KYAR
GAUNG TAUNG,
Myanmar, 2017 - Rohingya Muslim women lined up to tell reporters of missing
husbands, mothers and sons on Saturday as international media were escorted for
the first time to a village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state affected by
violence since October.
"My son is not
a terrorist. He was arrested while doing farm work," said one young
mother, Sarbeda. She had bustled her way -- an infant in her arms -- through
several other women telling reporters their husbands had been arrested on false
grounds.
In November,
Myanmar's army swept through villages where stateless Rohingya Muslims live in
the area of Maungdaw.
Some 75,000 people
fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations.
U.N. investigators
who interviewed refugees said allegations of gang rape, torture, arson and
killings by security forces in the operation were likely crimes against
humanity.
Myanmar's
government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most of the
claims, and is blocking entry to a U.N. fact-finding mission tasked with
looking into the allegations.
The government has
also kept independent journalists and human rights monitors out of the area for
the past nine months.
This week, the
Ministry of Information escorted more than a dozen foreign and local
journalists representing international media, including Reuters, to the area
under a guard of officers from the paramilitary Border Guard Police
Brutal
Tactics
The reporters spent
nearly two days in Buthidaung, a township in Maungdaw district of Rakhine
state, where they were taken to sites of alleged militant activity.
They were taken to
Kyar Gaung Taung, one of three settlements requested by the journalists.
Officials cited time constraints for the limited access.
Reuters had
previously gathered accounts from residents by phone and from former residents
who have fled to Bangladesh, of brutal counterinsurgency tactics unleashed in
Kyar Gaung Taung and several nearby villages in mid-November.
**
When a group of
journalists insisted on speaking to villagers away from security forces,
allegations of abuses by troops emerged almost immediately.
Kyar Gaung Taung
resident Sarbeda, 30, had been able to visit her son, Nawsee Mullah, 14, at a
police camp where he is being held separately from adult detainees. She was not
sure if he had a lawyer, she said.
Reuters reported in
March that 13 boys under the age of 18 were detained during security operations.
They were included in a list of 423 people charged under the colonial-era
Unlawful Associations Act, which outlaws joining or aiding rebel groups.
At least 32 people
from Kyar Gaung Taung village had been arrested and 10 killed, said a village
schoolteacher, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. He estimated
that half the village's 6,000 residents had fled during the clearance
operation.
**
Burned to
Death
Another villager,
Lalmuti, 23, pointed to a small pile of ashes where she said she found her
father's remains. She described how he was bound and thrown into a house and
burned to death.
Her mother was later
arrested when authorities deemed her complaint about the killings to be
fabricated. She is serving a six-month jail sentence, Lalmuti and two other
villagers said.
Reporters were not
given a chance to put these allegations to authorities, and Reuters was unable
to reach officials to confirm the details of the cases by phone.
In a press briefing
on Friday, Brigadier General Thura San Lwin, commander of Myanmar's Border
Guard Police, said some villagers had made what he said were erroneous claims
and were subsequently charged and jailed for lying to the authorities.
"The media said
we torched houses and that there were rape cases -- they give wrong
information," Thura San Lwin told reporters.
He also disputed the
U.N.'s estimates for the number of people who fled, claiming local records
showed that only 22,000 people were missing in the conflict.
Myanmar officials
say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe - a former
lieutenant general in the army - and a commission headed for former U.N. chief
Kofi Annan - which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses - are the
appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State.
Reporting by Simon
Lewis in Kyar Gaung Taung village, additional reporting by Wa Lone in Yangon
and Editing by Bill Tarrant.