The farmers who had been tending to cows and seeing to paddy fields didn’t stand a chance when the peaceful evening on April 3 was shattered by two military attack helicopters.
By the time the bombs had stopped falling and the pointless barrage was over, at least seven were dead and another 18 injured.
Two days later in Geneva, Switzerland, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN briefed journalists on the event, telling them: “The Myanmar military is again carrying out attacks against its own civilians – attacks which may constitute war crimes.
“These particular killings we have been able to verify with some certainty,” she continued, noting that the UN’s human rights office had received a large amount of video footage and photographs supporting the attack.
“This is why we’re putting it out there that there was a helicopter attack, that bombs were dropped, and that these seven civilians were killed.”
The event was the latest in a series of violent episodes in the region which has seen many civilians killed, homes torched, arbitrary arrests and abductions. More than 20,000 civilians are believed to have fled their homes.
The clashes were sparked by an initial attack on police outposts in January by the Arakan Army, an armed group who say their mission is to “protect our Arakan people, and to establish peace, justice, freedom and development”.
It is estimated that the group is made up of as many as 7,000 fighters.
Shamdasani added: “There was an attack by the Arakan Army on several police posts and the Tatmadaw – the army of Myanmar – responded with very strong force and we received information that instructions were given to them to crush the Arakan Army.”
Tragically, the civilians most heavily caught up in the violence are the Muslim Rohingya, an ethnic minority group that has faced persecution in Burma for decades. At the end of 2017, this persecution exploded into a genocidal campaign which saw the country’s military conducting “clearance operations” in civilian areas.
The accounts that emerged in the subsequent months painted a picture that was disturbingly similar to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Estimates show that at least 10,000 were killed in the violence, almost 400 villages were burnt to the ground and there were widespread gang rapes and sexual violence.
One of the most infamous events was the Tula Toli massacre which took place in August 2017. Eyewitnesses claimed soldiers closed off all exit points before storming the village. Women and children were separated from the men and told to go to a riverbank where they were told to run.
As they started running and the soldiers opened fire. Those who survived the hail of bullets drowned in the river.
The men were then lined up at the river and were either shot, decapitated, burned alive or lynched. Others were blown up by rocket launchers.
Today, hundreds of thousands who fled in the wake of it all are languishing in refugee camps in Bangladesh, while those who remained in the country are trapped in the fighting between the Arkan Army and the military.
The Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) has claimed the military has also placed a ban on aid, resulting in severe shortages of food and medical supplies.
Kyaw Win, BHRN’s Executive Director, said in March: “In this conflict, the Burmese Military is proving again that they have no concern for human life or the safety of civilians. This is especially true of minorities in the country and the ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya living in Rakhine state are evidence of this inhumane disregard.
“The International Community must insist that Burma initiates a ceasefire with the Arakan Army to protect civilians from further harm.”
But arguably it is the international community’s reluctance to take any effective action against Burma’s military that has allowed the cycle of violence to continue.
The UK is a clear example. In March, the country’s Department for International Trade co-hosted a Burma trade and investment conference in London and allowed a number of Burmese business leaders to speak, despite ties to the military.
It showed complete disregard for a damning report from the UN published in September 2018 that detailed widespread war crimes against all ethnic groups in the country and urged sanctions against military leaders.
The UK’s own Mission to the UN said the month before the event that “it is the Burmese military who are the root cause of these longstanding problems”.
The European Union has also failed to support the UN’s recommendation that Burma be referred to either the International Criminal Court or to an alternative ad hoc tribunal and has not been transparent over whether any member states are providing training to the country’s military.
And it was America, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, that championed Burma as a democratic success story and laid the groundwork for these spikes in violence. In 2016, Obama pledged to remove economic sanctions despite this going against the recommendations made my several human rights experts.
He justified the move by saying that the country had “greater enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms” and “has been significantly altered by substantial advances to promote democracy”. This decision emboldened the military and a month after the sanctions were lifted there was a resurgence of violence in Rakhine State, setting the scene for the 2017 genocide.
Since then the Trump administration has been reluctant to place effective sanctions that punish those responsible for the rape, torture and death of thousands. Meanwhile, they have crippled the economy of countries such as Venezuela where they have a clear interest in the nation’s oil.
As the world once again turns a blind eye to their suffering, the Rohingya once again face fear and violence at the hands of Burma’s military. If nations that claim to care for human rights cannot hold Burma to account for the horrors of the 2017 genocide, then there is little hope for the Rohingya civilians who find themselves caught up in violence now.
“What is happening in Rakhine reminds me of the tactics used by the Tatmadaw against ethnic populations for decades,” the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, said in January.
“All the people of Rakhine State, including the Rakhine, Mro, Daignet, Hindu and Rohingya, have suffered enough.”
Photo credit: United States Embassy Kuala Lumpur