A/HRC/39/64 This is a violation of the right to education, and a powerful tool to ensure cross-generational marginalization. Although Rohingya were allowed to vote in 2010, the right was revoked prior to the elections in 2015. The oppressive climate led to an increase in Rohingya leaving Rakhine State by boat in the following years. 25 August 2017 and the “clearance operations” 4. That day felt like the last day of this world, as if the whole world was collapsing. I thought judgment day had arrived. 31. What happened on 25 August 2017 and the following days and weeks was the realization of a disaster long in the making. It was the result of the systemic oppression of the Rohingya, the violence of 2012, and the Government’s actions and omissions since then. It caused the disintegration of a community. 32. In the early hours of 25 August, ARSA launched coordinated attacks on a military base and up to 30 security force outposts across northern Rakhine State, in an apparent response to increased pressure on Rohingya communities and with the goal of global attention. A small number of minimally-trained leaders had some arms, and a significant number of untrained villagers wielded sticks and knives. Some had improvised explosive devices. Twelve security personnel were killed. 33. The response of security forces, launched within hours, was immediate, brutal and grossly disproportionate. Ostensibly to eliminate the “terrorist threat” posed by ARSA, in the days and weeks that followed, it encompassed hundreds of villages across Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung. The operations targeted and terrorized the entire Rohingya population. The authorities called them “clearance operations”. As a result, by mid-August 2018, nearly 725,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh. 34. Even though the operations were conducted over a broad geographic area, they were strikingly similar. Tatmadaw soldiers would attack a village in the early hours, frequently joined by other security forces, often by Rakhine men and sometimes men from other ethnic minorities. The operations were designed to instil immediate terror, with people woken by intense rapid weapon fire, explosions or the shouts and screams of villagers. Structures were set ablaze, and Tatmadaw soldiers fired their guns indiscriminately into houses and fields, and at villagers. 35. The nature, scale and organization of the operations suggest a level of preplanning and design by the Tatmadaw leadership that was consistent with the vision of the Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who stated in a Facebook post on 2 September 2018, at the height of the operations, that “the Bengali problem was a longstanding one which has become an unfinished job despite the efforts of the previous governments to solve it. The government in office is taking great care in solving the problem.” (a) Human rights catastrophe Everyone was just running for their lives. I was not even able to carry my children. 36. The “clearance operations” constituted a human rights catastrophe. Thousands of Rohingya were killed or injured. Information collected by the mission suggests that the estimate of up to 10,000 deaths 7 is a conservative one. Mass killings were perpetrated in Min Gyi (Tula Toli), Maung Nu, Chut Pyin and Gudar Pyin, and in villages in the Koe Tan Kauk village tract. In some cases, hundreds of people died. In both Min Gyi and Maung Nu, villagers were gathered together before the men and boys were separated and killed. In Min Gyi, women and girls were taken to nearby houses, gang raped, then killed or severely injured. Houses were locked and set on fire. Few survived. In numerous other villages, the number of casualties was also markedly high. Bodies were transported in military vehicles, burned and disposed of in mass graves. 7 8 Médecins Sans Frontières, “‘No one was left’: Death and violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, Myanmar”, March 2018.