By Rohingya Eye | March 1, 2017
Maungdaw — More than 200 Rohingya civilians arrested in
northern Maungdaw on 14th November 2016 are now facing arbitrary trials and
subjected to long-term imprisonments, reports say.
On the November 14 last year, the Myanmar military
rounded up the village of ‘Ye Dwin Chaung’ and arrested more than 200 innocent
Rohingya men taking refuge in the village to escape from arbitrary arrests in
its neighboring villages — such as ‘Pwin Phyu Chaung’ and ‘Kyar Gaung Taunt.’
They were detained without sufficient foods to eat and brutally tortured in the
cells of the Border Guard Police (BGP) headquarter for two weeks.
Afterwards, they were transferred to the Buthidaung
prison, where the authorities have tortured them less but detained them without
providing critically required medical treatments; and regular and proper meals
since then.
It has been learnt that the authorities are now putting
the victims on arbitrary trials under four criminal charges — such as Section
302 (Murder), Section 17/1 (Unlawful Association Act), Section 324 (Voluntarily
Causing Hurt by Dangerous Weapons) and one more — and using the office of the
clerks of the Buthidaung Township Administration as an alternative courtroom
for the trial.
The victims were apparently given the rights to hire
their own lawyers.
“The victims have been allowed to hire their own lawyers.
But winning margin of their cases are extremely slim, according to some
lawyers, as all the prosecutors and the witnesses are the military themselves”,
said a man, related to a victim charged under the false cases, while speaking
to Rohingya Vision on the condition of anonymity.
The man further added “hundreds of other victims arrested
and sentenced to long-term imprisonments earlier didn’t even get the right to
know under what charges they were jailed. Neither did the lawyers working for
Maungdaw High Court. The Judge made to the place of the detention and just read
out the verdicts and terms of the imprisonments to the victims”
More than 1,500 innocent village men have been arrested
and detained or imprisoned since the Myanmar military and the Border Guard
Police began the so-called “Region Clearance Operation” in Maungdaw on October
9, 2016. Many of whom have been reported to have either died by falling sick
due to ruthless tortures or been mercilessly killed after the arrests.