He was a member of the Rohingya student union in college, taught at a public high school and even won a parliamentary seat in Burma's thwarted elections in 1990.

But according to the government of Burma, Kyaw Min’s fellow Rohingya do not exist.

A long-persecuted Muslim minority concentrated in Burma's Rakhine state, the Rohingya have been deemed dangerous interlopers from neighbouring Bangladesh. Today, they are mostly stateless, their very identity denied by Buddhist-majority Burma.

“There is no such thing as Rohingya,” said Kyaw San Hla, an officer in Rakhine’s state security ministry. “It is fake news.”

Such denials bewilder Kyaw Min. He has lived in Burma all of his 72 years, and the history of the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group in Burma stretches back for generations before.

Now, human rights watchdogs warn that much of the evidence of the Rohingya’s history in Burma is in danger of being eradicated by a military campaign the United States has called ethnic cleansing.

Since late August, more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims, about two-thirds of the population that lived in Burma in 2016, have fled to Bangladesh, driven out by the military’s campaign of massacre, rape and arson in Rakhine.

In a report released in October, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Burma's security forces had worked to “effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognisable terrain.”

The UN report also said the crackdown in Rakhine had “targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.”

“We are people with our own history and traditions,” said Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya lawyer and former political prisoner.

“How can they pretend we are nothing?” he asked.

Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Show all 10 1 /10 Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Rohingya refugee Mohamed Jabair, 21, reveals the burns on his bod, which he said he sustained when his house was set on fire in Myanmar REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Refugee Momtaz Begum, 30, at Balukhali refugee camp. Begum told how soldiers came to her village demanding valuables.After beating her, they locked her inside her house and set the roof on fire. She escaped to find her three sons dead and her daughter beaten and bleeding REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Imam Hossain, 42, sleeps at Kutupalang refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar. Hossain said he was returning home after teaching at a madrassa in his village when three men attacked him with knives REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Rohingya refugee Setara Begum, 12, at Nayapara refugee camp. The home of Begum and her siblings was hit by a rocket. The young girl received no treatment for the severe burns to her feet. Her feet healed but she has no toes. Her mother said: 'She has been mute from that day, and doesn't speak to anyone. She only cries silently' REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Mohamed Heron, 6, and his brother Mohamed Akter, 4, show the burns on their bodies at Kutupalong refugee camp. The boys' uncle said the burns resulted from Myanmar's armed forces firing rockets at their village Reuters Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Kalabarow, 50, at Leda refugee camp, in Bangladesh. Kalabarow said her husband, daughter and son were killed when soldiers fired on her village in Maungdaw. She was hit and lay on the floor pretending to be dead for several hours before a grandson found her. During their journey to Bangladesh, a village doctor amputated her REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Ansar Allah, 11, at Leda refugee camp in Bangladesh. Allah showed a large scar – the result of a gunshot wound. His mother Samara said: 'They sprayed us with bullets, as our house was burning' REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Anwara Begum, 36, at Kutupalang refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar. Begum said she woke to find her home in Maungdaw township in flames REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Abdu Rahaman, 73, at Leda refugee camp in Bangladesh. Rahaman, a merchant from Maungdaw, was ambushed while walking on a mountain path with other refugees. A machete thrown at his feet severed three toes REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Nur Kamal, 17, described how soldiers assaulted him after they found him hiding in his home in Maungdaw. His uncle found him unconscious in a pool of blood. It took them two weeks to get to Bangladesh. Kamal said: 'We want the international community to help us obtain justice' REUTERS

Five years ago, Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, was a mixed city, divided between an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist majority and the Rohingya Muslim minority.

But since sectarian riots in 2012, the city has been mostly cleared of Muslims. Across central Rakhine, about 120,000 Rohingya, even those who had citizenship, have been interned in camps, stripped of their livelihoods and prevented from accessing proper schools or health care.