Qualitative evidence of crimes against humanity: the August 2017 attacks on the Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar.

BACKGROUND: The Rohingya ethnic minority population in northern Rakhine state, Myanmar, have experienced some of the most protracted situations of persecution. Government-led clearance operations in August 2017 were one of many, but notably one of the most devastating, attacks on the population. The study aimed to conduct a multiphase mixed-methods assessment of the prevalence and contexts of violence and mortality across affected hamlets in northern Rakhine State during the August 2017 attacks. This publication describes qualitative accounts by Rohingya community leaders from affected hamlets, with a focus on the events and environment leading up to and surrounding the attacks. METHODS: Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with Rohingya community leaders representing 88 northern Rakhine state hamlets across three townships affected by the August 2017 attacks (Maungdaw, n = 34; Buthidaung, n = 42; Rathedaung, n = 12). Prior quantitative surveys conducted among representative hamlet leaders allowed for preliminary screening and identification of interview candidates: interviewees were then selected based on prior reports of 10 or more deaths among Rohingya hamlet community members, mass rape, and/or witness of mass graves in a hamlet or during displacement. Recorded interviews were transcribed, translated, and thematically coded. RESULTS: Rohingya leaders reported that community members were subjected to systematic civil oppression characterized by severe restrictions on travel, marriage, education, and legal rights, regular denial of citizenship rights, and unsubstantiated accusations of terrorist affiliations in the months prior to August 2017. During the attacks, Rohingya civilians (inclusive of women, men, children, and elderly) reportedly suffered severe, indiscriminate violence perpetrated by Myanmar security forces. Crimes against children and sexual violence were widespread. Bodies of missing civilians were discovered in mass graves and, in some cases, desecrated by armed groups. Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw), consisting of the Army, Navy, and Border Guard Police continued to pursue, assault, and obstruct civilians in flight to Bangladesh. CONCLUSIONS: Qualitative findings corroborate previously published evidence of widespread and systematic violence by the Myanmar security forces against the Rohingya. The accounts describe intentional oppression of Rohingya civilians leading up to the August 2017 attacks and coordinated and targeted persecution of Rohingya by state forces spanning geographic distances, and ultimately provide supporting evidence for investigations of crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.

Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis for the production of inorganic nanomaterials.

As nanotechnology becomes increasingly important and ubiquitous, new and scalable synthetic approaches are needed to meet the growing demand for industrially viable routes to nanomaterial production. Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis or supercritical water hydrothermal synthesis (scWHS) is emerging as a versatile solution to this problem. The process was initially developed to take advantage of the tunable chemical and physical properties of superheated water to produce metal oxide nanoparticles by rapid nucleation and precipitation. The development of new mixing regimes and reactor designs has been facilitated by the modelling of reactor systems. These new reactor designs further exploit the properties of supercritical water to promote faster and more uniform mixing of reagent streams. The synthetic approach has been expanded beyond the metal oxide systems for which it was conceived, and now encompasses metal sulfides, metal phosphates, metal nanoparticles and metal-organic frameworks. In many of these cases, some degree of size and shape control can be achieved through careful consideration of both chemistry and reactor design. This review briefly considers the development of scWHS reactor technology, before highlighting some of our recent work in expanding the scope of this synthetic method to include a wide range of materials.

Morphology and reactivity characteristics of char biomass particles.

In this work, 10 different biomasses were selected which included directly grown energy crops, industrial waste material and different wood types. Each biomass was sieved into six different size fractions and pyrolysed in a fixed bed furnace preheated to 1000 °C to produce a char residue. Intrinsic reactivity during burnout was measured using a non-isothermal thermogravimetric method. Scanning electron microscopy and oil immersion microscopy were used to characterise the morphology of the products. Char morphology was summarised in terms of degree of deformation, internal particle structure and wall thickness. Intrinsic reactivity corresponded directly with these morphology groupings showing a significant correlation between char morphotypes, char reactivity and the initial biomass material.