my great regret,

-it didn't seem to happen.

-But you literally said to her,

"There are appalling atrocities being committed in your country.

"Please do something about it," and her response was what?

So, she said, "This is awful. Certainly, we want to look at it."

After that, they began to question whether the facts were correct.

So, it seems Aung San Suu Kyi chose

to challenge the UN High Commissioner's facts

rather than challenge her country's generals.

She has little direct power over the military,

but the international community did nothing to stop them, either.

There was no action taken against them.

I suppose that they then drew a conclusion

-that they could continue without fear of...

-With impunity?

-Yeah.

What we began to sense was that this was really well thought-out

and planned and what seems to have happened

is that they were pushing on a door

and if it moved, then they would continue to push.

And push they did.

We've gathered new evidence

that in the months before this summer's terrible attacks,

the state accelerated its campaign against the Rohingya.

The government made an offer.

Every citizen in Rakhine wishing to protect their state

would have the chance to become part of the local armed police, it said.

Mohammed Rafiq was a successful business owner in Myanmar.

-TRANSLATION:

-My name is Mohammed Rafiq. I'm 33.

I had two shops, one warehouse.

My home was burned. The shops were looted.

He said some of his Buddhist customers

were recruited by the security forces.

A number of local Buddhists from our village

told us they had joined the training.

When the army was burning our houses, torturing us,

they were there.

They were just like the army.

They had the same kind of weapons the soldiers were carrying.

They were local boys. We knew them.

Matthew Smith has been investigating the build-up

to this year's violence.

He's spoken to dozens of witnesses.

This next person says,

"The Rakhine people were given guns by the government.

"I know this because the government brought some guns with a truck.

"We looked into a window and saw piles of guns."

So, this person's describing a situation

two months before the August 25th attacks

when state security officials were driving an instalment of rifles,

guns to a neighbouring Rakhine village.

With the help of these local people,

it was much easier for the army to make us suffer

because they know the place.

If they saw someone among the Muslims who was a kind of leader,

the local Buddhists would alert the army.

The state was making life harder for the Rohingya in other ways, too.

Aid organisations found it difficult to operate.

Food shortages were widespread.

In July, the World Food Programme published

an assessment of the situation.

Now, this is it and it makes shocking reading.

It found that more than two-thirds of the population

had an inadequate diet and it warned

that unless food supplies improved,

almost half of all children under five - 80,000 in total -

would suffer acute severe malnutrition.

Now, that is malnutrition so bad,

it could damage their development for life.

The response of the authorities?

They cut off virtually all aid.

What it means is that people who rely on your service,

they will go without that food or that medicine.

People would really suffer

and I think that you could say that people would be in danger of dying.

This aid worker was in north Rakhine.

He says tensions were rising.

We saw an increased military activity,

army trucks driving into villages and out of villages,

which I had never seen before up until that point.

And our staff were telling us

that that was security clearance operations happening.

He doesn't want us to reveal his identity,

because he's concerned about his safety.

There really was a sense that it was a bad situation.

In terms of something being about to happen, we just had no idea,

but there was an overwhelming feeling that this is a really

awful situation.

Myanmar has said its recent military action was a response to

coordinated terrorist attacks.

But two weeks earlier, the Army was reinforcing.

More troops were brought in.

A UN representative issued a public warning urging restraint.

But when the militants struck on August 25,

the military action that followed was not restrained.

It was well organised, systematic and huge.

-TRANSLATION:

-My mother said, "Let's go now,"

and we crossed the stream in front of the market by paddle boat.

At that time the helicopters were circling above.

They would have killed us if they saw us.

But luckily they didn't see us.

Senuara was forced to flee after the camp in Myanmar

she was living in was burnt to the ground.

CAR HORN

-TRANSLATION:

-For two days and for two nights,

I started running and I fled through the forest.

What could we eat?

There was no food, so we ate leaves from the trees.

-TRANSLATION:

-It breaks my heart.

There is so much oppression in that country.

How can we live there?

The most important thing is your life,

so to save our lives and to save our faith, we left the country.

About 350 Rohingya villages were burned.

Two-thirds of the Rohingya population fled the country.

Thousands have been killed.

The total number of dead will probably never be known.

The Army says it committed no atrocities,

blaming terrorists for torching houses.

The head of the Armed Forces is General Min Aung Hlaing.

Like many Burmese people,

he doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Rohingya.

He says they are Bengalis from Bangladesh.

A week into the assault, he said the government was tackling

what he described as an unfinished problem.

The attack on the Rohingya has been called a textbook

example of ethnic cleansing.

But does it amount to something more?

The so-called crime of crimes - genocide.

Acts of genocide are those committed with the intent to destroy

a group of people.

The crime was defined after the Holocaust.

Member countries of the newly founded United Nations signed

a convention.

The aim was to ensure that genocide should never happen again.

But this month at the UN in Geneva, it has been raised once more.

Can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present?

The UN's human rights chief called for a criminal investigation.

Only a court could judge

whether what has happened in Myanmar is genocide.

It's very hard to establish that, because the thresholds are high,

but it wouldn't surprise me in the future if a court

were to make such a finding on the basis of what we have seen.

So, who might be brought to justice?

He believes this could go right to the top.

Given the scale of the military operation, I mean,

clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high enough

level, and then there is the crime of omission,

that if it came to your knowledge that this was being committed and

you did nothing to stop it, then you could be culpable as well for that.

But almost certainly at the very highest levels,

because this attracted the attention of the world community very

early on and it, you know, it is

inconceivable that the army chief and Aung San Suu Kyi

were not aware that this was happening in their country.

Well, certainly you can see a court making that argument, that the

international news media was awash with imagery of burning

villages, of claims that atrocities were being committed,

so certainly one could make the argument that there was time

sufficient for a halt to the operations

and inquiries to be launched, and that didn't seem to happen.

Which raises the possibility of Aung San Suu Kyi,

once an icon of the battle for human rights,

standing trial for one of the most heinous crimes of all - genocide.

We asked Aung San Suu Kyi and General Hlaing for a response,

but neither has replied.

Aung San Suu Kyi did speak publicly three weeks after the attacks began.

We are concerned to hear numbers of Muslims are fleeing

across the border to congregate.

We want to find out why this exodus is happening.

She said there had been no armed clashes since September 5.

But Human Rights Watch says more than 100 villages were burned

after that.

And satellites detected fires in October

and right into November.

Meanwhile the leader of Myanmar's civilian government still

refuses even to use the word Rohingya.

For goodness' sake, you know,

everything has been stripped from them, you know,

and then to strip their name from them, I mean,

it's sort of dehumanising to the point where, you know,

you may, you begin to believe that anything is possible.

We heard, "Never again," after the Holocaust,

we heard, "Never again," after the Rwandan genocide, and it's happening

again and it's happening right now and the world is failing to act.

And it is not over.

There are almost a million Rohingya refugees in these camps.

There's little prospect of them going home,

little hope for them here.

-TRANSLATION:

-You don't just give up the country that you live in.

No-one does.

There's so much misery there and that's why we left.

-TRANSLATION:

-My heart longs to go back,

but I don't want to go back like this.

I want to go back to a country where I can get justice,

I can have a good life.

-TRANSLATION:

-They have the weapons. The Rohingyas do not.

They can do whatever they want with Rohingyas. We are powerless.