LINDSAY MURDOCH
December 18, 2017
Almas Khatun saw her seven children and
husband murdered during a wave of massacres in Myanmar. She and thousands of
other survivors now face new threats as they languish in refugee camps.
Rashidullah explained about TulaToli Carnage
He is from the village, an eye-witness too.
Sitting on the dirt floor in a flimsy bamboo shelter,
Almas Khatun pulls a pink shawl from her face to reveal scars across her cheek
and throat.
"I saw my family killed with my own eyes," says
the softly spoken 40-year-old survivor of Tula Toli, the most horrific massacre
in a pogrom of indiscriminate killing, mass rape and arson targeting Rohingya
Muslim civilians in Myanmar.
Almas says that every night she sees in her nightmares a
soldier pulling her three-month-old baby from her lap and slashing open his
stomach, moments before her house was set alight.
READ MORE:
* Journalists with leaked Rohingya attack documents
arrested https://lnkd.in/dU_bfjr
* Rohingya Muslims escape persecution and find hope https://lnkd.in/dpku_F6
* Face-to-face with the Rohingya refugee crisis https://lnkd.in/dde4cqY
* What is going on with Myanmar? https://lnkd.in/dpibUmJ
She wakes and weeps amid a sprawling mass of refugee
camps carved into hillsides in southeastern Bangladesh, reliving the morning of
August 30. That was when soldiers ran – shooting and shouting obscenities –
into Tula Toli, a picturesque village that sits in a bend where two rivers
meet.
"They shot my old father, they put a log of wood in
his mouth and then slit his throat," Almas says, wiping tears from her
eyes. "I keep thinking about my children. They burnt all my children and I
couldn't save them. It breaks my heart. They killed seven of my children, my
husband and his two brothers." Almas says 60 of her relatives who were
living in three houses in the village are dead.
"Some were slaughtered by monks."
More than a dozen previously interviewed witnesses to the
massacre have said Buddhist monks were among the attackers, but Almas's
detailed testimony implicates them directly in killings that took place in
Buddhist-majority Myanmar, just across the border from Bangladesh.
During 10 days in the camps, which are now home to more
than 835,000 Rohingya, we interview dozens of survivors who describe
unimaginable atrocities committed by government soldiers and Buddhist mobs in Myanmar's
Rakhine State since August.
Eight-year-old Mansur Alam, who also survived Tula Toli,
tells us in a separate interview outside a makeshift Muslim school, on a
hilltop overlooking the camps, that he saw monks slashing and shooting people
in the village, including his own parents, as he hid in bushes. "The monks
were in the forest and one slashed me on the head with a kirji (farming sickle),"
he says, pulling apart his hair to reveal a scar across his scalp.
Other witnesses have described women and girls being
dragged into huts, their screams filling the air, before men left, locking the
buildings and setting them ablaze.
Corpses were thrown into pits, doused in petrol and
burned and others were thrown into the river, according to multiple witnesses.
Almas says that somehow, amid chaos and terror, she ran for her life from the
house as it burned and joined Mansur, the son of her neighbour, in the bushes,
hiding among dead bodies, before both were discovered and slashed.
"We pretended to be dead," she says.
"When the killers left I crawled away, dragging
Mansur. We were bleeding but we somehow managed to walk through the forest to
Bangladesh. We had no food or water for three days."
Almas has now adopted Mansur as her son.
A WIDE-EYED NUMBNESS
Images of exhausted and starving Rohingya, many of them
injured, stumbling across the Bangladesh border have shocked the world.
Since August, almost 650,000 have made the journey.
The United Nations Human Rights Council last week
condemned the "very likely commission of crimes against humanity" by
Myanmar security forces. In doing so, they ignored the denials of the country's
government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been widely
criticised for failing to use her moral authority and domestic legitimacy to
shift anti-Muslim sentiment in her country.
Refugees still arriving at the Bangladesh border say
threats and intimidation are continuing against Muslims in their homeland.
The mass flight of the Rohingya has created humanitarian
catastrophe in chaotic and disorderly camps rife with diseases, rapidly
depleting and contaminated water supplies, overflowing temporary toilets, acute
malnutrition, shortages of basic needs, child exploitation and trafficking.
In 25 years covering Asian crises, I have rarely seen
such traumatised people.
Look into many of the faces here and you see a wide-eyed
numbness that experts say points to terrible suffering and trauma.
Doctors Without Borders says the first extensive survey
in the camps indicates that between 9425 and 13,759 Rohingya were killed in
Rakhine in the first 31 days of the violence, including at least 1000 children.
Of the children below the age of five who were killed, 59
per cent were shot, 15 per cent burnt to death in their homes and seven per
cent beaten to death, the survey showed.
"What we uncovered was staggering, both in terms of
the numbers of people who reported a family member died as a result of
violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely
injured," says Sidney Wong, the organisation's medical director.
Robert Onus, the Australian emergency response
co-ordinator for Doctors Without Borders, says refugees arriving at the border
exhausted and not knowing what their futures hold creates a "sense of
desperation that you see in people's eyes".
"This is a complex situation that is fast becoming a
worst-case scenario," he says. "These families have been
broken."
Wayne Bleier,a psychosocial expert with the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says that, unlike survivors of many other
conflicts, Rohingya are eager to tell their horror stories "because they
want the world to know what happened".
THE GIRL IN THE PRETTY DRESS
Rounding a corner on a narrow, dusty track, a small group
of men wearing white Islamic skull caps beckon us to a shelter made of bamboo
and plastic.
Inside, 25-year-old Hasina has just finished bathing her
dead two-year-old daughter, Eshoroma. They have placed palm leafs over her eyes
and put on her prettiest frock.
Eshoroma had suffered an itchy rash and fever for 10 days
in the shelter just a 10-minute walk from a Bangladesh hospital.
Measles is spreading rapidly through the camps.
Hasina is wailing as Kate Geraghty, a stranger carrying
cameras, is ushered into the shelter. They hug.
Hasina gently strokes Eshoroma's body as it lies on a
woven mat. This family fled their homeland with nothing but the clothes on
their backs.
Hasina has no money for a funeral and there is no land
available in the camps for gravesites. We pay for Eshoroma to be buried in a
mass grave.
"I am relieved. Now Allah will take care of my
baby," Sobbir Hossain, the baby's 30-year-old father tells me.
A CHILDREN'S CRISIS
Fifty-four per cent of the refugees who have fled Myanmar
in the past three months are children under 18.
A study by organisations including Save the Children
shows that one in four aged between six months and five are suffering acute
malnutrition, and many more are severely malnourished.
"This is a children's crisis," says Elhadj As
Sy, secretary-general of the Red Cross.
Robert Onus says families generally don't know how to
access what limited health care is available in camps that stretch for
kilometres across a peninsula in poor and overcrowded Bangladesh.
"They are worrying about their basic survival
needs," he says.
"My father had been quarrelling with my mother about
money and clothes for us," says their 10-year-old daughter, Ami Alki, as
men lift Asad into a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi and drive him to a medical
clinic.
Laila Begum gently squeezes the ears of her 40-day-old
baby as he clings to life, his tiny chest heaving on a bed in a Red
Cross-tented field hospital.
The baby's eyes open only briefly as his mother turns to
stroking his head, willing him not to give up.
Nobody knows how many babies are dying here in deplorable
conditions.
"He can't breastfeed properly. He remains hungry
because he only gets a little milk from me," Laila says.
A Red Cross doctor by chance noticed the baby's critical
state as Laila was holding him on her breast. Mohammad was just 1.8 kilograms.
"Amongst all this suffering some good things can happen
too."
LITTLE BOY LOST
They walk listlessly and barefoot through the narrow
alleyways and tracks or spend days under a hot sun in lines waiting for food
handouts. Some beg alongside roads.
Almost 3000 unaccompanied and separated children have
been documented but the actual number is much higher, aid workers say.
For 20 days, Rohimullah, 30, trudged through the camps
until he could walk no more, holding a photograph of his 2-and-half-year-old
son.
"My child was playing with other kids outside and
there were these two men who were there, giving them bits of food and all of
them were eating it, so the other kids told me," Rohimullah says, weeping
while squatting on a dusty pathway.
Ruhimullah's search meant he could not join the queues
for food.
"It's been 20 days since we've eaten properly and we
don't have money," he says. "My child's mother has gone crazy. I had
to tie her up." But, like the baby saved in the Red Cross field hospital,
a flash of hope comes amid despair.
Who had kept him, and why, is unclear.
ONE LESS MOUTH TO FEED
The International Organisation for Migration has found
that camp children as young as 11 are getting married, often forced by their
parents.
Marrying off a daughter is one less mouth to feed and
early marriage is a common cultural practice among Rohingya Muslims. Other
children as young as seven are working for paltry pay as maids and nannies for
Bangladesh families, and on farms, construction sites and fishing boats.
In 281 child-friendly spaces set up by aid agencies
throughout the camps, children have made crayon drawings depicting in chilling
detail events they have witnessed in Rakhine, such as bodies in the streets,
helicopter gunships and the arc of bullets.
Rohingya are showing incredible resilience in the world's
largest concentration of refugees.
Myanmar soldiers beat 21-year-old mother of two Shosma
Begum when they attacked her village and killed her husband.
"I do as much as I can," she says. "But it
is difficult to feed my children."
Squatting before a cooking fire, Shosma gives a detailed
account of how soldiers slashed and killed people in her village before setting
houses on fire. She saw body parts being put in sacks. Many of the Rohingya we
spoke with have similar shocking stories which are impossible to independently
verify.
A VICIOUS CYCLE
Myanmar has banned United Nations and human rights
researchers and journalists entering Rakhine.
But these are poor, uneducated villagers from an
impoverished part of the country (also called Burma) that has been largely
closed to the outside world for half a century. Under repeated questioning
their stories are unbending.
Debra Blackmore, an Australian doctor working with the
Red Cross supervising mobile health clinics for the camps, says it has been
devastating to see families sitting on roadsides in monsoon rains with little
but the clothes on their backs, after fleeing Rakhine.
"I have not seen anything like it before in my
life," says Blackmore, who has worked in disaster and conflict areas
across the world. "It is like the images I saw on television of
Rwanda."
Robert Onus, from Doctors Without Borders, says after
several months in the camps the refugees' health is deteriorating further.
"People have reached their limits. There is a
vicious cycle where the vulnerable are becoming increasingly vulnerable,"
he says, pointing to the camp conditions.
Diseases eradicated in most other countries are now
appearing.
The World Health Organisation says more than 110
suspected cases of the vaccine-preventable and deadly diphtheria have been
clinically diagnosed.
"These cases could be just the tip of the
iceberg," says Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the WHO representative in
Bangladesh.
"This is an extremely vulnerable population with low
vaccination coverage and living conditions that could be a breeding ground for
infectious diseases like cholera, measles, rubella and diphtheria."
A cholera outbreak would be devastating.
Temporary toilets are overflowing and there are no
private places. The stench of excreta is everywhere.
Aid agencies say while more than half a million refugees
have received limited aid so far, 173,000 of them have not received full food
rations, 200,000 require emergency shelter assistance and 120,000 pregnant and
lactating women require nutritional support.
Mark Handby, a public health expert from Port Fairy in
Victoria working for the Red Cross, says one of the biggest problems is a lack
of water as temporary hand pumps run dry.
Some deeper bores have drawn good-quality water but he
fears others being sunk may be salt-contaminated.
Handby has seen refugees drinking putrid water from ponds
in paddy fields and also says the situation "ticks every box for a
worst-case scenario".
Aid agencies estimate the number of pregnancies could be
as high as 10 per cent of the camp population, many of them as a result of
rapes.
BRILLIANT EFFORTS
Myanmar denies that any sexual assaults took place in
Rakhine State.
In a country where life for the ethnic minority has been
made unbearable for decades, one Rakhine official told reporters the Rohingya
are too "ugly" to be raped and state media has described them as
"human fleas".
Myanmar's military commander, Min Aung Hlaing, has
honoured "brilliant efforts to restore regional peace, security" in
so-called "clearance operations" against insurgents in Rakhine.
A supposed internal investigation conducted by the
military found that troops fired "not a single shot" on civilians and
that "all security members strictly abided by the orders".
Frail, bent of back and near-deaf 105-year-old Jorina
Khatun was piggybacked for days to reach Bangladesh after her village was
attacked. "She didn't want to come. We had to force her," says her
55-year-old son, Mahmud Hossain, after receiving treatment at a Red Cross
mobile clinic.
The only other time Jorina has left Rakhine, she says,
was when the British and Japanese were fighting each other in Myanmar in World
War II.
More than 1 million Rohingya have suffered longstanding
discrimination in Myanmar, which sees them as "Bengali" interlopers,
even though they have lived there for generations.
Jorina's parents and their parents before them were born
in Myanmar but she is denied citizenship.
"They have driven us away and I will only go back if
we are accepted as Rohingya," she replies.
The grim reality is that the vast majority of Rohingya
are not going to return to their homeland in the foreseeable future, creating
grave political and security risks, including the potential for radicalisation
of Muslims and recruitment for transnational terrorism.
Researchers from the International Crisis Group (ICG) say
organisers and fighters from Arakan Salvation Army, which attacked police posts
in Rakhine in August 25, are now in the camps, indicating they may shift to
cross-border missions, which could escalate tensions between Myanmar and
Bangladesh.
AN UNEASY REFUGE
Radicals are watching what is happening in these camps.
"The plight of Rohingya has captured the attention
of the Muslim world, becoming a cause celebre like perhaps no other since
Kosovo," the ICG said in a report last week.
One Rohingya approached me in a market and said: "If
we do not get citizenship, we will go there and fight and destroy them
all." Rumours are circulating about smugglers touting for passengers for a
new wave of boat people.
International agencies also fear tensions could eventually
erupt between Rohingya and local Bangladeshis who have so far been remarkably
welcoming to their fellow Muslims.
As the camps begin stirring before sunrise, Mohammad
Anis, a 54-year-old English teacher, lifts an old wooden radio to his ear,
hungry for news from Rakhine.
A tall, proud father of five wearing a white Muslim skull
cap, Mohammad says Rohingya have basic demands that must be met before they
return.
"We must be treated with respect and
acceptance," he says in a speech for our camera.
"The Burmese planned to drive us away. How? By
killing us and prohibiting us from marrying and having children. It is
genocide," he says. "Living here in the camps we have good days and
bad days but if we are forced to go back to Burma we won't go back … even if we
are killed or burned here, that would be better than going back without
justice."
Across the maze of camps, another teacher Abdul Majed,
38, also insists on making a speech for the camera to appeal to the world to
help Rohingya.
And still they come, exhausted, hauling bags of meagre
possessions and clutching infants, thousands of them every week, in the fastest
refugee exodus since the Rwandan genocide.
Silhouetted by a full moon, nine months pregnant and
mother-of-two Shajida Akter and nine family members cross the Naf river,
reaching Shah Porir Dwip, an island on the southeastern tip of Bangladesh,
which means they are safe.
There is no rejoicing, though.
Behind her full-face hijab, tears well in Shajida's eyes
and she says men dragged away her husband. She believes he has been killed.
"Because all the people have been fleeing to
Bangladesh, we decided to come too, even if we die trying," she says.
Her 20-year-old cousin, Nurul Salam, tosses a sack
containing the family's only possessions onto his shoulder.
"What the military is doing there is just too
much," he says, walking off into an uncertain future.