Mohib Ullah, 46, Dies; Documented Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya

The NewYork Times

By Hannah Beech

Oct. 2, 2021

Shot dead by gunmen, he had compiled a list of those who perished in the hope that the data could be used as evidence in international courts.

Mohib Ullah in 2020 at a refugee camp in Kutupalong, Bangladesh. Death threats had become part of his life.Credit...Munir Uz Zaman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya community leader who believed in the power of data to confront the brutality of ethnic cleansing, died on Wednesday, shot by gunmen in a bamboo and tarp shelter in Kutupalong, Bangladesh, the world’s biggest refugee camp. He was 46.

The gunmen had burst into his shack before opening fire, according to his brother, Habib Ullah, who was with Mr. Mohib Ullah at the time. The shack was stacked high with papers documenting massacres of Rohingya, the Muslim minority native to neighboring Myanmar.

SENATOR MARKEY AND COLLEAGUES REINTRODUCE LEGISLATION DIRECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE TO ISSUE A ROHINGYA GENOCIDE DETERMINATION

PRESS RELEASE

APRIL 14, 2021

Washington (April 14, 2020) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chairman of the East Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) today introduced legislation requiring the Secretary of State to determine whether attacks by Burmese military and security forces against the Rohingya minority constitute genocide. Since August 25, 2017, around 740,000 Rohingya have fled Burma (also known as Myanmar) to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a brutal campaign of atrocities by Burma’s military and security forces, including systematic murder and sexual and gender-based violence. On February 1, 2021 the Burmese military carried out a coup against the democratically elected, civilian-led government and has since killed more than 700 civilians during widespread peaceful protests and strikes in opposition to the coup.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other State Department officials have committed to Senator Markey that there will be an interagency process to determine whether the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Burma constitute genocide, but have not indicated a timeline for that decision to be announced.