A new book on the Rohingya crisis authored by Myanmar's army, shows a man standing over two bodies wielding a farming tool. “Bengalis killed local ethnics brutally”, reads the caption.
A combination of screenshots shows (top) an image taken from Getty Images depicting Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, who were trying to flee Myanmar, after their boat was seized by MyanmarÕs navy, near Yangon, in 2015. The same image (bottom) appears in the Myanmar armyÕs recently published book on the Rohingya, flipped and converted to black-and-white, describing Bengalis entering Myanmar. Top: Getty Images, Bottom: Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw
The photo appears in a section of the book covering ethnic riots in Myanmar in the 1940s. The text says the image shows Buddhists murdered by Rohingya - members of a Muslim minority the book refers to as “Bengalis” to imply they are illegal immigrants.
But Reuters claims that the photograph was actually taken during Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, when hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistani troops.
The book was published in July by the army's department of public relations and psychological warfare. The image is one of three that appear in the book. Another image with caption saying that Bengalis intruded into the country after British Colonalisation occupied the lower part of Myanmar, is actually an award winning image of Rwandan Hutu refugees leaving Tansania.
A combination of screenshots shows (top) an image taken from the Pulitzer Prize website depicting the migration of Rwandan Hutu refugees in 1996 following violence in Rwanda. The same image (bottom) appears in the Myanmar armyÕs recently published book on the Rohingya, converted to black-and-white, describing the people as Bengalis entering the country following the British colonial occupation of lower Myanmar. Top: Martha Rial/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/The Pulitzer Prizes Bottom: Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw
The 117-page “Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw: Part I” relates the army’s narrative of August last year, when some 700,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine to Bangladesh, according to United Nations agencies, triggering reports of mass killings, rape, and arson. Tatmadaw is the official name of Myanmar’s military.
Much of the content is sourced to the military’s “True News” information unit, which since the start of the crisis has distributed news giving the army’s perspective, mostly via Facebook.
A combination of screenshots shows (top) an image taken from Flickr depicting the bodies of Bengalis being retrieved following their massacre in Dhaka in 1971. The same image (bottom) as it appears in the Myanmar armyÕs recently published book on the Rohingya describing it as the brutal killing of the local ethnic people by Bengalis in Myanmar. Top: Anwar Hossain/Flickr, Bottom: Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw
On Monday, Facebook banned the army chief and other military officials accused of using the platform to “inflame ethnic and religious tensions”. The same day, U.N investigators accused Senior General Min Aung Hlaing of overseeing a campaign with “genocidal intent” and recommended he and other senior officials be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
The book also seeks to trace the history of the Rohingya - who regard themselves as native to western Myanmar - casting them as interlopers from Bangladesh.