But the military's campaign against the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, actually began years earlier — and since 2012, a small network of citizen activists have been risking their lives to secretly film its impact.

Their harrowing footage, and the first-ever on-camera interview with a member of the network, are featured in the new FRONTLINE documentary, Myanmar's Killing Fields.

"Even though it was risky to film, I did it to help my people," says "Sabo," who agreed to speak on the condition that FRONTLINE protect his identity.

Airing Tuesday on PBS, Myanmar's Killing Fields is U.S. television's most comprehensive investigation of the Myanmar military's violent crackdown on the Rohingyas — an effort that the United Nations has described as having the "hallmarks of genocide."

Secret footage

The Myanmar military denies abuses and says it has been fighting a militant Islamist Rohingya group, ARSA, that has attacked and killed security forces at police and army bases.

But with secret footage filmed by the network, and firsthand accounts from victims and their families, the documentary depicts an orchestrated campaign to target civilians, state-sanctioned violence and mass murder.

Including in Chut Pyin, one of dozens of Rohingya villages that were attacked and burned to the ground last August.

Sabo was filming in a nearby village as survivors from Chut Pyin streamed in — men, women, and children, many of whom had been shot in the back as they fled.

"They were all in a terrible state," Sabo says in the above excerpt from Myanmar's Killing Fields.

"They were traumatized after seeing brothers and sisters killed … Only God knows how much they suffered."

Shot, raped mutilated

FRONTLINE tracked down survivors seen in Sabo's footage, who independently recounted how the military attacked civilians and raped women and children.

"I was shot and fell in the rice field. I could not get up, I was in so much pain.

"Then four soldiers raped me," 16-year-old Jamila Khatun, now living in a refugee camp across the border in Bangladesh, tells FRONTLINE.

Another survivor, Nur Begum, describes being rounded up and taken into the bushes, where she says a soldier shot dead a woman who tried to fight back.

"A soldier cut off her breast," Begum says, sobbing.

"He held it up like this and showed us and it was shaking. He said if we screamed, they would do the same to us."

Then, she says, several soldiers raped her.

Village leader and medic Rashan Ali says he did what he could to treat the victims: "I treated 92 people there … They were lacerated, they cut their breasts, then they shot them. I treated them with whatever I had."

Many of the rape victims, Ali says, were children.

"Some of them could not bear it and they died," he says.

• Frontline documentary, first published on PBS. Used with permission.
• Image: YouTube

One who doesn't suffer with suffering brothers . . . must question himself on the sincerity of his faith and of his humanity, Pope Francis says.

His comments were made in the context of the Rohingya minority, who are persecuted in Myanmar. Read more

I've been visiting Rohingya refugee camps close to the Bangladesh/Myanmar border, and the scale of the forced migration is truly horrifying.

Land unoccupied in late August is now a cramped shanty city of bamboo, tarpaulin and mud that seems to go on forever.

Interviews in the camps paint a desperately sad picture. The details of these interviews are invariably confronting and often distressing, and explain why so many Rohingya fled Myanmar so quickly.

A farmer becomes understandably emotional when he tells me:

"I lost my two sons, and two daughters. At midnight the military come in my house and burnt the house, but first they raped my two daughters and they shot my two daughters in front of me.

"I have no words to express how it was for me to suffer to look at my daughters being raped and killed in front of me. My two sons were also killed by the government. I was not able to get the dead bodies of my daughters, it is a great sorrow for me."

Background to the refugee crisis
The military's ongoing "clearance operation" began in late August with the supposed aim of ridding Myanmar of a recently emerged militant group.

But this campaign's real intent is now widely regarded as being to force the ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority, from their homes, away from their land, and out of Myanmar.

Myanmar's military, the Tatmadaw, has used tactics that are brutal, indiscriminate, and yet sadly familiar to the Rohingya and other groups in Myanmar such as the ethnic Kachin and Karen.

Witnesses described to me how, when the Tatmadaw arrived at their village, the soldiers fired weapons and killed people inside wooden homes, arrested young men, raped women, told residents to leave, and then burned homes to prevent the residents' return. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation article by Ronan Lee, PhD Candidate, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University
• Image: Hindustan Times

It is estimated that in less than three weeks, up to 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar.

They are fleeing mass human rights violations and atrocities, including: the burning of villages and crops, using petrol and rocket launchers; executions by shooting, stabbing, beating or burning; beatings; and sexual violence.

But the Rohingya refugee crisis is not new. For decades, the Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar, with almost one million fleeing Myanmar since the 1970s.

Previous waves of displacement and return have been marked by violence and growing suspicion towards Rohingya by the Rakhine Buddhists and the national (military and civilian) governments.

The crimes being committed in the past weeks against the Rohingya are also not unusual.

They have only escalated in intensity and number, with the perpetrators no doubt spurred by the impunity with which they have been able to commit such atrocities for so long.

UN officials such as the Secretary General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights have called the current situation "ethnic cleansing."

The UN has avoided the term "genocide" - however, it is genocide that is taking place. Myanmar's military government has systematically sought and acted to remove the Rohingya minority from Myanmar and overall, from existence.

Rohingya are a minority group living in Rakhine state of Myanmar, located on the western coast and along the border with Bangladesh and close to India.

Rohingya are referred to as "Bengali" - a derogatory term - and, despite evidence of their residence in Myanmar for centuries, are denied citizenship and the participatory rights that come with that privilege such as participating in the public service.

Rohingya's freedom of movement is restricted (they are even herded into detention camps and ghettos), their employment rights and options severely limited, and they are denied access to food, healthcare and education.

In addition, long-term mass violence has been carried out, including instances of organised massacres accompanied by sexual violence. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion & Ethics, article by Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Melanie O'Brien.
• Image: Kenn Orphan

Hundreds of thousands of members of the Muslim minority have fled principally Buddhist Myanmar, where the military is conducting a "clearance operation."

The head of the Catholic Church in Myanmar, Archbishop of Yangon Cardinal Charles Bo, said he expects more from Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The world looks at Aung San Suu Kyi with the same lens with which it looked at her during her struggle for democracy," Bo told Time magazine. "Now she is part of the government, she is a political leader. Surely she should have spoken out."

However, he warned against "stigmatizing" Suu Kyi, saying that if the army retakes power, it would cause "the end of any dream of democracy."

Suu Kyi's position, is challenging because democracy in Myanmar remains fragile, Bo says.

Even though Suu Kyi was elected in a landmark democratic election in 2015, the military still controls key government ministries including Defence, Home Affairs and Border Affairs.

"Aung San Suu Kyi is walking a tightrope," Bo says.

"Already dark forces are clamouring for return to army rule."

Cardinal Patrick D'Rozario, the Archbishop of the Dhaka, told Crux he planned on visiting the camps personally to assess the situation.

D'Rozario said the church in the country is active in the humanitarian relief work being provided, despite the fact Catholics make up only about 0.2 percent of the population.

"Bangladesh Caritas is involved in relief work in the camps providing relief initially to fourteen thousand families," he told Crux, adding that Caritas Internationalis is the only international NGO approved by the government to work in the area.

James Romen Boiragi is the Bishop of Khulna, Bangladesh's third largest city. He said the situation with the Rohingya refugees is "very bad."

"We condemn this kind of military operation," the bishop told Crux. "This is an act against humanity and a violation of human rights. So many people are living inhuman lives. Lot of children are struggling to

Pakistani Bishop Joseph Arshad once served in the Vatican embassy to Bangladesh, and now heads the Pakistan Bishops' National Commission for Justice & Peace.

He told Crux the current crisis transcends ethnicity, religion, and nationality.

"We cannot remain silent. It's a humanitarian suffering and the Catholic Church in Pakistan stands strong with Rohingya people," Arshad said.

Sources

• Crux
• Time
• Image: Fortune

At least 5,000 Rohingya have fled the religiously and ethnically divided state where the military has operated counter-insurgency operations since Oct. 9 that has left more than 100 people dead and more than 400 arrested.

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, an advocacy group on Rohingya rights, said that at least 5,000 people fled to Bangladesh during Nov. 14-20 period.

"About 1,500 are stranded on a disputed island between Myanmar and Bangladesh in the middle of the Naf River without any food or water," Lewa told ucanews.com.

The United Nations said that they couldn't verify the numbers of Rohingya refugees, as they have no access to those areas.

"We have been appealing for access in order to assess and help meet the need for shelter, food and medical attention," Vivian Tan, spokesperson of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told ucanews.com.

For many Rohingya, reaching the border does not mean safe arrival.

Bangladesh has hardened its stance on keeping its border closed and has tried to push refugees back as the country struggles to cope with the exodus.

"The Bangladeshi government must not add to the suffering of Rohingya. They should be recognized and protected as refugees fleeing persecution, not punished for who they are," Champa Patel, South Asia director of Amnesty International said in a statement on Nov. 24.

A 40-year-old Rohingya woman told the London-based rights group that she had fled to Bangladesh after the Myanmar army killed her husband and one of her sons. She said she was not able to find shelter in a camp for herself and her two young children.

"We are sleeping outside in the mud," she said. " My son is 2- years-old and is crying all the time, he is very cold in the mornings. Still, compared to Myanmar, Bangladesh seems like heaven to me." Continue reading

Sources

• John Menadue in Pearls and Irritations
• Image: Stop Genocide Now

So profitable is the trade in slaves that some local fishermen in Thailand have been converting their boats to carry Rohingya migrants instead of fish.

A Guardian investigation into Thailand's export-orientated seafood business and the vast transnational trafficking syndicates that had, until recently, been holding thousands of Rohingya migrants captive in jungle camps, has exposed strong and lucrative links between the two.

Testimony from survivors, brokers and human rights groups indicate that hundreds of Rohingya men were sold from the network of trafficking camps recently discovered in southern Thailand.

According to those sold from the camps on to the boats, this was frequently done with the knowledge and complicity of some Thai state officials.

In some cases, Rohingya migrants held in immigration detention centres in Thailand were taken by staff to brokers and then sold on to Thai fishing boats.

Other Rohingya migrants say Thai officials collected them from human traffickers when they arrived on the country's shores and transported them to jungle camps where they were held to ransom or sold to fishing boats as slave labour.

Thailand's seafood industry is worth an estimated $7.3bn a year. The vast majority of its produce is exported.

Last year, another Guardian investigation tracked the supply chain of prawns produced with slave labour to British and American supermarket chains.

Though the Guardian has not irrefutably linked individual Thai ships using Rohingya slaves to specific seafood supermarket produce, the likelihood is that some seafood produced using this labour will have ended up on western shelves.

The scale of the profitable and sophisticated human trafficking networks making money from the desperation of hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya "boat people" has been emerging over the past weeks. Continue reading

Sources

• Emanuel Stoakes is a freelance journalist and researcher in the field of human rights and conflict; Chris Kelly is a documentary filmmaker and photographer; Annie Kelly writes on global development, human rights and social affairs for the Guardian and Observer. This article is from The Guardian
• Image: BBC News
• See also: Thai fishing industry turns to trafficking video, and 'Murder at Sea: Captured on Video but Murderers Go Free' in The New York Times