Why Joe Biden Should Help the Rohingya People of Myanmar

TIME

By Matthew Smith and Andrew Riley

January 6, 2021 

A large group of Rohingya people, fled from ongoing military operations in Myanmar's Rakhine state, try to cross the border at Palongkhalii, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on October 17, 2017.
Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

 

Matthew Smith is CEO and co-founder of Fortify Rights and a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Follow him on Twitter @matthewfsmith.
Andrew Riley is a consultant to Fortify Rights and was the principal author of “The Torture in My Mind”: The Right to Mental Health for Rohingya Survivors of Genocide in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Follow him on Twitter @andrewkyleriley.

 

Then the Myanmar Army attacked and massacred ethnic Rohingya civilians in 2017, more than 700,000 men, women, and children fled to Bangladesh, some riddled with bullets, burns, and gaping wounds. Hundreds of villages were in ashes, razed by soldiers and their civilian proxies.

But long after the physical wounds scarred over, Rohingya continue to suffer mental harm on a massive scale. President-elect Biden can and should do something about it.