Table 1 Reported threats by Myanmar government representatives against Rohingya prior to August 2017

Physical violence and forced eviction

In the meeting, they said there were bad people in your hamlet. “You have relations with them. If you did not find them, we will shoot you, torture you and drive you from the hamlet.” (Maungdaw #26)

We have to arrest the bad people. If we can’t, they would come and burn out the whole village. (Maungdaw #2)

Destruction of Rohingya village

If we reject NVC, military and BGP threatened us they would make our village the land of ash. (Buthidaung #5)

And they threatened us they would make our village burnt to the ground. (Maungdaw #21)

We would have “to receive NVC; if not, we would not be allowed to stay in the land and they would bring Buddhists from other areas to ours.” (Maungdaw #7)

In the meeting, they told that they would make us landless, helpless, and property-less (Maungdaw #10)

Loss of livelihood

They said “You will not be allowed to fish. You will not be allowed to go anywhere. You will not be allowed to do any business. You will not be allowed to go to the mountain. You will not be allowed to do anything. We will make you die from starvation.” (Buthidaung #24)

Forced eviction

They said in the meeting that we could not stay if we didn’t obey everything the government said. Also, they said that there was “nothing we owned; all belongs to the government.” (Maungdaw #21)

“If you want to live in this country, you have to follow instructions. If you don’t follow our instructions, for us, to kill you is as easy as killing ants and dogs, as you are Bengalis, the illegal immigrants.” (Rathedaung #7)

Retaliation

The commander of [name omitted] attended and told us that if any Buddhist was killed, they would kill a thousand Rohingyas. (Maungdaw #11)

They always threatened us in advance that they would “burn the whole village, destroy it by bulldozer, and kill all the people if any violence occurred.” (Maungdaw #11)