Myanmar: Crimes Against Humanity Terrorize and Drive Rohingya Out
More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar security forces' targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet of the ongoing crisis.
WASHINGTON
More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar security forces' targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet of the ongoing crisis.
'My World Is Finished': Rohingya Targeted in Crimes against Humanity in Myanmar describes how Myanmar's security forces are carrying out a systematic, organized and ruthless campaign of violence against the Rohingya population as a whole in northern Rakhine State, after a Rohingya armed group attacked around 30 security posts on 25 August.
Dozens of eyewitnesses to the worst violence consistently implicated specific units, including the Myanmar Army's Western Command, the 33rd Light Infantry Division, and the Border Guard Police.
"In this orchestrated campaign, Myanmar's security forces have brutally meted out revenge on the entire Rohingya population of northern Rakhine State, in an apparent attempt to permanently drive them out of the country. These atrocities continue to fuel the region's worst refugee crisis in decades," said Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International.
"Exposing these heinous crimes is the first step on the long road to justice. Those responsible must be held to account; Myanmar's military can't simply sweep serious violations under the carpet by announcing another sham internal investigation. The Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, must take immediate action to stop his troops from committing atrocities."
Crimes against humanity
Witness accounts, satellite imagery and data, and photo and video evidence gathered by Amnesty International all point to the same conclusion: hundreds of thousands of Rohingya women, men, and children have been the victims of a widespread and systematic attack, amounting to crimes against humanity.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists 11 types of acts which, when knowingly committed during such an attack, constitute crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has consistently documented at least six of these amid the current wave of violence in northern Rakhine State: murder, deportation and forcible displacement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhumane acts such as denying food and other life-saving provisions.
This conclusion is based on testimonies from more than 120 Rohingya men and women who have fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks, as well as 30 interviews with medical professionals, aid workers, journalists and Bangladeshi officials.
Amnesty International's experts corroborated many witness accounts of the Myanmar security forces' crimes by analysing satellite imagery and data, as well as verifying photographs and video footage taken inside Rakhine State. The organization has also requested access to Rakhine State to investigate abuses on the ground, including by members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya armed group. Amnesty International continues to call for unfettered access to the UN Fact-Finding Mission and other independent observers.
Murder and massacres
In the hours and days following the ARSA attacks on 25 August, the Myanmar security forces, sometimes joined by local vigilantes, surrounded Rohingya villages throughout the northern part of Rakhine State. As Rohingya women, men, and children fled their homes, the soldiers and police officers often opened fire, killing or seriously injuring at least hundreds of people.
Survivors described running to nearby hills and rice fields, where they hid until the forces left. The elderly and people with disabilities were often unable to flee, and burned to death in their homes after the military set them alight.
This pattern was replicated in dozens of villages across Maungdaw, Rathedaung, and Buthidaung townships. But the security forces, and in particular the Myanmar military, appear to have unleashed their most lethal response in specific villages near where ARSA carried out its attacks.
Amnesty International documented events in five such villages where at least a dozen people were killed: Chein Kar Li, Koe Tan Kauk, and Chut Pyin, all in Rathedaung Township; and Inn Din and Min Gyi, in Maungdaw Township. In Chut Pyin and Min Gyi, the death toll was particularly high, with at least scores of Rohingya women, men, and children killed by Myanmar security forces.
Amnesty International interviewed 17 survivors of the massacre in Chut Pyin, six of whom had gunshot wounds. Almost all had lost at least one family member, with some losing many. They consistently described the Myanmar military, joined by Border Guard Police and local vigilantes, surrounding Chut Pyin, opening fire on those fleeing, and then systematically burning Rohingya houses and buildings.
Fatima, 12, told Amnesty International that she was at home with her parents, eight siblings, and grandmother when they saw fire rising from another part of their village. As the family ran out of their house, she said men in uniform opened fire on them from behind. She saw both her father and 10-year-old sister get shot, then Fatima was also hit in the back of her right leg, just above the knee.
"I fell down, but my neighbour grabbed me and carried me," she recalled. After a week on the run, she finally received treatment in Bangladesh. Her mother and older brother were also killed in Chut Pyin.
Amnesty International sent photographs of Fatima's wound to a forensic medical expert, who said it was consistent with a bullet wound that "would have entered the thigh from behind." Medical professionals in Bangladesh described treating many wounds that appeared to have been caused by gunshots fired from behind -matching consistent witness testimony that the military fired on Rohingya as they tried to run away.
In Chein Kar Li and Koe Tan Kauk, two neighbouring villages, Amnesty International documented the same pattern of attack by the Myanmar military.
Sona Mia, 77, said he was at home in Koe Tan Kauk when Myanmar soldiers surrounded the village and opened fire on 27 August. His 20-year-old daughter, Rayna Khatun, had a disability that left her unable to walk or speak. One of his sons put her on his shoulders, and the family slowly made its way toward the hill on the village's edge. As they heard the shooting get closer and closer, they decided they had to leave Rayna in a Rohingya house that had been abandoned.
"We didn't think we'd be able to make it," Sona Mia recalled. "I told her to sit there, we'd come back... After arriving on the hill, we spotted the house where we left her. It was a bit away, but we could see. The soldiers were burning [houses], and eventually we saw that house, it was burned too."
After the military left the village in the late afternoon, Sona Mia's sons went down and found Rayna Khatun's burnt body among the torched house. They dug a grave at the edge of that house's courtyard, and buried her there.
Rape and other sexual violence
Amnesty International interviewed seven Rohingya survivors of sexual violence committed by the Myanmar security forces. Of those, four women and a 15-year-old girl had been raped, each in a separate group with between two and five other women and girls who were also raped. The rapes occurred in two villages that the organization investigated: Min Gyi in Maungdaw Township and Kyun Pauk in Buthidaung Township.
As previously documented by Human Rights Watch and The Guardian, after entering Min Gyi (known locally as Tula Toli) on the morning of 30 August, Myanmar soldiers pursued Rohingya villagers who fled down to the riverbank and then separated the men and older boys from the women and younger children.
After opening fire on and executing at least scores of men and older boys, as well as some women and younger children, the soldiers took women in groups to nearby houses where they raped them, before setting fire to those houses and other Rohingya parts of the village.
S.K., 30, told Amnesty International that after watching the executions, she and many other women and younger children were taken to a ditch, where they were forced to stand in knee-deep water:
"They took the women in groups to different houses. ...There were five of us [women], taken by four soldiers [in military uniform]. They took our money, our possessions, and then they beat us with a wooden stick. My children were with me. They hit them too. Shafi, my two-year-old son, he was hit hard with a wooden stick. One hit, and he was dead... Three of my children were killed. Mohamed Osman (10) [and] Mohamed Saddiq (five) too. Other women [in the house] also had children [with them] that were killed.
"All of the women were stripped naked...They had very strong wooden sticks. They first hit us in the head, to make us weak. Then they hit us [in the vagina] with the wooden sticks. Then they raped us. A different soldier for each [woman]."
After raping women and girls, the soldiers set fire to the houses, killing many of the victims inside.
Deliberate, organized village burnings
On 3 October, the UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) reported that it had identified 20.7 square kilometres of buildings destroyed by fire in Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships since 25 August. Even that likely underestimated the overall scale of destruction and burning, as dense cloud cover affected what the satellites were able to detect.
Amnesty International's own review of fire data from remote satellite sensing indicates at least 156 large fires in northern Rakhine State since 25 August, also likely to be an underestimate. In the previous five years, no fires were detected during the same period, which is also the monsoon season, strongly indicating that the burning has been intentional.
Before and after satellite images strikingly illustrate what witnesses also consistently told Amnesty International - that the Myanmar security forces only burned Rohingya villages or areas. For example, satellite images of Inn Din and Min Gyi show large swathes of structures razed by fire virtually side by side with areas that were left untouched. Distinct features of the untouched areas, combined with accounts from Rohingya residents as to where they and other ethnic communities lived in those villages, indicate that only Rohingya areas were razed.
Amnesty International has noted a similar pattern in at least a dozen more villages where Rohingya lived in close proximity to people from other ethnicities.
"Given their ongoing denials, Myanmar's authorities may have thought they would literally get away with murder on a massive scale. But modern technology, coupled with rigorous human rights research, have tipped the scales against them," said Tirana Hassan.
"It is time for the international community to move beyond public outcry and take action to end the campaign of violence that has driven more than half the Rohingya population out of Myanmar. Through cutting off military cooperation, imposing arms embargoes and targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for abuses, a clear message must be sent that the military's crimes against humanity in Rakhine State will not be tolerated.
"The international community must ensure that the ethnic cleansing campaign does not achieve its unlawful, reprehensible goal. To do so, the international community must combine encouraging and supporting Bangladesh in providing adequate conditions and safe asylum to Rohingya refugees, with ensuring that Myanmar respects their human right to return safely, voluntarily and with dignity to their country and insisting that it ends, once and for all, the systematic discrimination against the Rohingya and other root causes of the current crisis."
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
"There must be accountability for this administration's dangerous disregard for our national security," said one Democratic congressman and former military prosecutor.
U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and members of his staff have created at least 20 group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate official work on sensitive policy issues around the world, four people who were added to such groups told
Politico.
Waltz was already under fire for a group chat about the U.S. bombing Yemen when the report broke. Politico's Dasha Burns wrote on Wednesday that "none of the four individuals said they were aware of whether any classified information was shared, but all said that posts in group chats did include sensitive details of national security work."
The anonymous sources told
Politico that the group chats involved policy issues involving China, Ukraine, Gaza, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. One of them said, "It was commonplace to stand up chats on any given national security topic," one of the four sources told the outlet.
The Politico article comes a day after The Washington Postreported that Waltz and other members of President Donald Trump's National Security Council conducted official government business via their personal Gmail accounts, which are far less secure than Signal chats.
The fresh revelations also come as "Signalgate"—in which Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top Trump administration officials
added a journalist to a Signal group chat about plans to bomb Yemen—still smolders.
Calls for Waltz's resignation or firing, which were already numerous in the wake of Signalgate, mounted Wednesday.
"Waltz must resign. Hegseth must resign," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
said on the social media site Bluesky. "There must be accountability for this administration's dangerous disregard for our national security."
Referring to the Signal group chats, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.)
asked on the social media site X, "How many more are there?"
"Even Trump allies say this doesn't pass the smell test," he added. "National Security Adviser Waltz and Pete Hegseth need to be fired."
"He's taking a sledgehammer to the economy and pursuing unpopular, reckless trade policies that will do nothing to benefit workers and only serve to increase costs for consumers," warned one expert.
After U.S. President Donald Trump announced long-anticipated sweeping tariffs at the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, economists, labor leaders, American lawmakers, and other critics reiterated that the move will negatively impact people worldwide.
The president revealed that on April 5, he will
impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods and additional penalties for dozens of countries, including major trading partners—ignoring warnings that, as Jeffrey Sachs
wrote in a Common Dreams opinion piece, his "tariffs will fail to close the trade and budget deficits, raise prices, and make America and the world poorer."
Trump's related
executive order states that he finds "that underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and nontariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners' economic policies that suppress domestic wages and consumption, as indicated by large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States."
The order adds that the "threat has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States in the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system," and declares a national emergency.
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NBC Newsreported Wednesday that "global markets reacted sharply and swiftly... with investors fleeing U.S. stock indexes and companies that rely on global supply chains seeing their stocks plummet." The outlet noted that Dan Ives, an analyst at the investment firm Wedbush Securities, wrote, "President Trump just finished his tariff speech at the White House and we would characterize this slate of tariffs as 'worse than the worst case scenario' the street was fearing."
Trump framed this step in his trade war as "liberation day" and claimed that the duties are "reciprocal," but economists pushed back. Justin Wolfers at the University of Michigan
said: "Trump announces his tariffs, which are (somehow?) related to the trade barriers other countries are imposing on the U.S. But... THE NUMBERS HE'S PRESENTING BEAR NO RELATION TO REALITY. It would be absurd to call these reciprocal tariffs. They're grievances."
Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens
said in a statement that "Americans have one simple request of President Trump: lower prices. Instead of answering the call, he's taking a sledgehammer to the economy and pursuing unpopular, reckless trade policies that will do nothing to benefit workers and only serve to increase costs for consumers."
"But Trump doesn't care about what happens to working families, as long as his billionaire donors and advisers are happy," she continued. "Republicans are already
chomping at the bit to use any potential tariff revenue to fund their next massive billionaire tax break."
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Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the national campaign Unrig Our Economy, similarly concluded that "there is no other way to say it—this is an out-of-touch policy designed by a billionaire and for billionaires."
"Virtually no one will benefit from these Republican-backed tariffs—except for the ultrawealthy who will get yet another tax break, paid for by working families," Christian added. "Small business owners will be forced to raise their prices to keep their businesses afloat, and Americans will have to pay even more for everyday goods. These tariffs could even push the economy into a recession. American workers need lower costs, not more tariffs and billionaire handouts."
American Economic Liberties Project's Rethink Trade director, Lori Wallach, declared that "the businesses that profiteered from our old broken trade system should pay for the necessary transition to more balanced trade, not American workers and consumers. President Trump must take immediate action to stop corporations from using the pretext of these tariffs to price gouge the very Americans already slammed by decades of bad trade policy and corporate greed."
Wallach was among those who pointed out that tariffs can be a vital tool. She explained that "Trump's announcement goes much broader, but tariffs against mercantilist countries like China, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to counter systemic trade abuses can help restore America's capacity to produce more of the critical products needed for American families to be healthy and safe and for our country to be more resilient and secure."
"But to deliver more American production and good jobs, the goal must be to balance trade, not equalize tariff rates, and tariffs must be consistent," she stressed. "Tariffs must be accompanied by other industrial policies like tax credits to build demand for U.S.-made goods, incentives for investment in new production capacity and bans on stock buybacks, and easier union formation so gains go to wages, not just profits."
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of unions, also
said that "the strategic use of tariffs can be an effective tool to support our industries and protect jobs at home. But they must be accompanied by policies that invest in our manufacturing base and a strong commitment to promoting workers' fundamental right to organize trade unions and bargain collectively."
"Unfortunately, the Trump administration's attacks on trade union workers' rights at home, gutting of the government agency that works to discourage the outsourcing of American jobs, and efforts to erode critical investments in U.S. manufacturing take us backward," she asserted. "We will continue to fight for trade policy that prioritizes the interests of working people without causing unnecessary economic pain for America's working families."
Some congressional Democrats shared similar criticism. Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell
said that "when used strategically, tariffs are a critical tool to bring back jobs and support American workers and industries," but "I'm concerned about the chaotic and immediate implementation of these wide-reaching tariffs."
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U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.)
wrote on social media that "Trump's dumb tariffs are going to drive up costs for real working people. Like the dad who is trying to save money by fixing his car at home. Those parts from AutoZone are made somewhere else and the prices will go up!"
As the White House circulated a multipage sheet of targeted countries,
Gomez and Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) were among those who noticed that Russia—which is waging a yearslong war on Ukraine—is absent from the list.
Meanwhile, as
critics including Aaron Reichlin-Melnick at the American Immigration Council highlighted, the list included the Australian territory of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands—even though the islands are "completely uninhabited."
"Population zero. I guess we're going to tariff the seagulls?"
quipped Reichlin-Melnick. "It kind of feels like a White House intern went through Wikipedia's list of countries and just generated this list off of that with no further research."
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Organizer Max Berger
wrote on Bluesky Wednesday, "I like how no one knows whether the president of the United States is going to tank the global economy because he's a fucking idiot—or if he's just doing a bit."
The top Democrat on the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday led calls for the resignation of acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek following the revelation of internal emails confirming that the SSA canceled contracts with the state of Maine as political payback after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills publicly defied President Donald Trump in support of transgender student athletes.
The emails—which were obtained by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)—show that Dudek ordered the cancellation of enumeration at birth and electronic death registration contracts
with Maine, even though SSAd subordinates warned that such action "would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft."
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud."
Dudek—who is leading the SSA while the Senate considers Trump's
nomination of financial services executive Frank Bisignano—replied to the staffer: "Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child."
He was referring to Mills, who
stood up to Trump in February after the president threatened to suspend federal funding for Maine unless the state banned transgender girls and women from participating on female scholastic sports teams.
The termination of the enumeration at birth contract briefly forced Maine parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a Social Security office, rather than checking a box on a form at the hospital as is customary, before the SSA
reversed its decision.
Connolly sent Dudek a
letter demanding that he "resign immediately" and submit to a transcribed interview with House Oversight Committee Democrats. Connolly wrote that Dudek "ordered these contracts terminated" as "direct retaliation" for Mills' defiance, "even though you knew that doing so would increase improper payments and create opportunities for fraudsters."
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Government accountability advocates also condemned Dudek's actions.
"These emails confirm that the Trump administration is intentionally creating waste and the opportunity for fraud—in this case, to punish Maine Gov. Janet Mills for not bowing down to Donald Trump," Social Security Works president Nancy Altman told
Common Dreams.
"The people actually punished by these actions were exhausted new parents in Maine, forced to drag their newborns to overcrowded Social Security offices in the middle of a measles outbreak," she continued. "Thankfully, the Trump administration had to quickly reverse course after massive public outrage. But Trump is clearly comfortable weaponizing Social Security for political purposes, and we fear that this is only the beginning."
"Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told
Common Dreams that "it does not surprise us at all that this administration would weaponize Social Security against anyone who disagrees with or challenges President Trump."
"It's one of the concerns that we have with Elon Musk and [the Department of Government Efficiency] having access to everyone's personal data without any defensible explanation for why they need it," he continued. "We and the American people have legitimate worries, not only that this information will be vulnerable to hackers, but also that it could intentionally be misused as a weapon against anyone who publicly disagrees with Trump."
"The fact that the acting commissioner himself publicly admitted that he didn't really understand the Maine contract, but canceled it anyway, proves that this administration is making reckless changes that affect real people for no legitimate reason," Richtman added. "Once again, we see Team Trump resorting to revenge to set domestic policy."
The revelation of Dudek's emails comes amid SSA turmoil caused by the termination of thousands of agency personnel in what Trump, Musk, and other Republicans claim is an effort to reduce waste and fraud. Musk—who recently referred to Social Security as the the "biggest Ponzi scheme of all time"—has proposed the elimination of up to 50% of SSA's workforce and has said that up to $700 billion could be cut from programs including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.