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After losing her husband and
two children to the
attacks in Myanmar, Robeda and her youngest are
now living
in this makeshift shelter in the Kutupalong
unregistered refugee camp Abdul
Aziz/Dhaka Tribune
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‘I left my husband and children burning’
Rohingyas who have fled the
crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state have described escaping a scene of horror,
often with many left behind.
“The army announced that they
would count the people in the village. We went inside and soldiers surrounded
my home. They locked the door and set fire to the house.”
Robeda got out with her
youngest in her arms, but the husband and the two other children were trapped
inside. Then she escaped her village in Maungdaw, hiding and running for five
days until she reached the border of Bangladesh on Wednesday.
This correspondent found the
Rohingya woman in the Kutupalong unregistered refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar’s
Ukhia. At first she refused to talk, believing she was being interrogated by a
police or Border Guard man.
Even after coming this far, she
fears being pushed back through the border, where she will be shot dead by the
Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) for sure.
Her home was in Maungdaw
district’s Poangkhali village, Robeda said. She and her husband had made made a
good harvest of rice, potatoes and chillies this year and were raising a few
domestic animals. All was destroyed in the attack that took place a week ago.
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Deen Mohammad and his wife
Roshida, whose two
elder sons were taken by the Myanmar military are
living with their younger children after their escape
from Myanmar in a refugee camp
in Teknaf in southern
Cox’s Bazar district on November 24, 2016. AFP
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In Poangkhali, the army burned
down the entire village and took away hundreds of men, Robeda said. She has no
track of her parents, her two brothers and their families. She said she had
seen the burned remains of her father’s house.
Achhia and Juhura, two other
Rohingya women, said they had swam across the Naf River with others to save
their lives. One said her brother was murdered and the other said her sister
was raped. Their valuables were looted and and their homes set on fire.
In the Ukhia camp, these Rohingyas
are now living with no food, no winter clothes and little shelter.
Their statements could not be
independently verified. The Myanmar government began cracking down on the
Rohingya minority in October after an attack on border guards, but it has repeatedly
denied the reports of violence. A Myanmar government-appointed commission led
by former UN secretary general Kofi Anan has dismissed the allegations of
genocide. But UNHCR says an ethnic cleansing is underway in Rakhine state.
A Rohingya man, Nur Mohammad,
who is inside Myanmar, told this correspondent over phone that the army’s
violence continued every day in the Rohingya populated areas. In his village,
soldiers arrested 15 men on Thursday. Every day homes and silos of rice were
being set on fire, he said.
On October 9, several BGP
outposts were attacked and nine officials were killed. Rohingyas have been
blamed by the Myanmar government for the incident.