Exclusive: Villagers
who fled attack and crossed border into Bangladesh recall seeing their family
and neighbours killed
It was the
fast-flowing river that doomed the inhabitants of Tula Toli.
Snaking around the
remote village on three sides, the treacherous waters allowed Burmese soldiers
to corner and hold people on the river’s sandy banks. Some were shot on the
spot. Others drowned in the current while trying to escape.
Zahir Ahmed made a
panicked dash for the opposite bank, where he hid in thick jungle and watched
his family’s last moments.
“I was right next to
the water,” he recalled in an interview one week on, at a refugee camp in
neighbouring Bangladesh, his eyes bloodshot and his shirt stained with sweat
and dirt.
Ahmed said teenagers
and adults were shot with rifles, while babies and toddlers, including his
youngest daughter, six-month old Hasina, were thrown into the water.
Ahmed cried as he
described seeing his wife and children die, meticulously naming and counting
them on both hands until he ran out of fingers.
More than 160,000 of
Myanmar’s 1.1 million ethnic Rohingya minority have fled to Bangladesh,
bringing with them stories that they say describe systematic “ethnic cleansing”.
During interviews
with more than a dozen Rohingya from Tula Toli, the Guardian was told of what
appeared to be devastating carnage as Myanmar’s armed forces swept through the
village on 30 August and allegedly murdered scores of people.
Those who escaped
fled to the hills in the west to make the three-day trek to Myanmar’s border
with Bangladesh. The rest were buried in a mass grave, villagers said.
Myanmar, where the
majority of people are Buddhist, has blocked access to the area, meaning the
Guardian cannot independently corroborate the villagers’ accounts.
However, many of the
interviews were conducted separately, over two days, and the villagers
confirmed details of each other’s statements without prompting.
The story of Tula
Toli, while horrific, is not unique. The army, in retribution for
guerrilla-style ambushes on 25 August by an emergent Rohingya militant group,
has led a huge counter-offensive across northern Rakhine state.
Many Rohingya had
already escaped. In 2012, communal clashes with Buddhists in Rakhine prompted
140,000 Rohingya to leave their homes. Thousands have since died either at sea
or in brutal jungle camps run by people smugglers.
A United Nations
report released this year detailed what happened to those that stayed. The
report described mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya by the armed forces
in actions that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity.
The current wave of
violence is the worst so far. Rights groups have warned it could constitute a
final campaign to rid Myanmar of the Rohingya. Satellites have recorded images
of whole villages burnt to the ground.
All UN aid work in
the conflict area has been blocked. Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration, which
did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has said it is fighting
“extremist terrorists”, who are burning their own villages. Accounts of cruel
sectarian attacks by Rohingya militants on Hindus and Buddhists in Rakhine have
also surfaced. Around 26,000 non-Muslims have been displaced in the violence.
The subsistence
farmers of Tula Toli, who spent their lives growing rice and chillies, said
there were no militants in their village when the army attacked.
Here are their
stories:
Khaled Hossein, 29,
labourer
Three days before
the massacre, Hossein said close to 90 soldiers ordered the village’s several
hundred residents to an area east of the settlement, a place locals call the
“sands” for its infertile ground.
“Their leader had
two stars on his shoulder. He told us: ‘Rumours are being spread around by
people in the village that soldiers have been killing people in Rakhine. But
you should all keep farming and fishing. The one thing we ask is that if you
see soldiers, you don’t run away. If you run, we will shoot.’
“After the speech,
the soldiers went from house to house. They were with [local Rakhine Buddhists]
and took everything they could find that was valuable: gold, cash, clothes,
potatoes and rice. They smashed up houses of three or four people they said had
been spreading rumours. They were looking for fighters. The Buddhists had told
them about fighters. But there were none there.”
Petam Ali, 30, rice
distributor
A day before the
attack, people from a village across the river called Dual Toli swam over to
escape the army. More than 10 died in the river, according to Petam Ali, who
sheltered some of the displaced in his family home. They watched their village
burn from across the river.
At 3.30am the next
day, Ali heard shooting but was not sure of the direction.
“I live on the north
side of the village and the army had crossed the river further north and were
marching down. I left my family to run out to the jungle to try and spot the
soldiers. We waited until 8am, and then they moved in, wearing dark green
clothes. All of them were on foot.
“I ran back to get
my family, but we were too rushed and my grandmother was too old to run. From
the forest, we watched them burn our house. It was the first in Tula Toli to be
burned.”
Ali’s home, an
eight-bedroom wooden structure that he built with his three brothers for 16
members of their extended family, went up in flames fast. Its roof was covered
in straw and leaves.
“The soldiers used
rocket-propelled grenades, and they set fire to the houses with matches. Once
they had gone past, I went back. All the houses were burned. In the road, I saw
a dead man I recognised called Abu Shama. He had been shot in the chest. He was
85.”
In the ruins of his
house, Ali saw a singed corpse in two pieces — a head and a body. It was his
grandmother. “Her name was Rukeya Banu. She was 75. When I returned to the
jungle, I described the whole incident to the rest. They burst into tears. We
walked for three days.”
Kabir Ahmed, 65,
rice farmer
“When I heard the
army attacking to the north, I jumped into the river,” said Kabir Ahmed. “My
two sons came with me. They are 10 and 12.”
Eight members of his
family died, he said, and he has two sons who are unaccounted for.
“They threw the
children into the river. My three-year-old granddaughter, Makarra, and Abul
Fayez, my one-year-old grandson. I was hiding on the south side of the river.
They gathered everyone together and told them to walk away. Then they shot
them.
“We were on hills,
hiding behind trees. In the evening, they collected all the bodies on the river
bank, dug into the sands and burned them. It happened 40 metres away from me,
on the other side of the river. They are buried two to three metres from the
riverside.”
Zahir Ahmed, 55,
rice farmer (Kabir’s brother)
When the army
arrived, Kabir Ahmed’s brother, Zahir, was also down by the river but in
another spot. His son ran out of their home out in a panic.
“‘Leave us!’ he
shouted. I jumped into the river and swam to the other side.
“I waited in the
jungle, listening to the military firing. I was right next to the water. My son
had gone to save other members of the family.” But he says all were killed.
He starts to count
on his fingers those who died: “My wife, Rabia Begum, 50; my first son, Hamid
Hassan, 35; his daughter, Nyema, two to three, and his son, Rashid, six to
seven months; my second son, Nour Kamel, 12; my third son, Fayzul Kamel, 10; my
fourth son, Ismail, seven; my eldest daughter, Safura 25; her husband, Azhir
Hassan, 35; my second daughter, Sanzida, 14; my third daughter, Estafa, six; my
fourth daughter, Shahina Begum, five; my sixth daughter, Nour Shomi, two to
three; my seventh daughter, Hasina, six months old.
“I waited for five
hours and then left.”
Mohammed Idriss, 35
In Bangladesh, the
refugees from Tula Toli have made camp on a set of hills that were empty just a
few days before. Several thousand Rohingya have chopped down the trees,
levelled out the beige mud and erected tents using sliced bamboo frames and
black tarpaulin bought in the market.
All are hungry, and
hundreds mob the rickety open-back trucks that local mosques have deployed to
hand out donated clothes and food. For fear of being overwhelmed, volunteers
throw shirts and trousers into the heaving crowd as they slowly drive along.
Follow me to read breaking news of Rohingya crisis: https://twitter.com/mir_sidiquee
Children sleep on
the mud in tents, their parents looking on anxiously, worried about flu or
diarrhoea. At a clearing nearby, liquid excrement soaks the ground.
When heavy rains
arrive, Tula Toli’s displaced shower in the open. Women and children hold
dented metal pots at the side of the tent to collect fresh water. Thousands
have come to these hills but the area is almost entirely absent of any
belongings. Many fled in terror and few made it out of Myanmar with anything.
Mohammed Idriss
lived on the western side of Tula Toli, which borders an area thick with trees
and he was able to collect some things before leaving. He holds up a white sack
that has two large holes in it.
“I had a bag filled
with oil, sugar, flour, 10,000 kyat, rice – things I had taken from the house
when we left. When we got to the Naf river (the Bangladesh border), the Myanmar
army started shooting.
“I jumped into the
river and then hid behind a sandbank. The soldier came and shot at the bag,
opened it and took everything. Once we got to the Bangladesh border, the guards
told us to head here.”
He says he carried
the bag for three days during the 10-mile trek through the trees and hills from
Tula Toli.
At camp, Idriss gets
a phone call to a dusty mobile, being charged by a cheap solar panel someone
found in the market. On the line was another Rohingya refugee near the border.
They had found a woman with a gunshot wound to her arm who matched the
description of his missing sister.
“They thought she
might have been Rabia, but she wasn’t,” he said. “We’re not sure if she was
killed or not. We are hoping.”