I'm on a journey around beautiful and troubled Burma...
..one of the largest countries in Southeast Asia.
A land that's suffered generations of dictatorship and ongoing war.
They've been fighting now for decades.
It's supposed to be a fledgling democracy...
There's a lot of freedom, or less fear I would say.
..that's opening up to the world.
This is like Burma's version of Venice.
All right. More? More?
It's just completely, totally fantastic.
But Burma is still a place of tragedy
and now an unfolding catastrophe.
On this first leg of my journey,
I travel through Burma's Buddhist heartlands,
to discover how some are pushing a religion of peace
towards hatred and violence.
I witness how Burma's all-powerful military
has turned on its own people,
driving hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from their homes.
Like nothing I have seen anywhere on planet Earth,
this speaks of a Biblical exodus.
Burma, which is now also known as Myanmar,
was once part of the British Empire.
I began my journey in Mawlamyine, the first colonial capital.
TRAIN HOOTS
Right. Let's catch a train.
I think this is the carriage.
I was travelling to Burma's biggest city, Yangon.
And we're off.
TRAIN HOOTS
This is so atmospheric.
It really is.
No glass separating you from the outside,
so a lovely breeze coming in.
And a really stunning landscape outside.
TRAIN HOOTS
In the late 1800s the British began building railway lines
running almost the entire length of the country.
At times it can feel like the trains are of a similar vintage.
So we went for ordinary class with solid wood benches
rather than upper class, where you get a comfier, padded seat.
But with added lice.
We thought this was a better bet.
The British ruled Burma for more than a century.
After a long struggle, Burma finally gained independence in 1948.
Just over a decade later, the military seized power,
ushering in decades of brutal dictatorship.
The military completely ruined Burma.
They wrecked the economy, they jailed thousands of dissidents,
they imposed severe censorship
and they cut Burma off from the outside world.
Under the military,
this became one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
Now the slight issue with lack of a window becomes apparent.
Everyone else has chosen to close the shutters.
How much is your... How much is water from you?
300 per bottle?
OK. All right, we'll have one, please.
How old are you?
How much money do you normally make for the family?
About £2 to £3 a day.
Is that good money? Does it help the family?
When do you get a chance to go to school?
Poverty is still endemic here.
Around a third of school-age children
don't actually attend school.
Hundreds of thousands of youngsters
work in fields, factories and trains.
The military dictatorship in Burma lasted for nearly 50 years.
It was the generals who actually renamed the country Myanmar.
Now, both names are still used.
In 2011, the military said they were stepping aside.
Today the country has a new, democratically elected government
led by a human rights icon whose struggle against dictatorship
earned her the Nobel Peace Prize.
The de facto leader of the country, as I'm sure you know,
is Aung San Suu Kyi.
Daughter of the great independence hero, Aung San.
She is loved by many Burmese as a human rights hero,
an Asian Nelson Mandela, if you like.
So what do you think of Aung San Suu Kyi?
Are you telling me you like Aung San Suu Kyi because she's pretty
and still got her youthful looks?
It sounds like you really quite love Aung San Suu Kyi.
Aung San Suu Kyi is hugely popular across much of Burma,
a country of more than 50 million people.
When her party won elections,
many saw it as the start of a new era for the nation.
After a ten-hour journey, we finally arrived in Yangon.
When Burma was ruled by the military,
the international community imposed heavy sanctions on the country.
Now, sanctions have been lifted, money and investment has poured in
and this huge city and its skyline is starting to be transformed.
The civilian government has released hundreds of political prisoners.
Many exiles have returned from abroad.
I was on my way to meet one of them, an old friend.
An activist who spent her life
campaigning for Burma's many ethnic groups.
During the dictatorship she had to flee the country.
She is brave and brilliant and her name is Cheery Zahau.
I'm looking for a small green car.
And that is a small green car.
Hi! Cheery!
Oh, my goodness!
Cheery! Can I come in?
Oh, my God! How are you?
You look good! You look good, too.
How the hell are you? Good.
Who's this? This is my... my daughter and my mum.
Hello, Mum. Look at you!
Are you the cutest child in the whole country?
Hello!
Cheery comes from the Chin ethnic minority,
one of more than 100 ethnic groups in Burma.
During military rule,
Cheery risked her life to smuggle me into the country.
Ready? Are you ready? Yeah. As I'll ever be.
Travelling into the remote homeland of the Chin people,
who are Christians, was one of my riskiest adventures.
I've travelled to one of the most repressive countries in the world.
Under the military, many ethnic minorities suffered terribly.
The Burmese troops are not so far from here.
That's why the villagers are always scared of the Burmese troops.
The Chin endured arrest, torture, massacres.
Villages were burned
as the army tried to crush dissent and their culture.
I think we should go back.
Our trip was cut short when troops suddenly appeared nearby.
You were on a wanted list.
Yeah. How much danger were you in doing this with us?
Life-threatening?
If they get... They arrest me, of course.
And I don't know what will happen in prison.
The fact that I took foreigners into Chin state,
it would be seen as really... a heavy case.
I mean, obviously, for you, things have improved.
Here we are.
You've come back from exile.
Yes. In 2012 the government said people can come back.
People who have been campaigning for democracies, human rights,
you all can come back.
And... And you didn't think it was a trap?
Cautious optimism.
We'll show you... Are you going to be my guide again?! Yeah!
What an honour. I'll be your guide. What an honour for me.
This time not in the jungle. Not in the jungle. Urban jungle.
Yeah, urban jungle.
It was emotional for me to see Cheery.
There was so much to discuss,
starting with the basics - the country's name.
Burma has been officially renamed Myanmar.
But Burma is still used as a name by some foreign governments
and many people here use both.
Why do you say Burma rather than Myanmar?
I use Burma because the military regime
never conducted a public referendum to choose the name of the country.
They just changed it? They just changed it.
So I want to make a statement by using Burma,
that I'm not being fooled by the generals. OK!
This is a beautiful landmark of Yangon,
or the whole of Burma, Myanmar.
All right. Let's cross.
And this is a... Oh! ..very beautiful place to hang out.
Look at this! Yes, it is!
You can just come here and sit and you know, like meditate.
Shwedagon Pagoda is one of the most famous
and dramatic monuments in the whole country.
And it's extraordinary
that you are now able to be out in Yangon at all
and that, to me, signifies some really positive and profound changes
have happened in the country.
Yes. If you live in Yangon, yes.
There's a lot of freedom, or less fear, I would say,
to go anywhere you want.
It's a very special time to be here, actually, at sunset.
And a very strange time as well
because of what is going on elsewhere in this country.
It is bizarre to be here now in the city
at a peaceful meditative Buddhist shrine,
while genocidal ethnic cleansing against a Muslim minority
is happening elsewhere in Myanmar.
Shall we go here? Yeah. Lovely tea shop.
I think most people watching this
will have heard about what's been happening to the Rohingya Muslims.
Yeah. It is...serious.
Nearly half a million people were driven out
of their communities in one month.
It's the biggest exodus of, you know,
people driven out of their communities in recent history.
But you look around, you would not... It's as if nothing happened.
You would not have the sense that... Yeah.
..there is such an extraordinary thing
going on in the country at the moment.
Yeah. In Yangon, life goes on as if nothing happens.
I am astonished that this is happening in Myanmar today,
with Aung San Suu Kyi as the leader.
Yeah. Are you?
Erm...
Yes, or no.
It's very...
..like, taboo topic.
Taboo topic? Yeah.
Even someone like you, who has risked your life endlessly
for this country and for the different peoples in it,
there are still some things you cannot risk,
or it wouldn't be wise for you to risk saying?
Yeah, exactly. So I will not tell you everything I know!
Probably wise. Or everything you think. Yeah.
OK.
Burma's one million Rohingya people come from Rakhine State.
They're Muslims in a country where 90% of the population is Buddhist.
The United Nations has described what's happened to them
as ethnic cleansing.
Others have labelled it genocide.
I'll be heading to meet the Rohingya later on this journey,
but first I headed north from Yangon
and into the Buddhist heartlands of the country.
You drive on the right but the steering wheel is on the right,
so the driver can't really see what's coming at him.
But they drive on the right because a former leader of the country
had a premonition or spoke to a fortune teller,
it's not entirely clear which, which said that they should move
from driving on the left to the right. So they did, overnight.
I don't imagine it did wonders for road safety.
Such is the power of a military dictator.
On a whim, the entire country's roads were thrown into chaos.
The daft change, combined with rules that made it almost impossible
to import left-hand drive cars,
is part of the reason Burma has one of the highest rates
for road deaths in the whole of Asia.
The generals could be bizarre -
another time switching the currency to multiples of nine,
again based on advice from astrologers and fortune tellers.
Across Burma, even today, people mix Buddhism
with a deep belief in spirits and the supernatural.
We're just on the outskirts of the town of Pyay
and we're going to stop here, probably overnight, actually.
So we're here? We're here.
With a local guide,
I stopped off to meet one of Burma's famous spirit mediums.
People consult them with their everyday problems.
They are important and influential.
Lovely to meet you. You are a Nat Ga Daw?
Have I said that right, and if so, what is a Nat Ga Daw?
You're a medium for the spirits, is that right?
Can we come in, is that OK?
Oh, I'm going to get taken! Lovely.
Daw Tin Tin Myaing says the spirits started talking to her
when she was a child.
Oh, my goodness. Look!
I can see there's a busty figure over here smoking a massive cigar.
What's going on there?
What's going to happen this evening?
Is it a celebration? Is it a service? Is it a religious event?
I get one wish and if it comes true, I have you to thank?
Even before Buddhism came to Burma, people here worshipped the spirits.
Today, aspects of the two religions have merged
in a wonderful, unusual way that can often involve a bit of a party.
Followers, locals and slightly baffled guests
were all being encouraged to make donations to the spirits
in return for luck and prosperity.
Being a spirit medium is one of the few occupations open to gay men
in a country where it's still technically illegal
to be homosexual.
And many face harassment.
Has life improved for you?
Have you felt that you live in a more tolerant society
since democracy came to the country?
The next morning, I continued my journey north
towards the ancient capital of Bagan.
We're just coming into Bagan and there are temples everywhere.
It's an extraordinary sight.
Bagan was the capital of the first empire
that united what became known as Burma.
A huge city of perhaps over 100,000 people.
This is astonishing.
1,000 years ago, Bagan's kings chose Buddhism as their state religion.
They built around 10,000 Buddhist temples,
more than 2,000 of which survive today.
This is a site to match any of the great wonders of the world.
It really is.
It's as if you put all the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe
in an area the size of Bristol.
During colonial rule, the British deposed Burma's Buddhist kings.
When the military took over after independence,
they pushed the idea that to be truly Burmese,
you needed to be Buddhist.
They persecuted Christians, like the Chin,
and Muslims, like the Rohingya.
The generals tried to use Buddhism to prop up their power
and they tried to put themselves at the heart of the faith.
So although almost everything here looks ancient,
much of it has actually been renovated
or even built quite recently
and a lot of it by former generals and serving generals,
partly to atone for their sins,
the crimes they've committed against their own people.
It is astonishing, really,
that although the dictatorship is supposed to have ended in Myanmar,
the generals haven't been prosecuted,
they haven't been tried for their crimes.
Many of them are still in power or in business power.
If it makes money still in Myanmar,
then the chances are that a general or a former general
is benefiting from it.
Some of what they've done is pretty gaudy.
Despite some dubious renovations, Bagan is still stunning
and a site to rival anywhere on the planet.
Empires have risen and fallen.
Dictatorships have been and gone.
But through it all, Buddhism has been a thread
connecting most of the Burmese people.
And still today it plays a critical role,
often doing the job of the state.
Look at this!
"Social welfare, monastic education school."
My goodness. I think I'd better do my shirt up.
That looks like a reception committee.
Oh, my goodness. Abbot Pyinya Wuntha is head
of this school in Pakokku in the middle of Burma.
Mingalaba. Mingalaba.
Mingalaba. My goodness.
Mingalaba!
ALL: Mingalaba!
This is a school and a clinic,
but also a monastery that's training novice monks.
At any one time,
there are said to be around half a million Buddhist monks,
novices and nuns in Burma,
thought to be the highest proportion in the world.
Every Burmese Buddhist boy is expected to become a monk
for a period of anything from a week to several months.
The monks live an austere lifestyle
and they have to get up at what I personally consider an ungodly hour.
ALARM RINGS
Bloody hell!
Oh, my goodness.
It's 4:30am...
..and they're heading out.
These young monks are performing their early morning ritual.
Every day, they'll walk sometimes up to two miles in bare feet.
So, we've arrived.
Monks across Burma are supposed to live entirely on donations
from members of the public.
Across the country, monks line up to collect their breakfast
at donation points just like these.
What do you have for the monks today?
Chilli. Chilli.
VOICE OVER TANNOY
And what is this? Is this a sermon...?
An announcement.
In the nicest possible way, can I ask why you all do this?
It's five o'clock in the morning!
Monks also played a very special role
in Burma's transition to democracy.
In 2007, tens of thousands of saffron robed monks
rose up against the military to protest against worsening poverty.
One of the biggest uprisings was here in Pakokku.
The military crushed the uprising.
Thousands of monks were imprisoned and tortured.
Some were killed.
Monks are the most respected figures in the country.
The fact they'd stood up to the military junta
put huge pressure on the dictatorship to change.
And it's fascinating to see this.
I suppose it creates an extraordinary culture in a country,
where the monks depend on the people, and to a certain extent,
the people depend on the monks as well.
Buddhism is generally seen as the most peaceful
of the world's major religions.
But there is now a darker side to Buddhism in Burma.
Some Buddhist monks here are turning militant.
So we're just on our way to a very controversial monastery,
and they don't want us to film,
so I think we'll probably put the cameras down now, go in there,
and see if they'll let us film.
We've had some delicate negotiations, but I think...
I think we're going to be allowed to start filming.
I'd gone to visit a group of monks called Ma Ba Tha,
the Committee To Protect Race And Religion.
They're supposed to be banned,
and are controversial because of their rabble rousing,
particularly against Rohingya Muslims.
But they're still active and I was meeting their senior members.
What are your beliefs, then?
How do your beliefs differ
from almost the mainstream of Buddhist philosophy in the country?
Do you view Islam and Muslims as a threat, then,
to Buddhism and Buddhists in this country?
So you're worried that Muslims are breeding very quickly, then,
that they threaten to breed out Buddhism in Myanmar, is that right?
That's right.
Right now, the United Nations says there is an ethnic cleansing
under way in Rakhine State.
What do you say is happening in Rakhine at the moment?
I was really shocked to hear such extreme views
coming out of the mouths of monks.
Ma Ba Tha has operations across the country.
There are at least 600 monks living in just this monastery,
avidly studying the beliefs of their teachers,
one of whom's been called the Buddhist Bin Laden.
There's been violence committed by Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine,
but the students here are played inflammatory videos
that put all the blame on the Rohingya.
Fake news, social media and videos have played a critical role
in fomenting and spreading hatred in modern Burma.
Millions here have lapped up the propaganda of militant monks,
the Burmese military, and even Aung San Suu Kyi's own government.
In their own country,
the Muslim Rohingya people are now widely hated.
Most Rohingya lived in Rakhine State,
in an area closed to foreigners.
I couldn't go on a journey around Burma
without learning more about what's happened to the Rohingya.
So I headed to neighbouring Bangladesh
and on to the river that divides the two countries.
The Rohingya are one of the most persecuted people on the planet.
They've lived under a system described by many experts
as an apartheid system for decades now.
Many Burmese see the Rohingya as illegal migrants,
but there have been Rohingya in the country for centuries.
In recent years, they've been deprived of their right to vote,
their access to health care and education was limited
and they were banned from travelling freely between villages.
The Burmese dictatorship even stripped them of their citizenship,
making the Rohingya the largest group
of stateless people on the planet.
This is about as far as we can go
without crossing the border between Bangladesh and Burma.
It's a part of the country
that we are completely forbidden from visiting.
In fact, if we get too close to that side,
it's quite possible Burmese border guards will start shooting at us.
Holy crap, look.
There's a fire over there.
It could be a normal fire
or it could be the Burmese military burning a Rohingya village.
The most recent violence against the Rohingya
is just the latest phase in a long campaign of oppression.
Waves of Rohingya refugees have been fleeing Burma for Bangladesh
ever since the 1970s, to escape persecution.
Most have been held and housed in refugee camps
just inside Bangladesh.
The largest is called Kutupalong.
I met up with Shamin, a Rohingya guide who grew up in the camp.
Shamin!
Assalaamu Alaikum. Wa alaikum salaam. How are you?
You've been living here in the camp for how long?
26 years. 26 years?! Yeah.
You came across from Myanmar...
1992. An earlier time of crisis for the Rohingya, wasn't it? Yeah.
In August 2017, a group of Rohingya militants
carried out a series of attacks on Burmese police posts.
In response, the Burmese military unleashed an orgy of bloodshed
on Rohingya men, women and children,
burning hundreds of villages and killing thousands.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees poured out of Burma into Bangladesh.
The population of Kutupalong camp exploded.
This is now the biggest refugee camp in the world.
Oh, my God. Look at this!
Look at the size of this camp, this place, this city.
I think like nothing I have seen
anywhere on planet Earth bespeaks of a biblical exodus...
..of an entire people terrorised into fleeing.
Can we hop in this?
The attacks by the Burmese military
caused the most rapid movement of people since the Rwandan genocide.
God, it's just enormous, this camp.
It is just enormous.
What's going on here?
Can we stop? Can we stop?
During the exodus, tens of thousands of families were split up.
Many are still desperate to know if their loved ones are dead or alive.
What's happened?
Is this the sort of situation that can result in a reunification?
You think stolen, trafficked? Yeah.
More than half the refugees who have come to Bangladesh are children.
Some lost their parents in the chaos.
Others have been left orphaned.
They need protection and they need support.
So this is a child-friendly space.
This is one of 130 child-friendly spaces in this area
run by the charity Unicef,
a vital safe haven for many of the camp's children.
Shakeel Faisula from Unicef invited me to talk to two youngsters
in the charity's care.
Yousef came to the camp with his sister, Rosina,
after the August attacks.
I promise you, it's not a gun. It's a camera, OK?
I promise you.
What this lad is immediately saying is that Jonathan's camera,
which has a handle on it at the front with almost a trigger,
he's saying immediately, "It looks like a gun."
You can go and have a look. It's OK.
All rights? So you know it's not a gun, don't you?
Why did you have to...
..why did you have to come here to Bangladesh, do you know?
Do you feel safe here now?
Yes, I feel safe here.
Shakeel, these are horrific stories.
Are you hearing this a lot from children? Yes.
These are kind of common stories that we are hearing
from many of the children.
We kind of feel that their childhood has kind of been stolen from them.
And now, they are here,
we are just trying to make sure that at least they have a future
because in many cases, you really can't claim
that these children will forget these things.
These will remain within themselves.
Forever? Forever.
For the time being, we can just tell them that,
yes, this has happened, this has happened,
but you have to continue.
What are the things that you do here or in life
that really make you laugh and smile?
Have you got a favourite team? Barcelona.
Barcelona is your favourite football team in the world.
You're a good man. Thank you for talking with us.
Big guy!
Oh, wow! Look what we've been offered, Shamin!
Oh, this is very nice.
Oh, what a VERY kind offer.
Do you like cake? This is cake.
We've got some cake.
This is biscuit. Biscuits!
Oh, I love biscuits.
You've brought us some tea and some biscuits and some cake!
Yeah. Delicious!
There we go. In my country, we love putting our biscuits in our tea.
Yeah.
Can you cut me some cake, please?
Because if I cut it, I'll have it all!
Thank you.
What do you like most about coming here?
One of the many wonderful things about a centre like this,
a sanctuary like this,
is that it gives children who often have very little
and many of whom are traumatised,
it gives them a chance just to be children again.
Her brother is calling her.
Her brother is calling her, all right.
They've been through more than most people can comprehend,
haven't they, some of them?
The scale of the killings, rape and torture
committed against these people by the Burmese military
has led the United Nations to label it as ethnic cleansing.
Burma's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner,
has not condemned the army's actions.
She has blamed the crisis on tensions
between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine
and violence on both sides.
International observers have not been allowed
to freely visit the area.
I'd heard that people were still trying to flee Burma
and that thousands were still stuck at the land border
between the two countries.
Bangladeshi border guards were closing crossing points
and setting up checkpoints to stop more Rohingya entering the country.
Let's go.
How close to the border are we now, Shamin?
This is also Burmese fence. Look. INAUDIBLE
Just there?! Yes, this one.
This is the main. Can we stop? Can we stop?
Let's just hop out.
OK, let's have a look.
This is the border.
Myanmar and Bangladesh border.
This is the border?
Yeah, this is the border and...
Right here?! Yeah. Not the water?
Yeah. The water is the border?
Yeah, this is Bangladesh and that is Myanmar.
This is the fence and pillar of the Myanmar.
OK, so they are trapped on almost a no-man's land, almost...
Yeah. ..between the Myanmar fence and the Myanmar border,
which is just here.
So they're being allowed to come to this side just informally?
Informally, to take medicines and to take food,
to take aid and just to bring water also.
OK. So...
This little bridge here... Yeah, bamboo bridge.
..is one of a very few sort of actual crossing points?
Yes. An informal crossing point.
This is utterly horrific.
I mean, thank God the Bangladeshis are letting the Rohingya come across
to pick up aid, otherwise these people would have nothing.
But, of course, you may well be asking
why won't they let everybody cross into the safety of this side?
It's a very fair question.
Obviously, Bangladesh is a desperately poor country.
They've already absorbed and are housing tens and tens of thousands
of Rohingya refugees.
But there are tensions starting to develop between the community here,
of course, and the people coming in.
Then we spotted Burmese soldiers watching over the camp
from the hill above.
What happened? One is running.
One has just run up. Over there.
Bloody hell.
So she stepped on a land mine?
No... Yeah. She...
Lost both her legs. Yes.
Relations have never been good between many of the Burmese
and the Rohingya, but this is...
this is apocalyptic.
It is a completely, erm,
devastating situation.
How can you ever go back?
TRANSLATION
What did you do before you came here, before you had to flee?
You studied psychology?
The Rohingya see themselves as part of Burma.
Everyone I spoke to wanted to return home.
The Bangladeshis want them to go.
But clearly it's not safe.
HORN BEEPS
Yeah, we've got some stuff. We've got some stuff.
There's a guy been injured.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
Yeah, we've got bandages.
Here. I'll try and find a better one.
That's probably the best thing.
Not far. Yeah?
OK. If you go on here.
Oh, man, he's been badly beaten.
Kairo went back into Burma to check on his farm.
He was caught by Burmese soldiers.
Why did you want to go back?
CAR HORN TOOTS
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE Patient, patient. Yes, yes.
Just here? Yes, yes.
OK. How often is something like this happening,
where people have been across the border,
are being still brought in now, beaten up, attacked, tortured?
Daily. Every day?
Yeah.
He's lucky to be alive.
They could've killed him. Mm.
They want the Rohingya to stay out of Myanmar?
It's hard to know how the Rohingya will ever be able to go safely back
to Burma.
30 minutes ago.
There is a small fracture.
He's got a fracture in his skull?
Yeah, a small fracture, no need to operate right now,
but we'll just take him to the observation
and see through the night how he goes.
After all that's happened,
surely the Rohingya would need cast-iron guarantees
and an international force to protect them if they returned.
Wouldn't you?
The Burmese government has always blamed Rohingya militants
for starting the latest bout of violence.
There is a small, violent Rohingya resistance movement
called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA.
In August 2017, they coordinated a series of attacks,
mostly with knives and sticks, on remote Burmese police outposts.
We're in a blacked-out vehicle because we're heading
to try and meet some of the militants
behind the initial attacks.
I heard about a guide who could help take me to the group.
I couldn't be sure what I was getting into.
Are these the guys here? Assalaamu Alaikum.
VOICEOVER: ARSA has been accused of receiving support from foreign
terror groups. Assalaamu Alaikum.
Wa alaikum salaam.
What inspired you, what forced you to join the group?
TRANSLATION
What did you do?
Oh, my God.
During one of the attacks that the Burmese say was responsible
for causing their...their military crackdown, as they put it?
Do you have any regrets about the attacks that you launched?
What is it that you want us to know?
Are you part of an international group
or organisation
or are you just for the Rohingya?
Are those international fighters, are they Al-Qaeda?
Well, look, I'm going to go out on a limb here
and I'm going to say that if you or I had been through what these people
have been through,
there is every chance that many of us would at least
sympathise with that group.
What an appalling situation this is.
I tell you, what worries me is that international jihadi groups
are starting to latch onto this situation.
If they get involved in the conflict,
they will poison relations around this region
between the different ethnic groups and different religions.
Unless the Rohingya are given safety and security and their land back,
then I fear for the safety of Myanmar and of this wider region.
The Burmese government claims they'll welcome the Rohingya back
into Burma, but from everything I'd seen, that seems more than unlikely.
Evidence suggests the Burmese army attacks were systematic
and organised -
possibly in advance.
Many of the Rohingya villages attacked by the soldiers
have now been bulldozed.
The state-run media in Burma is busy spreading fear of Muslims.
And anti-Rohingya feeling inside Burma is shockingly widespread.
I confess, I hadn't realised how bad things are for the Rohingya until
coming here. The point is they've been bad for decades.
I can't really understand why the rest of the world hasn't spoken up
about their treatment more assertively.
I think it was because recently
we've been a bit blinded by the fact that Burma is supposed to have
changed into a democracy.
And we haven't wanted to criticise it
and we haven't wanted to criticise the country's de facto leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi.
We thought she was an Asian Mandela.
How wrong we were.
Next time, I journey deeper into Burma to discover a land
that's been cut off for decades...
Well, this is like Burma's version of Venice.
..and I travel secretly to one of Burma's conflict zones
to meet a rebel army who have waged a long war against the brutal
Burmese military.