Summary in September 2018, the Independent Likewise, International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (FFM), established by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2017 to investigate crimes committed by Myanmar security forces, concluded that there was “sufficient information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior officials in the Tatmadaw [military] chain of command” for the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingya in Rakhine State. As part of its findings, the FFM reported how “[p]ressure to accept the NVC increased in the months leading up to August 2017” and that Border Guard Police and Myanmar Army soldiers held a “series of more targeted and aggressive meetings” with Rohingya elders in mid-August 2017, demanding residents accept NVCs. According to the FFM, these meetings took place in villages where “some of the most brutal ‘clearance operations’ subsequently took place.” In cases documented by Fortify Rights, Rohingya refused to accept NVCs en masse in the weeks and months before August 2017, and Rohingya told Fortify Rights that they believe the Myanmar Army attacked them, in part, as a result. The authorities continue to pressure Rohingya to accept NVCs by imposing added restrictions on movement, enforced through ubiquitous military and police checkpoints. Security forces do not always grant Rohingya who hold NVCs with permission to pass, and Rohingya often encounter violence, threats, extortion, and other abuses at the checkpoints. “[T]he security forces beat me as I couldn’t show them an NVC,” a 58-year-old Rohingya man from Maungdaw Township told Fortify Rights, describing how the authorities stopped him at a checkpoint while he was attempting to travel to another township. “They tortured me with a rod, they extorted money, and they sent me back, threatening me that I must take the NVC.” O.M. is a 55-year-old Rohingya father of eight children, and a landowner in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before fleeing Myanmar to escape military-led attacks in 2017, he was a farmer. “Some years ago, the army gave us documents before the last election. They asked us to vote for them and promised that if we did, then we wouldn’t be tortured . . . But right after the vote ended, they started to torture us again . . . [W]hen the immigration people came to our village and asked us to take the NVC cards, we didn’t want to take it. We ran away from the village and took shelter in the nearby hills.” ©Saiful Huq Omi, Counter Foto, Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh, August 2019 11