By BBC
Rohingya Muslim
militants in Myanmar killed dozens of Hindu civilians during attacks last
August, according to an investigation by Amnesty International.
The group called Arsa killed up to 99 Hindu civilians in one, or possibly two massacres, said
the rights group. Arsa had denied involvement. https://t.co/Zrrypt0vSa
Don’t
miss to read here about the report of Amnesty International: https://t.co/IaQqIjJh0r
The killings came in
the first days of an uprising against Burmese forces, who are also accused of
atrocities.
Since August nearly
700,000 Rohingyas and others have fled the violence.
The conflict has
also displaced members of the majority Buddhist population in Myanmar (also
called Burma) as well as members of the Hindu minority.
Amnesty says interviews
it conducted with refugees in Bangladesh and in Rakhine state confirmed that
mass killings carried out by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) took
place in a cluster of villages in northern Maungdaw Township at the time of its
attacks on police posts in late August.
The findings also
show Arsa was responsible for violence against civilians, on a smaller scale,
in other areas.
The report details
how Arsa members on 26 August attacked the Hindu village of Ah Nauk Kha Maung
Seik.
"In this brutal
and senseless act, members of Arsa captured scores of Hindu women, men and
children and terrorised them before slaughtering them outside their own
villages," the report said.
Hindu survivors told
Amnesty they either saw relatives being killed or heard their screams.
One woman from the
village of Ah Nauk Kha Maung Seik said: "They slaughtered the men. We were
told not to look at them … They had knives. They also had some spades and iron
rods. … We hid ourselves in the shrubs there and were able to see a little … My
uncle, my father, my brother - they were all slaughtered."
Arsa fighters are
accused of killing 20 men, 10 women, and 23 children, 14 of whom were under the
age of eight.
Amnesty said the
bodies of 45 people from the village were unearthed in four mass graves in late
September. The remains of the other victims, as well as 46 from the
neighbouring village of Ye Bauk Kyar, have not been found.
The investigation
suggests that a massacre of Hindu men, women, and children in Ye Bauk Kyar
happened on the same day, bringing the estimated total number of dead to 99.
Why skepticism
over a mass grave?
Jonathan Head, BBC
News, Bangkok
Last September, as
international alarm was growing over the scale of the Rohingya exodus to
Bangladesh, and over the horrific accounts of atrocities by the Myanmar
security forces, the government in Nay Pyi Taw announced that it had discovered
a mass grave.
But the victims were
not Muslims - they were Hindus, killed, said the government, by militants from
Arsa.
Journalists were
taken to the site to see the grave and the bodies. However the government's
continued refusal to allow independent human rights researchers into Rakhine
left lingering doubts about exactly what happened in the village of Ah Nauk Kha
Maung Seik, and a neighbouring village, Ye Bauk Kyar.
The fact that the
Myanmar government refused to acknowledge any serious abuses by its forces, in the
face of huge amounts of testimony, undermined its credibility further.
At the time Arsa
denied any involvement in this massacre - the group has made no public
statements for four months. Myanmar has complained of one-sided reporting of
the conflict in Rakhine, but many foreign media, including the BBC, did report
the killing of Hindus back in September.
'Mass
Hindu grave' found in Rakhine http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41384457
Reuters
journalists held 'for investigating Myanmar killings' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-42956176
Amnesty also
criticised what it said was "an unlawful and grossly disproportionate
campaign of violence by Myanmar's security forces".
"Arsa's
appalling attacks were followed by the Myanmar military's ethnic cleansing
campaign against the Rohingya population as a whole."
Myanmar
Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41566561
The truth
about Rohingya militants http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41521268
Seeing
through the official story in Myanmar http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41222210
The human rights
group says its findings are based "on dozens of interviews conducted there
[in Rakhine] and across the border in Bangladesh, as well as photographic
evidence analyzed by forensic pathologists".
The investigation
"sheds much-needed light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses
by Arsa during northern Rakhine State's unspeakably dark recent history,"
Amnesty's Tirana Hassan said.
"It's hard to
ignore the sheer brutality of Arsa's actions, which have left an indelible
impression on the survivors we've spoken to. Accountability for these
atrocities is every bit as crucial as it is for the crimes against humanity
carried out by Myanmar's security forces in northern Rakhine State."
Arsa has
denied such accusations in the past, saying that claims of its militants
killing villagers were "lies".
The Rohingya - a
stateless mostly Muslim minority - are widely despised in Myanmar, where they
are considered to be illegal migrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that
some have been in Myanmar for generations.
Bangladesh also denies
them citizenship.