8/8/22, 9:18 PM New evidence shows how Myanmar's military planned the Rohingya purge CIJA allowed Reuters to review many of the documents, which include internal military memos, chain-of-command lists, training manuals, policy papers and audiovisual materials. Some documents contained redactions, which the group said were necessary to protect sources. The organization also asked Reuters not to disclose the location of its office for security reasons. The documents do not contain orders explicitly telling soldiers to commit murder or rape – such smoking-gun records are rare in the field of international justice. But key in the CIJA cache is the evidence of planning, said Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues who now sits on CIJA’s board. “Everything in it points to this intention to engage in this kind of mass removal process,” he said. Through interviews with former Burmese soldiers, Rohingya and Rakhine civilians and ex-government officials, and a review of social media and official statements, Reuters was able to independently corroborate many details in the documents. (See related story.) Myanmar’s military junta didn’t respond to questions from Reuters. The cache illustrates the obsession authorities had with reducing a population they viewed as an existential threat. In a private meeting with officials in Rakhine, which CIJA said was held around the time of the 2017 expulsion, the then-army chief and current junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, told the Buddhist population to remain in place, and pointed to a demographic imbalance between Rohingya and the rest of the Rakhine population, the documents show. Some of the officers who spearheaded the Rohingya expulsion and whose names appear in the documents have since been promoted. Rohingya, who are mostly Muslim, trace their roots in Myanmar’s Rakhine area back centuries, a reading of history supported by independent scholars. While they now comprise a slim majority in the north of Rakhine state, they are a minority overall compared to the ethnic Rakhine, a mostly Buddhist group. Nationalists from the country’s Buddhist majority see the Rohingya as illegitimate migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rohingya-warcrimes-investigation/ 11/34