Blood flowed in the street, Rohingya say
REFUGEES RECOUNT THE DAYS OF HORROR DURING MYANMAR MILITARY’S ‘CLEARANCE OPERATION’
Refugees recount the days of horror during Myanmar military’s brutal ‘clearance operation’ in Rakhine state |
he soldiers arrived in the Myanmar village just after 8am, the villagers said, ready to fight a war. They fired shots in the air, and then, the villagers claim, turned their guns on fleeing residents, who fell dead and wounded in the monsoongreen rice paddies. The military’s retribution for a Rohingya militant attack on police posts earlier that day had begun.
Mohammad Roshid, a rice farmer, heard the gunfire and fled with his wife and children, but his 80-year-old father, who walks with a stick, wasn’t as nimble. Roshid said he saw a soldier grab Yusuf Ali and slit his throat with such ferocity the old man was nearly decapitated.
“I wanted to go back and save him, but some relatives stopped me because there was so many military,” Roshid, 55, said. “It’s the saddest thing in my life that I could not do anything for my father.”
Triggering an exodus
The Myanmar military’s “clearance operation” in the Maung Nu hamlet and dozens of other villages populated by the country’s ethnic Rohingya minority triggered an exodus of an estimated 400,000 refugees into Bangladesh, an episode the United Nations human rights chief has called “ethnic cleansing.” The tide of refugees is expected to grow in the coming days. The newly arrived refugees — dazed, clutching their belongings, some barefoot in ankle-deep mud — have overflowed an existing camp and put up makeshift shelters. Others simply sit on the roadways, fighting crowds as large relief trucks fling down bags of rice or bottles of water.
Rights groups say it will take months or years to fully chronicle the devastation they are leaving behind in the nation also known as Burma. Satellite photos show widespread burning, witnesses recount soldiers killing civilians, and the government itself said 176 Rohingya villages stand empty. No total death toll is yet available because the area remains sealed by the military.
Nearly a dozen villagers from the Maung Nu hamlet who escaped recounted their last hours in their homes and the long journey that followed. They were interviewed for two days in Kutupalong refugee camp near Bangladesh border, where they arrived last week.