Background 20 For several consecutive weeks, the Myanmar government forces, alongside armed ethnic Rakhine civilians, attacked and burned to the ground hundreds of Rohingya villages, massacring women, men, and children, committing rapes, conducting mass arbitrary arrests of men and boys, and razing thousands of Rohingya homes.7 In a 160-page report published in July 2018, Fortify Rights found that the attacks constituted genocide and crimes against humanity.8 Months later, in September 2018, a U.N.-appointed Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar concluded that the crimes committed by the military against the Rohingya amounted to genocide and, even later, on March 21, 2022, the U.S. government likewise issued a genocide determination.9 This genocide took place against a background of decades of discrimination and violence against the Rohingya population of Myanmar. Successive governments of Myanmar refused to recognize the Muslim Rohingya as citizens of Myanmar or use the word “Rohingya.” Officially, the government’s position was that Rohingya did not exist and were instead migrants from Bangladesh who had no claim to Myanmar citizenship. These discriminatory and racist policies laid the foundation for the genocide.10 Such racist and discriminatory views were not limited to members of the military: even the Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi refused to use the term Rohingya or to acknowledge Rohingya as Myanmar citizens after becoming the de facto civilian leader of Myanmar. She also made a personal appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to defend the Myanmar Army on its genocidal violence.11 In addition to finding the Myanmar military responsible for committing atrocities against Rohingya in 2017, Fortify Rights also documented crimes committed by ARSA at this time.12 For example, six ARSA members told Fortify Rights in 2017 about witnessing their group kill Rohingya civilians.13 Additionally, Fortify Rights documented how, in the weeks and days leading up to August 25, 2017—a date now memorialized as the commencement of the military-led genocide—ARSA members killed six Rohingya civilians in Rakhine State suspected of being government “informants.”14 Members of ARSA told Fortify Rights that Atta Ullah issued direct orders to kill and target specific Rohingya civilians and that ARSA members in Myanmar carried out those orders.15 More than 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar to escape the attack by the Myanmar military in 2017, crossing the border into Bangladesh. At the time, it was the fastest refugee outflow since the Rwandan genocide.16 The exodus led to an exponential increase in the refugee population in Bangladesh, from an estimated quarter million before the 2016 and 2017 military-led attacks to more than one million post-2016 and 2017—almost all of whom were ethnic Rohingya.17 7 Fortify Rights, “They Gave Them Long Swords.” 8 Ibid. 9 Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, Report of the Detailed Findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar; Antony J. Blinken, “Secretary Antony J. Blinken on the Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in Burma.” 10 Fortify Rights,“Tools of Genocide:” National Verification Cards and the Denial of Citizenship of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, September 2019, https://www.fortifyrights.org/mya-bgd-rep-2019-09-03/; Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, February 2014, https://www.fortifyrights.org/myainv-rep-2014-02-25/. 11 Ibid. See also, Fortify Rights, “Genocide by Attrition: The Role of Identity Documents in the Holocaust and the Genocides of Rwanda and Myanmar,” June 8, 2022, https://www.fortifyrights.org/mya-inv-rep-2022-06-08/. 12 Fortify Rights, “They Gave Them Long Swords.” 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 For decades, Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps in southern Bangladesh provided shelter to more than a quarter million Rohingya refugees, many of whom fled earlier persecution in Myanmar or were born in the camps.