Military admits Rohingya killings
MYANMAR: Soldiers in Myanmar’s military and villagers were behind the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims whose bodies were found in a mass grave in the village of Inn Din in Rakhine state, commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing has said in a statement on Facebook.
The admission yesterday marks the first time that Myanmar’s powerful military has acknowledged wrongdoing in the violence that gripped Rakhine last year.
In just a few months, more than 650,000 members of the Rohingya minority fled across the border into Bangladesh. The crisis was labelled a ‘‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’’ by the United Nations’ top human rights official.
The military statement may also offer further hints to one of the most urgent questions in a crisis believed to have left thousands dead: where are the bodies?
Late last year, Doctors Without Borders estimated that at least 6700 Rohingya had died violently during the exodus last year, mostly from gunshot wounds, but the government of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, has blocked numerous attempts by outside groups to investigate.
‘‘It’s not as though there are human remains lying around everywhere,’’ said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. ‘‘We have reason to suspect that authorities have disposed of human remains, whether maliciously to hide evidence or for other reasons.’’
UN human rights investigators and others have been denied access to the areas worst affected by the violence, while two Reuters journalists who were reported to be investigating evidence of a mass grave at Inn Dinn are on trial in Rangoon. Prosecutors are seeking charges that could impose a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
After numerous accounts of massacres from survivors, human rights groups resorted to using commercial satellite imagery to look for evidence of violence. Matt Wells, senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International, said that although it was difficult to find mass graves using this technique, images seen by Amnesty had made it clear that Rohingya homes in the Inn Din area were burned down in what appeared to be a coordinated campaign.
In yesterday’s statement, the office of Myanmar’s commanderin-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, said villagers and security forces had admitted they killed ‘‘10 Bengali terrorists’’ – a reference to the Rohingya whose bodies were found in the Inn Din mass grave last year. The statement went on to claim that the soldiers were responding to provocations, but added that they would be dealt with by the military.
Though Rohingya have been established in Myanmar for generations, the government refuses to recognise them as citizens and refers to them as Bengalis to imply that they are illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
Yesterday’s message appears to contradict previous denials that Myanmar’s military was involved in violence. In a report released last November, the military exonerated itself of accusations of a number of atrocities, including rape and killings.
Rights groups said the admission of involvement showed the need for Myanmar to allow outside investigators into Rakhine.
‘‘This grisly admission is a sharp departure from the army’s policy of blanket denial of any wrongdoing,’’ said James Gomez, Amnesty International’s regional director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. ‘‘However, it is only the tip of the iceberg.’’ – Washington Post