‘THOSE OF OUR PEOPLE WHO RAN WERE HACKED TO DEATH’
▶ Refugees at a camp in Bangladesh reveal horrific details of an attack by Myanmar soldiers
Myanmar soldiers barred the doors to the mosque as men arrived with machetes and petrol cans. Then, Rohingya Muslim witnesses say, the killing began.
“Those that ran were hacked to death. Others that got away were shot by the army,” said Master Kamal, 53, a teacher who survived the massacre in Aung Sit Pyin, Rakhine state.
“They were burning houses. We fled to save our lives.”
Mr Kamal said that as he fled he saw three neighbours, including a father and son, butchered.
He made a 10-day trek across monsoon-drenched hills, rivers and fields to Bangladesh.
People from the village who found refuge at Balukhali camp in Bangladesh revealed horrific details of the events in Aung Sit Pyin on August 25.
That was the day Rohingya Muslim militants attacked police posts across Rakhine, sparking a violent crackdown that has so far driven almost 300,000 of Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya population over the border.
The stateless Muslim minority blames Myanmar’s army and Buddhist mobs for the widespread killings.
The testimony is difficult to verify because access to Rakhine is heavily restricted.
Myanmar’s government has blamed Rohingya militants for the atrocities, including firebombing their own villages and killing civilians suspected of collaborating with the army.
Mohammad Amin, 56, a farmer whose father was a village chief, said his family had lived in Aung Sit Pyin for three generations.
“This is the first time we fled. I have never witnessed violence like this,” Mr Amin said.
As the shooting began he ran into the jungle to hide, then crossed a river to avoid soldiers who were pursuing civilians.
Families scattered. Mr Amin spent days searching for his seven sons and daughters in the brush, dodging patrols.
“From the other side of the river I could see everything burning,” he said.
Myanmar’s army says at least 400 people, mainly militants, have been killed in the violence.
But there are fears that figure is a low estimate, with other Rakhine villages also the target of massacres. Many of the refugees from Aung Sit Pyin said they saw people slaughtered, or passed corpses cut down or burnt as they sprinted in all directions from advancing forces.
Twenty-six families who made it out are now cramped beneath a large tarpaulin sheet in a muddy field behind Balukhali. There is no toilet or clean water.
Some said the journey took seven days. Others said they spent up to 12 days hiding from the military and tackling steep passes and rain-soaked jungle to reach Bangladesh.
Anwara Begum said she plunged into a river with her son, 4, as soldiers fired at fleeing villagers.
She clung to debris but lost contact with her other five children in the chaos, saying she hid terrified in the hills while helicopters buzzed.
“I thought I would never see them again,” said Ms Begum, 35.
Her other children, aged
12 to 19, linked up with their father at the border and the family was reunited in Bangladesh, she said.
Others have been less fortunate. Nearly 100 people drowned trying to cross the Naf River on the border.
Still more have arrived with bullet wounds or missing limbs from landmines placed to deter those fleeing from coming back.
The sprawling camps inside Bangladesh have swelled with newcomers such as Jamal Hussain, 12, who said his five older brothers were cut down by machinegun fire in Aung Sit Pyin as they ran. He has not seen his parents or seven sisters since.
“We were all together but suddenly they started firing. I could not look back because I thought I would die,” the boy said. “When I was hiding I remembered the whole thing. I started crying.”
On Jamal’s shoulder was a scar the size of a small coin, evidence of a schrapnel splinter or bullet that he said hit his back and passed through.
“At first I didn’t know what happened, then people behind were saying there was blood on my back,” he said.
Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal migrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though many have lived in Rakhine for generations.
Pressure is mounting on unofficial leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi to end the violence.
Impoverished Bangladesh has been overwhelmed by the influx of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in the past two years.
For those squatting in the mud in Balukhali there is nowhere left to go.
Taking solace under a plastic sheet, Ms Begum said she was prepared to beg for a living.
“If I have nothing to eat, I will eat soil, but I will never go back.”