I pulled out a MUAC strip, used to assess child malnutrition by measuring the upper arm, and Umar Amin was in the red danger zone, signifying severe acute malnutrition. He can’t walk or talk and desperately needs help, but he has never been able to see a doctor.

International aid groups are ready and eager to help children like Umar Amin, but the government often blocks them, especially in northern areas near the Bangladesh border. It is difficult to understand this denial of humanitarian access as anything but an intentional policy of grinding down and driving out the Rohingya — one reason I see this as a slow-motion genocide.

What of “The Lady,” Aung San Suu Kyi, who won her Nobel for her resolute struggle for the human rights of Myanmar? She is now the effective leader of Myanmar’s government and has emerged as not only an apologist for this genocide, but also as complicit in it.

Suu Kyi does not control the army, which committed the massacres, but she has helped keep aid groups away. She has also tried to erase the existence of the Rohingya, rejecting the term and saying that they are merely illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. (In fact, a document from 1799 shows the Rohingya were well established here even then.) And it is her government that is proceeding with the criminal case against the two Reuters reporters.

I was able to get a tourist visa because I was leading a segment of a tour sponsored by The New York Times Company to Myanmar. The visa came with a stern warning that I must not do any reporting. In general, I believe that journalists should obey the laws of countries they visit, but I make an exception when a regime uses its laws to commit and hide crimes against humanity.

In one case on this trip, I arrived after dark so I would be less likely to be spotted. In others, villagers advised me on what paths to take to avoid the police. To get to two villages, I took a boat around a police checkpoint.