Hundreds Killed, Raped in Tula Toli
Watch: https://youtu.be/89ujUCRYL08
(Rangoon) – The Burmese army carried out systematic
killings and rape of several hundred Rohingya Muslims in Tula Toli village in
Rakhine State on August 30, 2017, Human Rights Watch said in a report released
today. The massacre was part of the military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing
that has forced more than 645,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh
since late August.
The 30-page report, “Massacre by the River: Burmese Army
Crimes against Humanity in Tula Toli,” details the security force attack on
several thousand villagers in Tula Toli, known officially as Min Gyi. Human
Rights Watch documents how security forces trapped Rohingya villagers along a
riverbank and proceeded to kill and rape men, women, and children, and torch
the village.
“The Burmese army’s atrocities at Tula Toli were not just
brutal, they were systematic,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Soldiers carried
out killings and rapes of hundreds of Rohingya with a cruel efficiency that
could only come with advance planning.”
Also read: Massacre by the River: https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/12/19/massacre-river/burmese-army-crimes-against-humanity-tula-toli
The report draws on interviews in Bangladesh with 18
Rohingya survivors from Tula Toli, as well as Human Rights Watch’s broader
investigation into the Burmese military’s operations against Rohingya villages,
including interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees since September.
Military operations were launched following August 25
attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on security force
outposts. On the morning of August 30, hundreds of uniformed Burmese soldiers
and armed ethnic Rakhine villagers arrived in Tula Toli. Rohingya villagers,
including residents of neighboring areas who had escaped to Tula Toli following
attacks on their towns in previous days, fled to the wide bank of the river
that borders the village on three sides. Many villagers told Human Rights Watch
that the ethnic Rakhine local chairman had told them to gather at the beach,
where he said they would be safe.
Security forces then surrounded the area, shooting at the
gathered crowd and those attempting to flee. They separated men and women,
holding the women and children under guard in shallow water while
systematically shooting the men or hacking them to death with knives. Shawfika,
24, who saw her husband and father-in-law killed, said the killings on the
beach went on for hours:
They just kept catching men, making them kneel down and
killing them. Then they put their bodies on a pile. First they shot them, and
if they were still alive they were killed with machetes.… It took them
one-and-a-half hours to carry all the bodies.
By the afternoon, hundreds had been killed on the
riverbank. Soldiers and Rakhine villagers burned the bodies in deep pits dug in
the sand, in an apparent effort to destroy evidence of the killings.
Survivors described young children being pulled away from
their mothers and killed – thrown into fires or the river, or beaten or knifed
to death on the ground. Hassina Begum, 20, tried to hide her 1-year-old
daughter, Sohaifa, under her headscarf, but a soldier noticed. “He took my
daughter from me and threw her alive into the fire,” she said. “What could I
do?… He had a knife in his hand and a rifle over his shoulder.”
Soldiers brought women and children to nearby houses in
small groups, where many were raped and sexually assaulted, stabbed, and
beaten. Nine women and girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they were
raped or sexually assaulted, and witnessed the rape of others. Afterward,
soldiers locked the houses and set them on fire, leaving the women and children
inside, most unconscious or dead. Shawfika described escaping the burning
house:
I woke up and realized I was in a pool of sticky blood. I
tried to wake the others up but they didn’t move. Then I broke through the
[bamboo] wall and escaped.… All the houses in the area were on fire. I could
hear women screaming from some of the other houses. They could not escape from
the fires.
Shawfika, like many other women interviewed, was the only
survivor from the group of eight women and children whom soldiers forced into
the house. Witness accounts suggest that the pattern of rape and killings in
the houses was repeated many times.
Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch confirms
that the Rohingya villages of Tula Toli and nearby Dual Toli were completely
destroyed by arson – a total of 746 buildings – while the neighboring
non-Rohingya villages remain intact. An estimated 4,300 Rohingya villagers
lived in Tula Toli prior to the attack.
The Burmese military and government have repeatedly
denied allegations of security force violations. On November 13, a Burmese army
investigation team issued a report asserting that security forces had committed
no abuses during the Rakhine State operations, and that there were “no deaths
of innocent people.”
Human Rights Watch reporting on the Burmese
military’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing. Rohingya crisis: https://www.hrw.org/tag/rohingya-crisis
Yet accounts from Tula Toli support the conclusion that
since August 25, the Burmese military has committed abuses against the Rohingya
that amount to crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, persecution,
and forced deportation. The report includes lists of numerous families
decimated in the Tula Toli attack, with names of more than 120 killed,
recounted by those who were often the sole survivors from their family. A
report released on December 12 by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) found that at
least 6,700 Rohingya died due to violence in the month after military
operations began in late August, based on mortality surveys conducted in
refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The Burmese government should immediately cease its
campaign of ethnic cleansing and urgently provide unimpeded access to Rakhine
State for humanitarian aid groups and the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission.
The UN Security Council and concerned governments should impose targeted
sanctions on Burmese military leaders and key military-owned enterprises,
including travel bans and restrictions on access to financial institutions, as
well as a comprehensive military embargo on Burma.
“The UN and foreign governments need to ensure that those
responsible for these grave abuses are held accountable,” Adams said.
“Condemnations are not enough to bring justice to the victims of Tula Toli.
Concerted international action is needed now.”
Testimonies From the Report
The soldiers separated the men from the women and the
children. They put the women and children near the bank of the river, and they
put the men in a different place on the beach. Some of the men were seated;
others were trying to run away in fear. They were being slaughtered, killed
with shovels and the army was also shooting them and killing them with sharp
weapons.… They dug a big hole and then also used the natural holes in the beach
to put bodies in, and then they burned them with gasoline. I saw them slide the
bodies’ in. –Rajuma Khatoum, 35
Between 7 and 10 soldiers took us to a room in a house. I
could hear women and girls screaming from the other rooms. They first took my
child and threw him down on the ground. He was still alive then, and I had to
watch as they slaughtered him. The children of the other two women were killed
the same way. A few minutes later, they took the bodies of the children and
threw them on a fire outside.
“No one else came out of that house. They all burned to death inside”.
Then the soldiers raped all three of us women. I was on
my back [being raped] for an hour. It was four or five soldiers.… They beat us
all until we were half dead, and then they set the house on fire. I saw that
one of the corners of the bamboo wall had a hole in it. I made it bigger by
kicking it, and I escaped from the house. No one else came out of that house.
They all burned to death inside. –Rajuma Begum, 20
About 10 soldiers took us away [to a house].… If they
found children alive, they shot them or beat them to death. When we first
entered, we couldn’t even really enter the room because of the number of bodies
already there, there were so many.
One of the soldiers had a big wooden stick, and he hit me
on the head and knocked me semi-unconscious. Then they were hitting the
children. They stripped us naked, searching for our valuables. It is all
blurry, but I remember them beating my 10-year-old sister-in-law – they hit her
in the head with a big stick. Her face was swelling up and she was just screaming
loudly in pain. Then she was just breathing loudly, and then she was barely
breathing. And then she died.
The house was already on fire when I woke up. I saw
another woman on fire. She tried to stand up, but she fell down again. Burning
objects were falling on us from the roof. So I stood up and stepped over the
bodies of the others, and broke the [bamboo] wall with my leg and escaped. The
other woman burned to death inside. Only I managed to escape, no one else came
out alive from the house. –“Fatima,” 15
“I tried to go back to get the bodies of my children, but they were already on fire”
All four of my children were with me. I was holding them.
They smashed the baby first, then they killed the two boys, first hitting them
with sticks and then with machetes.… I was unconscious, and when I woke the
house was fully on fire. It was when the fire was already burning my legs and
my body that I came to. I broke through the wall, and my daughter was already
outside. I tried to go back to get the bodies of my children, but they were
already on fire so we had to leave them. –Mumtaz Begum, 30