“Shoot all you see and all you hear” – after receiving this order from his commanding officer in August 2017, Pvt. Myo Win Tun confessed in a video confession years later to having participated in the killings of 30 Rohingya Muslims and burying them in a mass grave close to a cell tower and a military base. If nothing else, the preceding confession should make abundantly clear to a reader the horrific life that the Rohingya were forced to live in Myanmar.
The Rohingya have endured decades of systematic discrimination, statelessness, and targeted violence, which persist to this day. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017 to avoid detention, torture, rape, and other grave human rights violations after a “clearance operation” conducted by the Myanmar military. Bangladesh now hosts around one million Rohingya refugees.
Bangladesh is well aware of the sufferings of refugees as its own people have experienced the horror of being forced to flee their own country to escape torture and mass killing. Following the landslide victory of the Awami League in the 1970 election, West Pakistani leaders began procrastinating. On the night of 25th March 1971 the Pakistani military launched ‘Operation Searchlight’ against unarmed civilians of East Pakistan. Thousands of people died in the first few days, and an estimated 10 million people fled from Bangladesh, crossing the border and seeking refuge in India while 30 million were internally displaced.