"Atrocity Alert is a weekly publication by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect highlighting situations where populations are at risk of, or are enduring, mass atrocity crimes. ROHINGYA POPULATION ONCE AGAIN ENDURING ATROCITIES IN MYANMAR This Sunday, 25 August, marks seven years since security forces in Myanmar (Burma) initiated so-called “clearance operations” against the Rohingya population, a distinct Muslim ethnic minority, in Rakhine State. The operations were characterized by brutal violence and grave human rights violations on a mass scale in what a UN Human Rights Council-mandated Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar concluded to be genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The violence forced over 720,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh where they endure dire conditions in some of the largest refugee camps in the world. Seven years on, survivors and victims of the Rohingya genocide remaining in Myanmar are facing the threat of atrocity crimes as Rakhine State is besieged by armed conflict again. The Rohingya are increasingly caught in the middle of escalating fighting between the military and Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, which has surged in Rakhine State since November 2023 when an informal ceasefire broke down. In recent months the AA has advanced across Rakhine State, taking control of many predominantly Rohingya areas from the military junta. In response, the military has carried out relentless indiscriminate aerial attacks and blocked Rohingya attempting to escape. Last month, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, warned that the situation “carries echoes of the lead-up to genocidal violence in 2016 and 2017,” while highlighting how the junta has deliberately stoked tensions between the Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Rakhine State. The Rohingya have also been disproportionately targeted in the junta’s forced conscription campaign. Reports have also emerged of atrocities committed by the AA against Rohingya civilians, including mass arrests, forced displacement, looting and the blocking of humanitarian aid. According to the Women’s Peace Network, at least 200 Rohingya – mostly women and children – were killed in drone attacks launched by the AA near the Naf River during the first week of August. Around 20,000 Rohingya were forcibly displaced from downtown Maungdaw prior to this and attempting to escape other attacks by the AA in the area. Impunity for past atrocity crimes in Myanmar has enabled the ongoing commission of atrocities, while the renewed fighting in Rakhine State compounds existing vulnerabilities and risks for the Rohingya. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect’s Executive Director, Savita Pawnday, said, “For decades, the Rohingya have been systematically persecuted, with little-to-no redress for their generational suffering. On this somber commemoration, the international community must commit to action, including by pursuing justice for both past and ongoing atrocities in Myanmar and cutting off access to the jet fuel, weapons and funds the junta needs to continue to commit atrocities.”..."