Since late August, Burmese security forces have been waging a systematic campaign of violence against the Rohingya population of Myanmar's westernmost state of Rakhine. By the latest count, more than 389,000 Rohingya Muslims—a ghettoized stateless minority denied citizenship and basic rights by the Myanmar government—have walked, swam, and crawled through jungles and hills and muddy ravines into neighboring Bangladesh. Most arrive with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many haven't eaten for days. They report villages burned, possessions looted, women raped, and countless dead, included babies and small children. Around 30,000 Rohingya remain trapped in the mountains, hemmed in by security forces, without food or supplies.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former political dissident, denies both the scale and nature of the violence, blaming a campaign of " misinformation ." Her spokesman Zaw Htay has claimed that the Rohingya are burning their own villages in a ploy for international sympathy. Satellite images captured by Human Rights Watch show otherwise. This week, it was announced that Suu Kyi would not appear at the UN General Assembly .

The world is beginning to take note: On Monday, the UN high commissioner for human rights called the violence " a textbook case of ethnic cleansing ." (The Burmese government continues to euphemistically term the killings " clearance operations .")

For decades, the government has labeled Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh—despite evidence of their presence in western Myanmar since pre-colonial times—who violate the racial and religious purity of this Buddhist nation and scheme to establish Islamist rule. The government and its allies point to the emergence of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—which attacked police posts in August, killing 12 security personnel and prompting the massive military backlash—as evidence of this intent. ARSA claim theirs is a resistance born of self-defense, and that the officially sanctioned persecution and demonization of the Rohingya people—which includes restrictions on birth rates , marriages, and higher education—is nothing less than genocide.

We spoke to five Rohingya refugees who are among the victims of this most recent violence outside the camps of Kutupalong and Balukhali in Teknaf, in the southernmost point of Bangladesh. This is the the point of arrival for Rohingya crossing the Naf River from Myanmar.

For four days, they sheltered in a neighboring village—until the red helicopters descended once more. Again the military swept through, killing and burning. Again Abu Ahmed and his family fled, seeking refuge in another village. Then, for the third time, the army arrived. The village was destroyed, and Abu Ahmed said they had no choice but to start walking toward Bangladesh.

"We left the crops in the fields, the rice in the storehouse," he told me. "The goats, the cows, the fisheries. We couldn't bring anything. We left secretly, like thieves."

Abu Ahmed said he fled as army personnel, joined by local Buddhist mobs, raped women, slaughtered civilians, and torched houses. A bomb dropped from a military helicopter landed in a nearby pond. He and his remaining family hid, emerging the next day to find the smoldering remains of his village, bodies and buildings charred. They laid low until midnight, then fled to a neighboring village, taking only a few dishes and some cooking pots.

"They grabbed my sister-in-law and her child," he said. "First they killed the child. Then they shot my sister-in-law, and set her on fire, in front of my brother. There was nothing we could do but run."

Abu Ahmed is a 60-year-old farmer from the Maungdaw District. He crossed into Bangladesh 17 days ago, driven from his home by security forces who descended on his village with guns, bombs, and machetes.

"We walked for two days," he said. "Women, children, and the elderly. We had no food. When people fell on the road from hunger and weakness, we picked them up. Finally, we came to the shore."

He said several thousand Rohingya were already camped on the Ghat River waiting to be ferried across to Bangladesh. Wooden boats, rowed by Bangladeshis, plied a brisk trade. Abu Ahmed described how as one boat was about to touch soil on the Bangladesh side, a Burmese military boat arrived, ramming and sinking it. The only people who made it to shore from that boat were three children around ten or 12 years old, he said.

Eventually, Abu Ahmed made the crossing to Teknaf, joining the more than 34,000 official Rohingya refugees who had fled from previous crackdowns. These official camps are already at their saturation point. The makeshift settlements clogging the 12-mile road from Teknaf to Cox's Bazar are little more than shantytowns of tarps and blankets strung over ropes, meager protection against the season's torrential monsoon rains. Resources are scarce.