border of Myanmar where the state military has launched a violent

offensive against an ethnic minority group – the Rohingya. The UN reported

that since August 2017 about 400,000 Rohingya men women and children have

fled their homes in Myanmar's Rakhine State. Reports claimed that the military

has been killing and raping the Rohingya and has set their villages on fire.

Satellite imagery showing burned villages confirms those reports.

Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators, the current

situation cannot yet be fully assessed but the situation remains or seems a

textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The term ethnic cleansing has

been reserved for some of the worst atrocities in history. The UN defines it

as a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by

violent and terror inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or

religious group from certain geographic areas.

What makes Myanmar a textbook example is that the military has been launching

attacks on the Rohingya – a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist country.

Violent tactics have forced tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee their

homes. While many fled to Malaysia and Thailand most ended up in Bangladesh.

The recent wave of violence is the latest in a pattern of discrimination that started

over 50 years ago. In 1962, Myanmar – then called Burma – was taken over by the

military in a coup. They got rid of the country's constitution and created a

military junta. Like many dictatorships they promoted fierce nationalism based

on the country's Buddhist identity and when they needed a common enemy to help

unite the population the Rohingya were singled out as a threat. Tensions between

the Burmese Buddhist population and the Rohingya go back to the Second World War

when each group supported opposing sides. The Rohingya sided with the British

colonialists who ruled the country and the Buddhists mostly sided with the

Japanese invaders hoping they'd help end the British rule after the war. But even

in modern Myanmar the Rohingya minority continued to be an easy target.

Although their lineage can be traced back to 15th century Burma, the

government has been forcing them out claiming their illegal immigrants from

Bangladesh. It started in 1978 after a massive

crackdown called Operation Dragon King forced about 200,000 Rohingya to flee to

Bangladesh. The military reportedly used violence and rape to drive them out.

About a hundred and seventy thousand Rohingya reportedly returned to Burma. Then

in 1982, the government passed the Citizenship Act recognizing 135 ethnic

groups. The Rohingya, with a population of about 1 million, were not on the list

and became a stateless people. In 1991, Myanmar's military launched another

campaign literally called "Operation clean and beautiful nation." This time

about 250,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. Tensions continued to build

against the Rohingya in the 2000s. Violence broke out in 2012

when four Muslim men were accused of raping and killing a buddhist woman in

Rakhine. Buddhist nationalist backed by security forces attacked Muslim

neighborhoods, burned homes displacing tens of thousands of Rohingya again.

Human Rights Watch deemed it an ethnic cleansing campaign. By this point the

Rohingya were persecuted disenfranchised and stateless. In 2016, a

Rohingya militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, emerged and

coordinated small-scale attacks on border police stations. An attack on

August 25th 2017 left 12 police officers dead and sparked the current crisis

against Rohingya civilians. A brutal retaliation by the state security forces

has led to about 400 deaths and the mass exodus of about 400,000 Rohingya to

Bangladesh. Since the August attack 210 villages have been burned to the ground.

The violent campaign has triggered the fastest growing humanitarian crisis in

recent years, but Myanmar's de facto leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner

Aung San Suu Ky has barely acknowledged the attacks.

More than 50% of the villages of Muslims are intact they are as they were before

the attacks took place. When she says that, you know, 50% of the Muslim villages

are still present in Rakhine State wel,l I mean, what are we talking about? 50% are

gone. 50% are burnt out. You know in any school

I went to 50% is a failing grade. Recent reports claimed that the military has

planted landmines along the Bangladesh border to prevent the Rohingya from

returning. Myanmar's government has systematically

driven the Rohingya out of the country. Over the last five decades it has

stripped their citizenship, terrorized them, and destroyed their homes, and now

it wants to keep them from ever coming back.