Attachments
Executive Summary
On August 25, 2017, security forces from the Myanmar military, Border Guard Police (BGP), and police, as well as Rakhine and Hindu civilians, attacked the village of Gora Khali (Kyaung Taung, formerly known as Gaw Yar Khar Li), located in Maungdaw, Rakhine State. The 100-300 assailants besieged the village from their deployment stations at a BGP camp, Rakhine village, school, and military post in Hoirzza Bil (Oo Doung). They killed and injured Rohingya villagers with indiscriminate gunfire. Security forces burned down Rohingya homes and looted Rohingya property.
In the terror after such mass-scale violence and killing, Gora Khali villagers escaped to Bangladesh, where they now live in temporary tents inside precarious refugee camps.
Yet the systematic destruction of the Rohingya people began far earlier than August 2017. Starting from decades earlier, the government confiscated land from Rohingya villagers and allocated it to Rakhine settlers and also rented the land out.
And during the time period of 2012-2016, Rohingya experienced multiple and successive forms of religious discrimination and persecution. This included prohibitions on giving religious sermons, on holding religious events, on practicing Qurban (ceremonial sacrifice of livestock animals), and on using a microphone for azan (to make calls to prayer). They were forbidden to gather in groups of five or more people, which abrogated religious fellowship. Nor could they freely use their mosque for prayer or provide Islamic education to their children at the madrasa. Security forces physically beat, arrested, transported to the camp, and jailed those found in prayer or religious practice.