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''' SLAUGHTER :
''MUSLIM ROHINGYAS'' '''
2 WHO HAVE FLED SAY THEY WERE GIVEN nearly identical orders to ''kill all you see''. ''Kill all you see, whether children or adults.''
THE MASSACRES of Rohingya that culminated in 2017 catalyzed one of the fastest flights of refugees anywhere in the world. Within week, three-quarters of a million stateless group were uprooted from their homes in Myanmar's western Rakhine State, as security forces attacked their villages with rifles, machetes and flamethrowers.
Old men were decapitated and young girls were raped, their head scarves torn off to use as blindfolds, witnesses and survivors said.
Doctors Without Borders estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya, including 730 children, suffered violent deaths from late August to late September 2017. Roughly 200 Rohingya settlements were completely razed from 2017 to 2019, the United Nations said.
THE TWO SOLDIERS CONFESS THEIR CRIMES in a monotone, a few blinks of the eye their only betrayal of emotion : executions, mass burials, village obliterations and rape.
The August 2017 order from his commanding officer was clear, Pvt. Myo Win Tun said in a video ceremony. ''Shoot all you see and all you hear.''
He said he obeyed, taking part in the massacre of 30 Rohingya Muslims and burying them in a mass grave near a cell tower and a military base.
Around the same time, in a neighboring township, Pvt. Zaw Naiang Tun said he and comrades in another battalion followed a nearly identical directive from his superior :
''Kill all you see, whether children or adults.''
''We wiped out about 20 villages,'' Private Zaw Nainag Tun said, adding that he, too, dumped bodies in a mass grave.
The two soldiers video testimony, recorded by a rebel militia, is the first time that members of Myanmar's military, the Tatmadaw, have openly confessed to taking part in what United Nations officials say was a genocidal campaign against the mainly Buddhist country's Rohingya Muslim minority.
One recent Monday, the two men, who fled Myanmar last month, were transported to The Hague, where the International Criminal Court has opened a case examining whether Tatmadaw leaders committed large-scale crimes against Rohingya.
The atrocities described by the two men echo evidence of serious human rights abuses gathered from among the more than one million Rohingya refugees now sheltering in neighboring Bangladesh. What distinguishes that testimony is that it comes from perpetrators, not victims.
''This is a monumental moment for Rohingya and the people of Myanmar in their ongoing struggle for justice,'' said Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights, a human rights watchdog.
''These men should be the first perpetrators from Myanmar tried at the I.C.C. and the first insider witnesses in the custody of the court.''
The New York Times cannot independently confirm that the two soldiers committed the crimes to which they confessed. But details in their narratives conform to descriptions by dozens of witnesses and observers, including Rohingya refugees, Rakhine residents, Tatmadaw soldiers and local politicians.
And multiple villagers independently confirmed the whereabouts of mass graves that the soldiers provided in the testimony - evidence that will be sized on in investigations at the International Criminal Court and other legal proceedings. The Myanmar government has repeatedly denied that such sites exist across the region.
The crimes that the soldiers carried say were carried out by their infantry battalions and other security forces - some 150 civilians killed and of villages destroyed - are just part off Myanmar's long campaign against the Rohingya.
And they portray a concerted, calculated operation to exterminate a single ethnic minority group, the issue at the heart of genocide cases.
In a report published last year, a fact-finding mission for the United Nations Human Rights Council said ''there is a serious risk that genocidal actions may occur or reoccur and that Myanmar is failing in its obligations to prevent genocide, to investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation criminalizing and punishing genocide.''
The Myanmar government has denied any orchestrated campaign against the Rohingyas.
The Sadness in Serving of this Latest Global Operational Research on the Rohingyas, the minorities and the state of sufferings and solutions, continues. The World Students Society thanks authors, Hannah Beech, Saw Nanag and Marlise Simons.
With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011:
''' Muslim Ethnic Groups '''
Good Night and God Bless
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