Myanmar: Graves belong to terrorists

: Myanmar on Saturday denied that there were five mass graves of Rohingya Muslims in a village in crisis-hit Rakhine state, saying that 19 “terrorists” had been killed and buried in the area.

The denial was response to an Associated Press report that used testimony from dozens of Rohingya refugees and timestamped cell phone videos to describe a massacre by soldiers and at least five previously unreported mass graves in Rakhine’s Gu Dar Pyin village.

The Myanmar government’s Information Committee said in a statement on its Facebook page that a government inspection team had gone to the village to probe the report and found it to be false. “The inspection team systematically investigated the AP’s report on the Gu Dar Pyin village case, including interviewing villagers, and found it not to be true,” the statement said.

The report described grisly violence at the hands of soldiers and Buddhist vigilantes, who allegedly attacked villagers with guns, knives, rocket launchers and grenades before dumping bodies into pits and dousing them with acid.

Satellite images showed a village that has been completely wiped out, with villagers interviewed in refugee camps in Bangladesh claiming that up to 400 people could have been killed, according to the report.

The Information Committee said there had been deadly clashes between security forces and Rohingya militants in the village on August 28 which left 19 “terrorists” dead. AFP

YANGON