S65 · E48

Myanmar: The Hidden Truth

In August 2017, 11-year-old Monzur Ali saw things no child should ever see. Military helicopters landed on the football pitch in his village in Northern Rakhine in Myanmar. 'We didn't really want to leave my village but there was a lot of shooting. Some people were hanged from trees and shot. The dead bodies were left hanging', Monzur told Panorama. He and his family fled the country and are now living across the border in a giant refugee camp in Bangladesh. Like Monzur, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in 2017 to escape being killed, raped and abused by security forces and local Buddhists. It has been described by the UN as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, but could it amount to genocide? Using powerful eyewitness testimony, government documents and previously unseen footage, reporter Justin Rowlatt reveals how the Rohingya population has been isolated and weakened, and shows that attacks were part of a highly-planned and organised operation.