Today, Explained - Arrested for reporting a massacre

Episode Date: September 7, 2018

Two Reuters reporters have been sentenced to seven years in prison for calling attention to a recent massacre in Myanmar. The United Nations says it's part of a larger genocide to wipe Rohingya from the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sarah Cliff, you've been with me all week in the studio here with Max talking about your getquip.com slash explained conversion. Yes. I should ask about Max because he's been here patiently this whole time. Yes. Increasingly less patient. Increasingly less patient. I want to hear about baby toothbrushing, if you don't mind. Yeah, let's, if Max will tolerate it, we'll talk about baby toothbrushing.

Hey, Sean. Hey, Sean. Hey, Mike. Thanks for making time for me. I know you have an Ohio area code, but you're not in Ohio, are you? I actually live in Houston, Texas now. I work in public relations. And from Houston, you listened to Today Explained, and you emailed me the other day about our credits. You had a question, and it wasn't about the fact that I host the show or that Irene Noguchi is our executive producer or that Bridget McCarthy is our editor

or that Afim Shapiro is our engineer. It wasn't about Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vander Ploeg producing or Bree Seeley being our summer intern or Agarrene Shasha Gray helping out this week. It was about the guy who makes music for us, the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, right? Yeah, and he has a name that stands out too, doesn't he? He sure does, and you noticed something about it

that I thought maybe we could share with the audience. Yeah, I've had to purchase a new car recently, and when I brought it in for a pre-purchase inspection, one of the items on the list stuck out to me. It said, brake master cylinder, three words, B-R-A-K-E, right? Yeah. And then it dawned on me that not only is brake master cylinder a master of brakes, I assume drum brakes, but he's also a master of puns, Sean. I mean, that doesn't surprise me based on what he calls the songs he sends us.

But what did you notice when you went to the auto shop there in Houston? Well, I noticed that brake master cylinder is a car part that everyone has in their car. And we just never realized it. We didn't realize that he's also within us everywhere we go, taking us places. Well, and he's crucial because without that brake master cylinder, what's going to push the brake fluid to stop your car, Sean? True words, Michael. I ride a bike, but I'll take it. Michael, it's been really nice to learn this fact about the mysterious brake master cylinder.

I suppose that's why he's mysterious. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Before I go, I just wanted to ask, I know you're at work. I don't want to keep you too long. Do you follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained? I do, actually, and I'm very happy for the content. Have you rated and reviewed our program on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you listen? Oh, my God, I should.

Will you? I guarantee you on my life that I will review your show. Thank you, Michael. One last thing. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And thank God for that, Sean. You do a great job, and I hope you keep it up. The persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar has been going on for years.

This week, it got harder to even understand what's happening there. A judge in Myanmar found two Reuters journalists guilty of collecting state secrets on Monday. Wallon and Chosou have been sentenced to seven years in prison. Wallon and Chosou got seven years for doing their jobs. At the time of their arrest, the two had been working on an investigation into the killings of 10 Rohingya by troops and Buddhist civilians in Rakhine State. For reporting on the violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar. The writer's story draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers

who confess to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies, and killing Muslims. It's important to understand the context here. Kevin Krolicki worked with the two reporters. I'm Asia editor for Reuters. We reached him in Yangon. It's the biggest city in Myanmar. The events in question really started in late August of 2017. There was a coordinated attack on security stations in western Myanmar by a group called ARSA. It's a group of Rohingya militants.

The Myanmar military is cracking down in northern Rakhine state after fighters from a group that calls itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched coordinated attacks on Friday on 30 police stations and an army base. The government of Myanmar viewed the attacks of late August by the ARSA group as their 9-11, essentially. Those attacks precipitated a brutal crackdown by the army that every international observer says was utterly disproportionate. They are part of a deliberate strategy to intimidate, terrorize, or punish the civilian population. The ARSA attacks killed, you know, I think estimates are dozens,

but the reprisals that followed, thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed. A conservative estimate by the UN is 10,000. Villages were burned. Villages were surrounded by the Myanmar military. Soldiers swept through. They opened fire on men, women, and children as they were running away, and they systematically burned down villages. There were gang rapes.

There were three soldiers. Two of them pointed guns at me, and the other took off my clothes, pushed me to the ground. Then one after the other, they raped me. In the days and weeks that followed, more than 700,000 of them fled across the border to Bangladesh. But the involvement of the military and police, none of that was clear. What Wallon and Chosu wanted to understand, what many reporters wanted to understand, and many human rights groups wanted to understand, was what had happened. And they found evidence of a mass killing. It's a chilling and detailed account of what can only be described as a premeditated massacre.

It was the first time that the involvement of security forces in an extrajudicial killing had been documented. Up until then, the government's position had been that this had not happened. The photographs provided to Reuters by a Buddhist village elder don't lie. Ten men, including two boys, the youngest of whom was 17. There was one picture of them in custody, kneeling down, and then another after they'd been killed and pushed into a single grave. Their ages ranged from 17 to 45. Among them were students, fishermen, farmers, shop owners, fathers. They were all part of the same Rohingya community

from the village of Indin in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state. There was a lot of hate speech directed at our reporters and directed at us. There is a view, and it's a prevalent one, that Rohingya people are not citizens of Myanmar. Government officials don't use that term, which is the preferred term for the Rohingya themselves. They call them Bengali. They describe them as undocumented immigrants and aligned with terrorist groups. The military had been denying these atrocities despite clear evidence that widespread violence had been perpetrated by the military. Wallone, our reporter, he had been looking at the involvement of a particular police battalion in this killing. In the course of that reporting, he took a phone call from a police officer he'd never met who asked to meet. And when they met, he went with Chosu, our other reporter.

When they met, that police officer gave them documents rolled up in a newspaper. They hadn't sought those documents, tried to decline them, ended up taking them. And the moment they left the restaurant, they were arrested by police. They were set up in an attempt to prevent publication of their story about what had happened in this village called Indin, where the 10 men were killed. For a few weeks, they just vanished. They were taken by police. They were held for questioning. They were made to kneel for prolonged periods. They had no access to lawyers. And we didn't know where they were. It took a long time for us to even understand that they had been arrested. At the trial, we started to see the discrepancies

and holes in the prosecution case. One of the crucial moments was when the police called a police captain on the stand. Despite the prosecution's expectation he would say something else, he said that he had been present at a meeting where a more senior officer had said they needed to trap Wallon and Chosu and arrest them. There were gasps in the

courtroom. They were sentenced to seven years in prison and convicted of a violation of the Official Secrets Act in Myanmar. None of the evidence presented at trial justifies a guilty conviction, let alone a prison sentence of that kind. For many local reporters who don't have the protection of working for a large international news agency, this verdict is a really chilling message that, you know, any reporter at any time is not beyond the reach of the police and security forces if they want to shut down reporting that they find inconvenient. Kevin, these are your colleagues at Reuters being arrested for doing their jobs,

for reporting on what they discovered. Have you lost hope in what you do there in Myanmar? This isn't the end. It can't be allowed to end here. The government of Myanmar now has an opportunity to do the right thing, to pardon them and to set them free. Nothing can make up for the injustice of their detention and their arrest and the time they've spent from their families and been away from their jobs. But the government now has an opportunity and a responsibility to put this right.

And that's what we want to see. How this brutal conflict got started. That's next on Today Explained. All right, Max, we've reached the point in the program where we're going to talk about your toothbrushing habits. Is this bad? Is he like actually crying now? No, it's fine. He does this all the time.

This is normal. Max doesn't have teeth yet. He does not have teeth. So have teeth so you don't have to brush that's the summary of his tooth brushing once max is of tooth brushing age do you think he'll be like a old school rotary or a uh a quip or something in between some people use their fingers at camp yeah it's a little unpredictable yeah you know i mean i have a dog toothbrush for my dog i guess i'll get a baby toothbrush for my baby. I should say at getquip.com slash explained, I found out recently they have family packs. Oh.

But, I mean, he probably doesn't have, like, the proper motor skills. Well, maybe we can put something on our calendars for, like, two years from now and see. Okay, yeah, great. See what kind of toothbrush he's using. We'll hear back then. Thank you, Max. Great to see you. See ya. Bye.

Shafir Rahman, you're a documentary filmmaker based in the UK. You've made two documentaries about the Rohingya crisis. I'm wondering if you could help us understand it. Of course. First of all, Myanmar. Burma, Myanmar, which do people say? Both? I've heard both. I believe you're very right.

You can say both. In the camps, they use both words. The Myanmar government obviously prefers Myanmar without any of the colonial connotations that Burma has. And when did the country gain its independence from the UK, from Britain? In 1948, I believe, yeah. And what's the population now? The population of Myanmar is around 50 million.

And majority Buddhist? Overwhelming majority, 90% of the population are Buddhists. And how big is the Muslim minority? I believe Muslims constitute around 4% of the population, but the Rohingya would be much less than that. So who are the Rohingya? Rohingya are an ethnic minority who live mainly in the northern region of Rakhine State. Rakhine State is east of Bangladesh, and most of the refugees that you've been hearing about are from villages which are, you know, perhaps a day's walk away, and of course some much further afield.

So it's next to Bangladesh. And Rohingya have been basically described by the military government, successive governments, and including the present one, as interlopers, as if they were recent arrivals. Actually, this is not the case. Rohingya have been in Myanmar, in Burma for some time, the record of the word Rohingya is by a Scottish botanist way back in 1799. So therefore, there's historical evidence of how long they've been there. So how does the conflict begin between the Rohingya and Myanmar nationals, Buddhists in Myanmar? How do you even say this? They're all nationals of the country, right? They are absolutely.

I would say that, as you've correctly identified, that they are nationals of the country, but nationals who have lost their nationality. This was in 1982. But, you know, I think we should start in probably 1962 when everything changed for Burma. The military came in, there was a coup d'etat, and the military manipulated notions of nationhood, notions of who belongs, in order to undertake its nation building project. And in their rhetoric, Rohingya did not belong. They were infiltrators, they'd come to take up land, etc. and in their rhetoric Rohingya did not belong.

They were infiltrators, they'd come to take up land etc. So there were military operations in 1978, in 1991 and 2 and of course the most recent ones as well and these operations against the Rohingya were basically well look you're not a national, you have to clear out and in 1982 they basically made conditions for nationality, for citizenship so difficult that Rohingya couldn't possibly prove it. They needed to have documentation stretching back before 1823. So things really changed for Rohingya in 62, but certainly after 82, when the nationality laws came in.

How do you have documentation dating back a century? I feel like I couldn't tell you things about my grandparents. Yeah, absolutely. But this was their project. This was to clear Rohingya out of Rakhine state, because they were seen as an existential threat to both race and religion in Burma. You referenced this refugee crisis. How bad is it? How many refugees have fled so far? And where are they going? In August 2017, when I was at the border, when I saw all these people coming over, it was a very, very difficult sight to behold. You couldn't imagine. And this is the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

That's right, yes. So it was incredibly chaotic, and you had hundreds of thousands of people pouring into Bangladesh with nothing ready for them. They had to find their own spot to pitch their own little hut. They had to buy their own materials. They had to buy their bamboo, their plastic. There were no toilets.

It was just horrendous. You know, we are talking about 1.1 million people. And these people are not allowed to move around. They can't leave the camps for another city or another part of Bangladesh or anything like that. They are concentrated in there. There's very little in the way of amenities, facilities or services that can't work. The Bangladesh government will not allow them to work. So they are dependent on the handouts, their monthly handouts. And how are they viewed by, say, the government of Bangladesh, where the majority of

them are going? I think the Bangladesh government has to be congratulated for dealing with the refugee crisis as it has. But at the same time, the Bangladesh government does not give them refugee rights. It doesn't recognize them as refugees. If they were to be recognized as refugees, they would have the freedom to work, they would have the freedom to work, they would have the freedom to move around, to study. None of these apply. So Bangladesh needs to be persuaded that refugees need to be given refugee rights so that they're not just sitting around there wasting their lives. Are other countries helping as well, willingly taking in Rohingya refugees? I'm afraid third-party relocation of Rohingya is not permitted. Bangladesh does not allow Rohingya

to go to a third country as an exile, as an asylum seeker, as a refugee. Those who make the more hazardous journey to Malaysia, they're also pretty much trapped in Malaysia, and some even make it to Thailand. And there are really horrendous stories about what happens to these people who are trafficked to Malaysia and Thailand. What role is Myanmar's civilian leader playing in all this, Aung San Suu Kyi?

She's got a Nobel Peace Prize, right? Is she trying to establish peace with the Rohingya? Aung San Suu Kyi has not used her moral authority to do anything. She, in fact, explicitly said, I don't want to take sides. It is not the intention of the Myanmar government to apportion blame or to abnegate responsibility. We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence. This heroine who has been able to, in the eyes of the world, change Burma, why is she not using her influence, her moral status, to say anything about what's happening. And what's the answer to that question?

I believe she is working hand in glove with the military. As someone put it, she is the lipstick on the pig of the army. That's the reality. She is complicit. So Shafir, you've been in these camps in Bangladesh. You've spent time with these Rohingya refugees. You made a documentary about them. What did they want you to tell the world? I think what's clear and what was really emphasized to me everywhere that I went was that they want justice. I have to tell you that this was one of the most difficult things I've ever covered. I've been in Libyan detention camps.

I've seen some horrible things elsewhere, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw there. And many journalists that I've known have said the same thing to me. But one thing struck me was the resilience that these Rohingya refugees have. And I want to tell you a little story about one woman called Mumtaz and her seven-year-old daughter. She lost three young children in the massacre in Tulatuli. Her husband, her mother, she herself was raped. She was set on fire.

And Razia, her seven-year-old, actually saved her. She roused her. She was unconscious. She was able to wake her up and get her out of the burning hut. Razia herself, the seven-year-old daughter, was struck three times on the head with a machete. There's gaps in her hair. But what struck me was that she's getting on with her life, her instinct to survive, her endurance. And I wondered, you know, where does she get it?

I don't know. Perhaps it's her love for her seven-year-old daughter. Shafir, I mean, you're talking about murder, rape, setting a woman on fire, hitting a child over the head with a machete, attempting to kill a child. I mean, where does that kind of hatred come from in Myanmar? If you believe that there's a group of people who don't belong, if you believe that they're hell-bent on destroying your race, your religion, if you believe that they're there to take away your livelihood, your land, and all of this fuelled by the rhetoric of the government and the military mixed with religion, this is what happens.

I believe that in the new Burma, in the new Myanmar, these are the forces that have been let loose. Shafir Rahman is a documentary filmmaker based in London. I'm Sean Ramos-Firum. This is Today Explained. Thanks again to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for supporting today's Explain This Week. The Quips start at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com slash explained right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with your Quip electric toothbrush. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. Kara Swisher, we're here to talk about your podcast, Recode Decode. You're joining me in the Today Explained studio here in D.C. Usually a lot of tech people, media people, but not exclusively, huh?

Not at all. I try to do different things, and that's why I interviewed Dr. Jen Gunter. She is the blogger who kind of took down Gwyneth Paltrow a little bit, down a few notches. Oh, really? She is an OBGYN and a pain physician, and she has this blog where she would read a lot of the stories on Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness site called Goop. And they enraged her. Things like putting jade eggs in your vagina, steam. It's a lot around the vagina because she is an OBGYN. And so she was like, you cannot do this, ladies. Do not steam your vagina. Don't

put a jade egg in there. And all kinds of different things that they were pushing. And so she thought it was junk science and made it her business to stop it from being on these sites. And so now Goop has a fact checker. She's definitely gotten into trouble. Just, again, from a small platform, she changed things. And she's very, very funny. Cool. And people can find that right now when they go look for Recode Decode, wherever they find their podcasts?

Yeah.