8/8/22, 9:18 PM New evidence shows how Myanmar's military planned the Rohingya purge Thura San Lwin and Maung Maung Soe didn’t respond to questions sent to the military junta. At another meeting in August between a MOC-15 commander and local administrators, the commander complained there were too many Muslims living near a military detachment. The majority of “Bengali” villages had been “trained for terrorism,” the group concluded. They resolved to demolish their homes and mosques, according to one record. Around this time, according to another record, national and state-level officials visited a group of ultranationalist Buddhist monks in northern Rakhine state, who told them “illegal migrant Bengalis” were killing ethnic people to occupy the region. One of the monks said action needed to be taken. Thura San Lwin, the border guard police chief, told the monks that forces were deployed for patrols and would carry out “area clearance” in cooperation with the military, according to the document. He didn’t specify where the clearance would take place. The officials urged the monks and other locals to cooperate with the security forces and share information. Burned to the ground During the 2017 expulsion of the Rohingya, almost 400 villages were partly or completely destroyed, mostly by fire, according to United Nations investigators. Myanmar security forces and Rakhine locals were responsible, according to the investigators. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rohingya-warcrimes-investigation/ 19/34