Thieves making a killing with livestock

YANGON: Thousands of cows and goats grazed in abandoned fields and wandered through charred-out Rohingya villages after the military crackdown.

Now, more than a half-dozen witnesses said soldiers and police are cashing in on the humanitarian catastrophe. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

In violence-wracked northern Rakhine State, where village after village has been burnt to the ground, security forces and local administrators have been collecting the livestock and bringing it by foot, truck and sometimes boat to Buddhist-controlled areas.

The prized beasts are then being sold to traders and residents for US$200 (RM840) a head – a quarter of their value.

From there, cows are taken to the Rakhine capital, Sittwe.

The government has blocked UN agencies and international aid organisations from delivering aid to the camps for weeks and the Rohingya living in flimsy bamboo shelters are growing more desperate by the day.

They don’t like buying the cows, said a Rohingya Muslim community leader, but feel they have no choice.

“They are angry because this is livestock that was looted by the army and Rakhine people,” he said, adding those in at least two camps refused to buy the cattle because they know if belongs to other Rohingya.

One police officer said he didn’t know about the cattle scam.

The Arakan Project, a research and advocacy group active in the region, has also spoken to witnesses who said security forces were collecting abandoned cows and loading them into trucks and boats. — AP