Analysis: Armies Target Minority Muslim Rohingya in West Myanmar
A new report by Human Rights Watch is detailing how minority Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar's western Rakhine state are caught between junta forces and rebel groups.
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00:00Could you tell us the situation in Rakhine State in western Myanmar at the moment?
00:05We're seeing a severe deterioration in the human rights situation in Rakhine State over
00:10the last year or so.
00:12Really, the situation started to get significantly worse in November last year when an unofficial
00:18ceasefire between the ethnic Rakhine Arakan army and the Myanmar military broke down.
00:24Since then, we've seen the Arakan army gain control over more than the majority of the
00:29state, but in the process, we've seen indiscriminate and unlawful targeted attacks directly on
00:36civilians.
00:37This includes wide-scale use of airstrikes by the Myanmar military, but we've also expressed
00:45concerns about the Arakan army's conduct and whether it's taken adequate protection to
00:51precautions in terms of protecting civilians, in particular, the Rohingya minority, which
00:59lives predominantly in the northern townships of Rakhine State.
01:03This area, Rakhine State, has been wracked by violence for years, if not decades, and
01:08made headlines around 2017 when the Rohingya population was persecuted.
01:13How is the violence that's wracking this area different to what we saw in the past?
01:17Right, so I think it's important to recognize that the Rohingya, who are a stateless Muslim
01:22minority in Myanmar, they've been persecuted for decades by the Myanmar military.
01:28In 2017, we saw acts of genocide committed as part of the military's so-called clearance
01:34operations that caused more than 700,000 people to flee to Bangladesh, where they remain
01:40today. What's different about the current violence is that this is certainly the
01:47moment that we've been most concerned about the Rohingya since 2017, as this time they
01:53are really caught between the two sides. On the one side, the ethnic Arakan army, and
01:58on the other side, the Myanmar military.
02:01Could you tell us a bit about the situation for civilians across the country, three and
02:05a half years after the military took power in a coup?
02:09We continue to see civilians across Myanmar in a dire situation. On the one hand, they
02:17can be targeted by the Myanmar military's airstrikes, many of which are indiscriminate
02:21at any point in time. In addition, we're also seeing a really awful humanitarian crisis
02:28with massive underfunding of the UN response and really serious obstacles to actually getting
02:35assistance to large parts of the country. With almost three million people displaced
02:41across Myanmar, that's a huge amount of humanitarian need for a country that even before the
02:47coup struggled to deliver essential services to its population.