By Kathleen Prior
(CNN) The men who
came to kill Arafa Khatun were also her neighbors. "The Rakhines and the
Hindus, they joined with the military. I watched them coming over the hill,
like a team. As they came towards us to attack, I saw faces that I recognized.
I knew them, yet they were killing us."
Khatun has eight
children, but since the attack on her village of Shairapara, in Myanmar's
Rakhine State, she can only find one of them, her 16-year-old son. He had been
shot in the back and is now receiving treatment.
"It is an
ethnic cleansing," said 50-year-old Khatun, who like her son is a member
of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority. "They massacred only the Rohingya
villages. The other villages were left untouched while ours burned to the ground."
Follow my
twitter to read updates of Rohingyas: https://twitter.com/mir_sidiquee
Similar stories are
repeated throughout the many hastily constructed refugee settlements in
southeastern Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees like
Khatun and her son are now gathered, having been forced to flee their homes and
villages across the border in Myanmar.
The United Nations
estimates that over 400,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since August
24, an average of 16,000 a day. The South Asian country, which is also dealing
with the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens due
to severe monsoon flooding, has been unable to cope with the sudden influx,
leading to fears of imminent food shortages. On Sunday, one woman and two
children were killed in a stampede as aid workers handed out relief packages
near a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar.
At a newly
established makeshift settlement in Gumdum, itself a spillover from larger
preexisting camps located nearby, an estimated 50,000 people, mostly women and
young children, huddle together under scraps of tarpaulin and plastic.
Azida Abad arrived
at the camp several days ago along with her four young daughters. Her husband
had been admitted to a local medical clinic with a high fever. In the cramped
and filthy conditions, disease is rife. With the daily monsoon rains, the whole
area is flooded and quickly turns to mud.
Abad recognized the
militants that stormed into her village and reeled off their names like a class
register. "They were in uniform, the military must have given it to
them," she said.
The events that
unfurled after August 25, in retaliation to an alleged Rohingya insurgency that
left 12 Burmese security officers dead, have been deemed "a textbook
example of ethnic cleansing" by UN human rights chief Zeid Raad
al-Hussein.
The Myanmar government
has denied this, claiming security forces are carrying out counter attacks
against "brutal acts of terrorism."
In a statement
released by the Myanmar foreign ministry, it purports the security forces are
taking "full measures to avoid collateral damage and the harming of
innocent civilians."
Yet still the
violence continues and with it the steady stream of refugees.
Scattered
in a panic
Alongside the
ongoing exodus of people, the catalog of reported human rights violations is
also growing. Sayed Hakim, from Quinr Khali, is certain that his village was
specifically targeted by the Burmese military on August 31.
"Helicopters
flew overhead, the doors flung open and I looked right at them. They were
Myanmar military, I saw their uniforms," he recalled, while sat inside the
Chittagong District Hospital in Bangladesh, where he was waiting for his father
who was undergoing surgery. "First they shot at us with rocket launchers,
then guns. Then they dropped bombs."
The villagers
scattered in a panic. Hakim's elderly father, Kalim, tried to run with his
wife. But at 75-years-old, he was unable to keep up.
Other villagers told
Hakim that his father had been hit. So he and his brother turned and ran back
to the burning village to rescue him. "He was unconscious when we found
him, and there was so much blood."
Hakim and his
brother took turns to carry their father to the border with Bangladesh, where
he was admitted to hospital. Nurses caring for him confirmed his injuries are
consistent with a blast trauma. He had shrapnel wounds and burns on his legs,
and his hip was dislocated by force.
Prior to the current
wave of violence, Myanmar's population of Rohingya was estimated to number
about one million, with the majority clustered in small, often isolated, villages
in the northern part of Rakhine state along the border with Bangladesh and
India. More than a third have now sought refuge in Bangladesh, many repeating
the same claims that the attacks were part of a coordinated strategic
operation.
On Thursday, human
rights group Amnesty International released analysis of active fire-detection
data, satellite imagery, photographs and videos from Myanmar, that they insist
offers irrefutable evidence of a government-backed "scorched-earth
policy" intended to rid the country of its minority Rohingya population.
"There is a
clear and systematic pattern of abuse here," said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty
International's Crisis Response Director. "In legal terms, these are
crimes against humanity -- systematic attacks and forcible deportation of
civilians."
Friends
turn on friends
In the village of
Tula Toli, close to the border with Bangladesh on the Myanmar side, members of
different ethnic groups had lived side by side for generations.
Aware of stories of
violence emanating from other villages, Tula Toli's community leaders had moved
to reassure Rohingya families that they were safe and that no harm would come
to them.
The very next day,
several of those leaders were allegedly seen armed alongside the military.
"I watched as
the government landed in helicopters in Tula Toli and distributed arms,"
said Omar Ali, as he crouched beneath a sheet of tarpaulin alongside his wife
and twin baby girls in the makeshift refugee settlement of Bhalukhali.
"They
distributed arms to the Mughs, the Hindus, the Buddhists and to the Murongs,
everyone," he continued. "We watched helicopters landing and then the
weapons being given out. They suddenly had everything; uniforms, knives, guns,
everything."
One cluster of men
receiving the arms stood out in particular to Ali. They were his family
friends, of Rakhine Mugh ethnicity.
"I saw these
friends of mine put on uniforms and holding weapons. We used to be childhood
playmates."
His village of
Whykhong on the opposite side of the river bank gave him a vantage point. Some
men from his village went closer to film the events on their phones, and were
shot at.
"Once
everything was distributed, they started the operation." Ali could only
watch helplessly on the riverbank as members of the nearby village, fearing
death, began to flee into the rice paddies and towards the water as the
militants started setting fire to their houses.
"The women and
children hid in the paddy field by the river bank. But when the militants saw
people in the paddy field, they started to shoot at them, killing them this
time."
"You could hear
the children crying," recalled Ali. "There were so many bodies in the
water; they were floating down the river like pieces of wood."
The Myanmar
government has not responded to CNN's repeated requests for comment regarding
these allegations of atrocities, or that the military provided arms and
instructions to non-military groups.
For many of the
refugees, there is no doubt that they were targeted because of their ethnicity.
"It was the
non-Muslims that did this. They conspired against us," said Rabiya, who
went by only one name. In her former village of Nayapara in Maungdaw, a
prominent member of the local ethnically Rakhine community had uttered a
fateful warning in the weeks leading up to the attack.
"He got very
angry and threatened us," Rabiya continued, "He told us that soon, he
was going to finish us all."
Editor's note: Names
have been changed to protect the safety of individuals interviewed.