A/HRC/39/64 A. Targeting of civilians 76. The military has consistently failed to respect international human rights law and the international humanitarian law principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. The deliberate targeting of civilians has been part of Tatmadaw policies, tactics and conduct for decades. The “Four Cuts” counterinsurgency policy, initiated in the 1960s and still implemented, is aimed at cutting off non-State armed groups from access to food, finances, intelligence, and recruits from the local civilian population. The policy has been implemented through “clearance operations”, essentially scorched earth campaigns in which civilians are killed and entire villages destroyed, leading to mass displacement. 77. Such policies and practices violate the State’s obligations under international law and amount to criminal conduct. They are also unwarranted; military necessity would never justify killing indiscriminately, gang-raping women, assaulting children and burning entire villages. The tactics used by the Tatmadaw are consistently and grossly disproportionate to actual security threats, especially in Rakhine State, but also in northern Myanmar. 78. While the mission outlines in the present report the violations against civilians from many ethnic groups in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan States, the contempt shown by the Tatmadaw for human life, integrity and freedom, and for international law generally, should be of concern to the entire population. The number of refugees from areas outside these three States attests to the existence of similar human rights concerns elsewhere in the country. B. Sexual violence 79. Rape and sexual violence have been a particularly egregious and recurrent feature of the targeting of the civilian population in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States since 2011. Similar patterns of rape and sexual violence have been reported for at least three decades. Rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mutilation and sexual assault are frequently followed by the killing of victims. The scale, brutality and systematic nature of these violations indicate that rape and sexual violence are part of a deliberate strategy to intimidate, terrorize or punish a civilian population, and are used as a tactic of war. This degree of normalization is only possible in a climate of long-standing impunity. C. Exclusionary rhetoric 80. The Tatmadaw has historically cast itself as the protector of the nation, preserving “national unity in the face of ethnic diversity” while prioritizing Bamar-Buddhist identity and interests. Discrimination against ethnic and religious minority groups has been welldocumented for decades. Military operations are often accompanied by deeply insulting slurs and outright threats linked to ethnicity and religion. 81. The situation of the Rohingya has been aggravated by their gradually increasing exclusion from the Myanmar nation since the 1960s, amid decades of State-sponsored stigmatization, leading to their de facto statelessness and being reviled by much of the population. The members of the mission were struck by the normality of deeply exclusionary and dehumanizing rhetoric in Myanmar society, actively nurtured by the Tatmadaw. While other ethnic and religious minorities are, at least in theory, accepted as belonging to the nation under their “national race” status, the lack of status of the Rohingya has dramatically increased their vulnerability, which contributes to the extreme scale and intensity of the violence against them. D. Impunity 82. The Tatmadaw acts with complete impunity and has never been held accountable. Its standard response is to deny, dismiss and obstruct. It publicly lauds the discipline of troops and operations conducted “in full accordance with the law”. It promotes perpetrators. Occasional superficial investigations have only been undertaken when the Tatmadaw has 15