A new school and Buddhist pagoda had been built on what was once the village’s Muslim quarter. The remaining residents have been gifted new homes by the government, rows of prefabricated houses that looked incongruous in one of the poorest places in Asia.

In the town of Maungdaw, U Kyaw Win Htet, the assistant director of the Maungdaw District General Administration Department, gave a briefing on the area’s changing demographics. A year ago, Maungdaw District had a population of 800,000. Now, there were 416,000 people. Before, the township was 90 percent Muslim. Now it was barely half.

Why did the Muslims leave? Mr. Kyaw Win Htet, a Buddhist, said he wasn’t sure. “I think they didn’t want to live here anymore,” he said. “But the reason why, only they themselves know.”

Did the local government have death tolls from last year’s violence, broken down by ethnicity? Mr. Kyaw Win Htet said he did not know. Had he ever visited any of the hundreds of burned Rohingya villages? No, he had not. Did he know of any Muslim employees of his government department, given that nearly most of the district’s population had been Rohingya? No, he did not.

Later, Mr. Kyaw Win Htet admitted that the “Bengali issue” was not his bailiwick. His expertise was flood control. He had been assigned to talk to us only because his boss was away.

Earlier this week, the Myanmar government formed yet another commission to investigate what exactly had happened in northern Rakhine. Half a dozen such committees have been convened so far; none has determined anything substantive.

Meanwhile, the country’s leadership continues to deny there was any state-sponsored campaign to remove the Rohingya from Myanmar.