By @shafiur
'With my own eyes, I
saw the dead bodies of not less than 300 small kids and about 200 women of my
age'
 |
| Rohingya refugee. @shafiur |
“There is no
Rohingya left in Tulatoli”. These were the first words uttered to me by Nurul
Huq, a gaunt 65-year-old Rohingya refugee who has fled the ongoing conflict in
Rakhine state in northwest Myanmar.
Collapsing in a heap
over a sack containing his belongings, he said: “I saw my son shot dead with my
own eyes and the dead bodies of two of my daughters. Five other daughters of
mine remain missing.”
He is one of a dozen
or so Rohingya villagers I have met from Min Gyi or Tulatoli (as referred to by
Rohingya) and the neighbouring village of Onsiprang. They have been describing
what could prove to be one of the worst large-scale massacres in the continuing
military operation against Rohingya villages immediately east of Bangladesh’s
border. Eyewitnesses have claimed that over a period of three days beginning
Wednesday 30th August, virtually all the villagers of Min Gyi were put to
death.
If confirmed, this
bloodshed would be one in a string of alleged mass killings perpetrated by the
Myanmar army with support from the local Rakhine population, propelling 270,000
Rohingya people to seek refuge in Bangladesh.
Mohammed Nasir
arrived in Bangladesh from No Man’s land in pitch darkness, having walked for
three days with his family and struggling with a heavy sack on his head. What
he told me matches the chilling accounts of the massacre recounted to me by
other fellow villagers.
“After the military
had surrounded the village and cut off all exit points, the Rakhine chairman of
the village assured the villagers that the military would not harm them but
that their homes would be torched. He told the villagers to assemble in one
place where they would be safe.”
Nasir described how
the destruction began in the morning with homes being torched. However, soon
the assurances that no physical harm would come to the villagers proved to be
empty. All the eyewitnesses described the same killing methods – long swords,
burning alive in torched homes, rifle shots, or “brush fire” by auto and
semiautomatic weapons as well as a weapon the villagers called “launcher”.
Nasir himself had
escaped to a nearby hillock with his family. From his vantage point and before
he left for Bangladesh later that day, he recounted how “bodies were thrown
into large pits near the river, covered in straw, doused in petrol and
torched.”
I also met villagers
who were much closer to the scene of violence. I came across Zahid and his
10-year-old nephew Osman near Balukhali makeshift camp. They were yet to pitch
their tent, and wondering where to do so. Osman had witnessed the killing of
both his parents as he hid in a bush and peeped out. Zahid, 20 years older, was
emotional when he recalled what happened:
“I have lost nine
family members including my wife, two sons, two young sisters, my brother’s
wife and son”.
Zahid described in
disturbing detail how many of the women villagers lost their lives. It is a
gruesome scenario which suggests the military were vacillating about how
exactly to kill the women. “Many of the women were near the river. After the
military had torched the homes, they told the women to get out of the river and
sit down on the bank. Then they changed their minds and ordered them to stand
up. Then they again ordered them to sit down. Finally they said stand up and
form a line. They then shouted at the women to run.
As they ran, they
brush fired them. After the shooting, around 30 women survived. They told these
women to wait in the water again. And from this group of 30, they would take 5
women at a time into huts to rape them. After raping them, they were robbed off
their jewellery, and then beaten to death and the huts set on fire.”
Four women survived
this ordeal according to Nasir. These women are now in Kutupalong MSF clinic
with burns and other injuries. Nurul Amin’s niece, Shofika, is one of the
victims receiving care at the MSF clinic. He simply cannot believe that she is
alive.
He told me “you can
see her brain such is the size of the fracture in her skull, and she has
another wound down one side of her body. I do not know how she is still with
us”. Shofika was transported to the MSF clinic in Kutupalong over a period of
three days and through the very difficult terrain that characterizes the border
areas of Bangladesh.
Equally challenging
was the journey undertaken by a mother of five. I found her crying in a
makeshift encampment. I asked her what she had seen with her own eyes in
Tulatoli. “With my own eyes, I saw the dead bodies of not less than 300 small
kids and about 200 women of my age”.
It was touch and go
whether she would make it out of Tulatoli herself. Her husband and son had both
been killed in the army assault. When she tried to escape, she found that the
river’s current was too fast and too high for her to manage with her small
children.
Thankfully her
brothers were there to help. As she made her escape, she saw children hiding in
the paddy fields. She said “The military caught these children, put them flat
on the floor and drove long knives into their chests and their stomachs. The
lifeless bodies were thrown in the river.”
She got separated
from her brothers and made her way with her children with villagers from
neighbouring villages. Now in Balukhali, she has been asked by the Bangladeshi
who has a lease over that land to pay 1000 taka to have a spot for her to pitch
a tent. She was muttering that maybe it would have been better if she had been
burnt to death. “There is no one to buy me terpal (plastic sheeting) and no one
to construct a hut for me. And I don’t know how I can feed my children”.