New fires in empty Rohingya village raise doubts
BANGKOK: Journalists on a government-controlled trip saw new fires burning in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims.
Some 164,000 Rohingya from the area have fled across the border to Bangladesh in less than two weeks since Aug 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police outposts in Gawdu Zara and several others, the UN refugee agency said yesterday.
The military has said nearly 400 people, most they described as insurgents, had died in clashes and that troops were conducting “clearance operations”. It blames insurgents for setting the villages on fire, without offering proof.
The Rohingya who have fled Myanmar, however, all described large-scale violence perpetrated by Myanmar troops and Buddhist mobs – setting fire to their homes, spraying bullets indiscriminately, stabbing civilians and ordering them to abandon their homes or be killed.
On the Myanmar side of the border, reporters saw no Rohingya in any of the five destroyed villages they were allowed to tour, making it unlikely they could have been responsible for the fires.
An ethnic Rakhine villager who emerged from the smoke said police and Rakhine Buddhists had set the fires. The villager ran off before he could be asked anything else.
No police were seen in the village beyond those who were accompanying the journalists.
But about 10 Rakhine men with machetes were seen there. They looked nervous; the only one who spoke said he had just arrived and didn’t know how the fires started.
Another village the journalists visited, Ah Lel Than Kyaw, was blackened, obliterated and deserted.
Cattle and dogs wandered through the still- smoldering remains.
Local police officer Aung Kyaw Moe said 18 people were killed in the village when the violence began last month.
“From our side, there was one immigration officer dead, and we found 17 dead bodies from the enemy side,” he said.
He said the fires were set on Aug 25, though some of them continued to burn yesterday.
Virtually all buildings in the village seen by journalists had been burned, along with cars, motorbikes and bicycles that fleeing villagers left behind.
Columns of smoke could be seen rising in the distance, and distant gunshots could be heard.
“They burned their own houses and ran away,” Aung Kyaw Moe said.
“We didn’t see who actually burned them because we had to take care of the security for our outpost. ... But when the houses were burned, Bengalis were the only ones in the village.”
Myanmar refers to Rohingya as Bengalis, contending they migrated illegally from Bangladesh, though many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations. — AP