‘Graves were dug in front of captives’
Report: Myanmar forces torched homes and killed their Rohingya victims.
INN DIN ( Myanmar): Bound together, the 10 Rohingya captives watched their Buddhist neighbours dig a grave.
Soon afterwards, on the morning of Sept 2, all 10 lay dead. At least two were hacked to death by Buddhist villagers. The rest were shot by soldiers, two of the gravediggers said.
The killings marked another episode in the violence sweeping Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State.
The Rohingya accuse the army of arson, rapes and killings. The United Nations has said the army may have committed genocide.
Myanmar says its “clearance operation” is a legitimate response to attacks by insurgents.
Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most people in majority-Buddhist Myanmar consider them to be unwanted Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. The army refers to the Rohingya as “Bengalis,” and most lack citizenship.
In recent years, the government has confined more than 100,000 Rohingya in camps where they have limited access to food, medicine and education. Nearly 690,000 fled to Bangladesh since August.
Reuters has pieced together what happened in the days leading up to the killings in Inn Din, drawing for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims.
This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel.
The Reuters investigation was what prompted police authorities to arrest two of the news agency’s
reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, on Dec 12 for allegedly obtaining confidential documents relating to Rakhine.
On Jan 10, the military issued a statement that confirmed portions of what Reuters was preparing to report, acknowledging that 10 Rohingya men were massacred in Inn Din.
But the military’s version of events is contradicted in important respects by accounts given by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses.
The military said the 10 men belonged to a group of “200 terrorists” that attacked security forces. But Buddhist villagers interviewed for this article reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din.
And Rohingya witnesses said that soldiers plucked the 10 from among Rohingya who had sought safety on a nearby beach.
Scores of interviews with Rakhine Buddhist villagers, soldiers, paramilitary police, Rohingya and a local administrator further revealed: The military and paramilitary police organised Buddhist residents of Inn Din and at least two other villages to torch Rohingya homes, Buddhist villagers said.
Five Buddhist villagers said the army officer in charge told them they could volunteer to join security operations. He found willing participants among Inn Din’s Buddhist “security group”, members of the organisation and villagers said.
In the days that followed, soldiers, police and Buddhist villagers burned most of the homes of Inn Din’s Rohingya Muslims, a dozen Buddhist residents said.
One of the police officers said he received verbal orders from his commander to “go and clear” areas where Rohingya lived, which he took to mean to burn them.
A second police officer described taking part in several raids on villages north of Inn Din.
Security forces wore civilian shirts and shorts to blend in with the villagers, according to the second police officer and Inn Din’s Buddhist administrator, Maung Thein Chay
After the Rohingya had fled Inn Din, Buddhist villagers took their property, including chickens and goats, Buddhist residents said.
But the most valuable goods, mostly motorcycles and cattle, were collected by the commander of the 8th Security Police Battalion and sold, said the first police officer and the village administrator.