UKHIA, Bangladesh (AP) — For six hours he hid in an
upstairs room, listening to the crackle of gunfire and the screams of people
being slaughtered outside his Myanmar home.
With every footstep that drew near, every cry that
pierced the air, 52-year-old Bodru Duza braced for the soldiers to find him, to
kill him like all the others who had fled to his compound that morning seeking
a safe place to shelter. They were being blindfolded and bound, marched away in
small groups, then butchered and shot as they begged for their lives.
What had started out as a quiet Sunday in northwestern
Myanmar had spiraled into an incomprehensible hell — one of the bloodiest
massacres reported in the Southeast Asian nation since government forces
launched a vicious campaign to drive out the country’s Rohingya minority in
late August, 2017.
By the time it was over, there was so much blood on the
ground, it had pooled into long rivulets across the uneven earth, among bits of
human flesh and the fragments of shattered skulls.
When Duza finally dared to emerge from his hiding place,
he wondered how anyone could have survived.
The compound he grew up in was now consumed by an
ethereal silence. His wife, daughter, and five young sons were nowhere to be
seen. And as he crept toward a backdoor to escape, he stumbled upon the corpse
of an unknown boy sprawled on the floor.
“Oh Allah!” he thought. “What have they done to us? What
have they done to my family?”
The Associated Press reported this story with a grant
from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Duza’s family belonged to the ethnic Rohingya Muslim
community, which has long been persecuted and denied basic rights in
predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. They lived in the village of Maung Nu, where at
least 82 Rohingya are believed to have been murdered on Aug. 27.
The massacre was part of a streak of violence that
started before dawn two days earlier, when Rohingya insurgents staged an
unprecedented wave of 30 attacks on security posts across Rakhine state. At
least 14 people were killed.
The assaults triggered one of the greatest catastrophes
the Rohingya have ever known: an army counter-offensive that has left hundreds
of villages burned and driven 650,000 refugees into Bangladesh. The aid group
Doctors Without Borders estimates 6,700 Rohingya civilians were killed in the
first month of reprisals alone, and human rights groups have documented three
large-scale massacres.
The Associated Press has reconstructed the massacre at
Maung Nu as told by 37 survivors now scattered across refugee camps in
Bangladesh. Their testimony and exclusive video footage from the massacre site
obtained by AP offer evidence, also documented by the United Nations and
others, that Myanmar armed forces have systematically killed civilians.
Myanmar’s military did not respond to repeated requests
for comment on this story, and the government — which prohibits journalists
from independent travel to northern Rakhine State — did not reply to an AP
request for a visit. The army has insisted in the past that not a single
innocent has been slain.
For as long as anyone could remember, there was only one
place in Maung Nu that was truly considered safe. It was a large two-story
residence shared by two of the village’s most prominent businessmen — Duza and
his brother Zahid Hossain.
Built on a hillside more than half a century ago, the
vast home was known for its three-foot-thick walls of hardened mud, which many
believed to be bullet-proof and virtually impossible to burn. That mattered in
Rakhine state, where the Rohingya population lived in fear of both the military
and the area’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. Although the Rohingya have lived in
Myanmar for decades, they are still seen as foreign invaders from Bangladesh
who are intent on stealing land.
Despite the tensions, Hossain worked extensively with
local army commanders, trading cows and rice and jointly operating a
brick-making factory. Both brothers were charismatic, educated and popular.
Duza, an affable man who was well-known throughout the area, had previously
served as village administrator for 12 years. Many people assumed that neither
he nor his compound would be harmed.
After insurgents launched their first attacks a year ago,
the government had imposed strict new measures aimed at curbing militant
activity. Islamic schools were closed, a curfew was put in place, and
authorities ordered the removal of fences and even shrubbery so security forces
could see inside private compounds.
But Maung Nu, a village of about 2,000 people also known
as Monu Para, remained peaceful. Duza and his brother counted their blessings.
They were among the village’s wealthiest men. They owned scores of cows and
buffalo, and vast acres of rice.
Soon, it would all be gone.
A few hours after midnight on Aug. 25, fierce volleys of
gunfire woke the residents of Maung Nu. Rohingya militants had launched a
surprise assault on a Border Guard Police post in Hpaung Taw Pyin, less than a
kilometer (a mile) to the north.
The fighting lasted until dawn. According to the
government, two officers and at least six of the assailants died.
That morning a commander from the army’s Light Infantry
Battalion 564, based just south of Maung Nu, called the local district
administrator, Mohamed Arof, furious.
“Why didn’t you tell us about these attacks?” the commander
demanded.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” replied Arof, a
Rohingya. “I only heard the shooting, like you.”
The same day, police snatched Arof’s 15-year-old son from
a rice paddy and took him to their camp, where he was hung with a rope along
with three other teenagers, according to Arof and several witnesses. It’s
unclear why the teens were killed, but word of their deaths spread quickly.
Fearing more reprisals from security forces, most of
Hpaung Taw Pyin’s residents fled. Hundreds of them walked to the homes of
friends and relatives in Maung Nu, in the hope they would be safe there.
And for a day, they were.
On Aug. 27, bursts of gunfire echoed across Maung Nu
again. This time only the army was shooting.
Several military trucks parked on the village’s main road
around 9 a.m. and began disgorging troops who fanned out on foot, firing into
the air. Peering out a window of her home, 35-year-old Jamila Begum spotted
several armed soldiers crossing her yard carrying coils of nylon rope.
Hundreds of people were already on the move, seeking the
closest refuge — the hillside compound of Duza and Hossain, which included half
a dozen other homes belonging to their relatives and a large rectangular pond.
Jamila’s family joined them.
Other residents were being rounded up by force and
ordered to head to the compound. Some cowered inside their homes, wondering
what to do. One of them, 18-year-old Mohammadul Hassan, put a woman’s veil over
his face when troops burst through the front door of his home, guns drawn.
Hassan immediately recognized one of the soldiers — a
skinny army staff sergeant named Baju who was well-known in the village. A
member of the 564th Battalion, Baju had lived in the area for 15 years and
spoke the Rohingya dialect, according to numerous villagers. Duza said Baju was
also a frequent visitor to his home.
When the soldiers discovered Hassan hiding among several
female relatives, they became enraged. He was dragged outside along with two of
his brothers, shoved to the ground and kicked until blood poured from his left
eye.
As troops ripped clothes off the women and seized their
valuables, the three brothers were stripped and tied up. The soldiers marched
them to Duza’s compound naked, at gunpoint, the sunbaked dirt road burning
their bare feet.
Duza had never seen people so scared.
As the number of Rohingya hiding on his property rose
into the hundreds, his wife, a warm woman with an easy smile named Habiba,
turned to him and asked, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”
The answer came when dozens of helmeted soldiers in olive
green uniforms arrived around 11 a.m., accompanied by several border guard
police.
Their entrance set off a new panic. A few men in Duza’s
house locked the main wooden doors and climbed the stairs to a balcony, where
most of the males already had gathered.
Before joining them, Duza pulled Habiba aside.
“Please take care of our daughter and our sons.”
So many people were crammed into their house by then,
though, that Habiba soon lost track of all but one child.
Outside, a soldier’s voice rose above the others. It was
Baju, and he was calling on everyone to come out, assuring them they would not
be harmed. As the minutes passed and nobody emerged, the calls turned menacing,
and the sergeant threatened to burn the compound to the ground.
Several bursts of gunfire rang out and a young boy was
struck in the forehead. The women recoiled in horror as he lay motionless
before them, the back of his skull blown apart.
Seconds later, soldiers broke down the doors and began
dragging people out, separating the men from the women.
Mothers and elderly women were ordered onto their knees.
Some tried to push back when troops ripped off their headscarves and tore at
their clothes. The soldiers first demanded their cell phones, then grabbed at
exposed breasts as they snatched gold earrings, necklaces and wads of cash.
About 20 or 25 of the women — mostly attractive and young
— were taken away. They were never seen again. The rest eventually were driven,
along with their children, into a pair of houses on the property.
The soldiers bound the men’s hands behind their backs and
ordered them into the dirt courtyard in front of the house, where they were
forced face down onto the stifling ground. Most were blindfolded with masking
tape or veils taken from the women. A handful who tried to resist were thrown
off the balcony head-first.
Troops started to walk across the sea of people, grinding
boots into their heads and beating them with rifle butts. Some of the soldiers
cursed their prisoners, calling them dirty “kalar,” a derogatory word for
Muslims that is frequently used in Myanmar.
Duza’s brother, Hossain, begged for the violence to stop.
“Why are you doing this?” he cried. “Why are you tying us
up?”
There was no answer.
Around noon, a senior officer called a commander on his
phone. The officer said they had rounded up 87 men.
“What should we do with them?”
The call ended shortly afterward, and the officer barked
an order to his troops.
“Let us begin.”
Duza watched through a slit in a closed window as a
soldier plunged a long knife into his brother’s neck in front of their house.
When two of Hossain’s sons got up and tried to run, soldiers opened fire.
Duza stepped back in shock. He scrambled to an upstairs
room and crawled into the only place he could think of to hide: a foot-high
space under a large wooden container normally used to store rice. He covered
his legs with rice sacks and curled into a ball, trying to disappear.
Outside, screams like he’d never heard before
reverberated across the courtyard.
Several soldiers hammered four-inch nails into the
temples of three men on the ground with the butts of their rifles. Four other
men were decapitated, including a prominent gray-bearded mullah.
Then a pair of soldiers — one was Baju — descended on her
husband. With two-foot-long machetes, they hacked into his neck from both
sides. He crumpled in the dirt, gagging on blood.
Gasping for breath, Jamila stumbled toward the door. She
wanted to rush to his side, to help him, to be with him — to die.
But the women in the house pulled her back.
“You can’t go,” one said, as Jamila collapsed, weeping.
“If you go out there, they’ll kill all of us.”
While women rocked back and forth, several children began
praying. In the courtyard, they could hear people begging for their lives.
“Please Allah!” Please help us!”
“We’re dying!”
When Jamila rose to look out the window again, she saw
her 16-year-old son dragged away by the collar of his shirt and tied to a tree,
screaming, “I didn’t do anything!”
The gunshots rang out. Jamila could not bear to look.
As the afternoon wore on, the carnage became more
methodical.
Men and teenage boys were taken away in small groups and
killed by firing squads near a forested area on the edge of the property. In
some cases, a soldier blew a whistle beforehand, signaling for them to begin.
Other troops wrapped corpses in orange and green tarps
and transported them downhill in three-wheeled push-carts to a pair of army
trucks parked on the road. Several witnesses reported seeing soldiers digging
pits and dumping bodies into them.
When Mohammad Nasir was marched to the killing ground
with six others, he saw more than a dozen cadavers crumpled there under the
trees. As those beside him braced for death and called out Islamic creeds —
“There is no god but Allah! Mohamed is his prophet!” — Nasir wriggled loose and
ran.
He made it to the far side of a small ravine before the
first burst of gunfire rang out. Half an hour later, when he had run out of
breath, he realized he had been shot in the elbow.
Mohammadul Hassan was taken to a pond just east of the
main house. Soldiers ordered him to kneel with his two brothers, then shot them
all from behind and rolled them over to make sure they were dead. When Hassan
unexpectedly opened his eyes, an officer sitting on the bank walked casually
forward and fired a single rifle shot into his chest. Hassan later regained
consciousness, stumbled away, and survived.
That afternoon, soldiers began searching the compound for
men. At one point, Baju grabbed Duza’s 9-year-old son Mohamed Ahasun, and
demanded to know where his father was.
The boy said Duza had left four days earlier for another
village. Baju slapped him, but let him go.
In the tiny, darkened crawl space upstairs, Duza’s mind
had gone numb. He kept telling himself: “It has to stop ... This has to end
somehow.” Praying for survival, he waited for the soldiers to discover him, to
drag him out by the feet.
But they never did. And when the guns finally fell
silent, he crept slowly downstairs, and slipped away.
For the next two weeks, he traveled alone, joining the
hordes of Rohingya bound for Bangladesh. They crossed streams and forests and
mountains, and finally the Naf River, which separates the two countries.
When Duza got out of a boat and stepped onto Bangladeshi
soil, he looked back toward Myanmar and saw half a dozen columns of smoke
curling skyward from burning Rohingya homes. His family, he thought, was surely
dead.
There is no way to independently confirm the death toll
in Maung Nu. But one handwritten tally seen by The AP details the names, ages
and professions of 82 people, most of them men and boys from Maung Nu and
Hpaung Taw Pyin, who family members say were killed.
They are farmers and students, carpenters, businessmen
and teachers. The youngest is seven years old; the oldest, 95.
According to Arof, the village administrator, at least
200 more remain missing and are feared dead.
Most of the survivors struggle to understand why so many
of their neighbors were slaughtered. Arof said the army falsely believed they
were supporting the insurgency, but something much deeper had driven the
killing. The massacres reported since August have stood out for their high
casualty toll, their ferocity, and the methodical way in which they were
carried out.
“You have to understand ... they hate us,” Arof said.
“This didn’t only happen in our village, it happened everywhere.”
In the end, Duza was one of the luckiest survivors.
After weeks spent imagining another life without a
family, he found a newly-arrived refugee with a Myanmar phone and asked to use
it.
He dialed his wife Habiba’s number. A young girl
answered.
He could barely believe it. It was his 14-year-old
daughter, Taslima.
As tears welled in his eyes, Duza asked about the rest of
his family. “Are they with you? Are they alive?”
“Yes papa! Yes!” Taslima replied. “We’re here! Everybody
is fine.”
Duza’s family had been elsewhere in the compound when he
fled. It would take them six more weeks to make the journey to Bangladesh.
When the family reunited in a refugee camp, Duza broke
down as he hugged his wife and squeezed the children he never thought he’d see
again. They had lost so much -- their friends and relatives, their home, their
savings, their future -- but they had somehow found each other.
“It felt like living in another world,” Duza said. “It
felt like a new life.”
Rohingya Activist tweeted:
The list of Rohingyas killed by Myanmar Army on 27/8/2017
in MaungNu or MawNu village of Chin Tha Ma VT & Phaung Taw Pyin VT of Buthidaung
Tsp. The list was made by some villagers; actual death toll is much higher. https://t.co/OAwXqeXsoc
