I. Identity Documents and Genocide: Case Studies 44 The military-led atrocities forced more than 745,000 Rohingya, including more than 400,000 children, to flee Myanmar in 2017.118 Rohingya survivors of the genocide who fled to neighboring Bangladesh largely remain living in sub-standard conditions in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh. In its first report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, in September 2019, the FFM concluded, “there is sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw [military] chain of command, so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine State.”119 More recently, on March 22, 2022, the U.S. government concluded that the Myanmar military is responsible for committing genocide against the Rohingya people, marking the eighth time since the Holocaust that the U.S. has recognized a genocide.120 Welcoming the U.S. genocide determination, the NUG notably issued a statement acknowledging “that discriminatory practices and rhetoric against the Rohingya also laid the ground for these atrocities” and that “[t]hose crimes against the Myanmar people continue until today by the military.”121 Many factors have contributed to the multi-generational attempts by Myanmar’s junta and government leaders to erase and destroy Rohingya people. Identity politics in Myanmar have a strong “racial” as well as religious component and, while not the sole cause of the atrocities, were and are a contributing factor.122 Successive Myanmar juntas and governments, including the current junta and the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, failed to recognize the Rohingya population as a legitimate group, claiming instead that the Rohingya are “illegal Bengali immigrants” from Bangladesh.123 Laws, policies, and practices instituted by Myanmar’s military and government leaders reinforced the idea of Rohingya as foreigners, effecting the administrative erasure of Rohingya. Following Myanmar’s independence from Great Britain, the 1948 Union Citizenship Act granted citizenship to a “non-exhaustive list of ethnic groups,” then known as “indigenous races,” provided 118 Fortify Rights, “Tools of Genocide: National Verification Cards and the Denial of Citizenship of Rohingya, September 2019, https://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/Tools%20of%20Genocide%20-%20Fortify%20Rights%20-%20 September-03-2019-EN.pdf. See, Fortify Rights, “They Gave Them Long Swords.” Fortify Rights and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “They Tried to Kill Us All”: Atrocity Crimes against Rohingya Muslins in Rakhine State, Myanmar, November 2017, https://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/THEY_TRIED_TO_KILL_US_ALL_Atrocity_Crimes_ against_Rohingya_Muslims_Nov_2017.pdf. 119 U.N. Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, U.N. Doc. A/ HRC/39/64, September 12, 2018, para. 83. 120 See, Fortify Rights, “U.N. Member States: Acknowledge the Rohingya Genocide, Refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court,” March 21, 2022, https://www.fortifyrights.org/mya-inv-2022-03-21/; Fortify Rights and Refugees International, “Rohingya Refugees React to the U.S. Genocide Determination,” film, April 25, 2022, https://www. fortifyrights.org/our_films/bgd-inv-vdo-2022-04-25/. 121 NUG, “Announcement No.(5/2022)–Statement on the Determination by the United States Government of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity against the Rohingya,” March 22, 2022, https://gov.nugmyanmar.org/2022/03/22/ announcement-no-5-2022-statement-on-the-determination-by-the-united-states-government-of-genocideand-crimes-against-humanity-against-the-rohingya/. 122 Anthony Ware and Costas Laoutides, Myanmar’s ‘Rohingya’ Conflict, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 137-196. Rohingya were not always not recognized. Statements by officials even mention the Rohingya by name for example a year before the 1962 coup in 1961, Brigadier General Aung Gyi mentioned the Rohingya in a public speech saying: The ethnic group that reside on the west of Mayu District boundaries are Pakistani. And the people who reside on the east side of this border are called Rohingya . . . I want to openly and publicly tell you this: we consider [the Rohingya people] of Mayu District an ethnic minority integral to the Union of Burma . . . Towards the goal of establishing the region’s security, I urge Rohingya religious leaders, Rohingya men, Rohingya leaders, Rohingya politicians to keep the military and administration in the Mayu District region informed [about the remaining insurgencies]. If possible, please join our efforts to repel insurgents. If possible, I urge you to join hands with the Burmese Armed Forces and fight the insurgents. Unofficial Transcript of the Address delivered by Brigadier General Aung Gyi Vice Chief of Staff, “The Union of Burma Armed Forces Mujahid Insurgents, Surrender Ceremony,” Maungdaw Township, Rakhine, Burma, July 4, 1961. See also, Carlos Sardina Galache, The Burmese Labyrinth: A History of the Rohingya Tragedy (New York: Verso, March 10, 2020), p. 176. 123 Fortify Rights, “Tools of Genocide,” pp. 16-17; Francis Wade, Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim “Other” (London: Zed Books, 2017).