Highlights:

Within Myanmar:
• Nearly 5,000 civilians displaced by fighting in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state have taken refuge in the state capital, trekking 100 kilometers after camps near the conflict zone were too full to take them, refugees and officials have reported.
• A Rohingya man has been barred from standing in Myanmar’s upcoming election, due to questions about his parents’ citizenship. The decision has been decried by rights groups as discriminatory and a symptom of the “ongoing genocide” against the persecuted minority. He has said he will appeal the decision.
Accountability:
• Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar, said Facebook has not released evidence of “serious international crimes”, despite promising to work with investigators looking into abuses in the country including against the majority-Muslim Rohingya.
• The Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights has strongly rejected a recent government report on the 2017 massacre at the Gu Dar Pyin village in Rakhine state, which reported that a total of “19 terrorists” were killed in the operation. The Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights claimed instead that the operation ended with the killing of nearly 250 civilians.

RSN follows the plight of the Rohingya community, an ethnic minority driven from their home country of Myanmar to a number of countries, most principally Bangladesh. RSN compiles a weekly developments tracker (or “digest report”), focusing primarily on news coming out of Bangladesh, but including regional and international perspectives. Highlights of each week are featured here and linked in more detail in the full digest report. If you would like to receive these digest reports directly to your inbox, please email [email protected].