Myanmar army 'used fake photos' in Rohingya book
The army聽appears to justify a crackdown on the ethnic minority group and blames the violence on Rohingya militants.
Friday 31 August 2018 14:13, UK
A new book written by Myanmar's army uses "fake" photographs to tell the history of the Rohingya people, it has been claimed.
It attempts to the trace the history of the Rohingya in western Myanmar - portraying them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The military also uses the book to deny reports of mass killings, rape, and arson.
Around 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar's Rakhine state last year and headed for refuge in Bangladesh.
The United Nations has described the alleged atrocities as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
:: Myanmar generals must be tried for genocide against Rohingya - UN
But in Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw: Part I, the army appears to justify a crackdown and blames the violence on "Bengali terrorists" - Rohingya militants who call themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.
The army claims they were intent on establishing a state called Arkistan.
The group did carry out attacks ahead of the military action a year ago but denies it has separatist aims.
Much of the book is sourced to the military's "True News" information unit, but Reuters claims three out of eight photos are not what they seem.
The news agency used Google's reverse image search and TinEye - tools commonly used to identify images that have previously appeared online.
One grainy black and white photo purportedly shows Buddhists murdered by Rohingya in Rakhine state, with the caption, "Bengalis killed local ethnics brutally".
But Reuters said it was actually taken during Bangladesh's 1971 independence war, when hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistani troops.
The caption of a second faded black and white photo reads: "Bengalis intruded into the country after the British Colonialism occupied the lower part of Myanmar".
According to Reuters, the picture is in fact a distorted version of a colour image taken in 1996 of refugees fleeing the genocide in Rwanda.
The photographer, Martha Rial, working for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, won the Pulitzer Prize.
The newspaper has not yet commented.
A third black-and-white image shows men aboard a rickety boat, with the caption, "Bengalis entered Myanmar via the watercourse."
Reuters said the original photo had been flipped and blurred, and depicts Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants leaving Myanmar in 2015.
It said a Myanmar government spokesman and a military spokesman could not be reached for comment.
U Myo Myint Maung, permanent secretary at the ministry of information, declined to comment, saying he had not read the book.
The Rohingya - who have their own language and culture - say they are descendants of Muslim traders who have lived in the region for generations.
Earlier this year, Sky News won a BAFTA for its news coverage of the Rohingya crisis.
On Monday, the United Nations called for Myanmar's top six generals to be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide.