Five new Rohingya mass graves uncovered
Grim discoveries bear all the hallmarks of genocide by the Burmese military says UN special envoy
THE existence of five new Rohingya mass graves was revealed yesterday as further evidence of the systematic slaughter of the persecuted Muslim minority in Burma’s western Rakhine state since last August.
The reports, verified by the Associated Press through multiple witnesses from Gu Dar Pyin village and by time stamps on phone footage of corpses, attribute new atrocities to a military crackdown that now appears to have involved crimes against humanity.
Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special envoy on human rights in predominantly Buddhist Burma, said yesterday that the military’s operations against the Rohingya bore “the hallmarks of a genocide”. She said that she could not make a definitive declaration about genocide until a credible international tribunal or court had weighed the evidence, but “we are seeing signs and it is building up to that”.
The fresh evidence strengthens fears that the planned repatriation of some 750,000 refugees, currently sheltering in squalid conditions in neighbouring Bangladesh, is “premature” and cannot guarantee their rights or safety.
Bangladesh and Burma had pledged to repatriate the refugees within two years, but the start date last week was delayed for logistical reasons.
Burma is racing to construct reception camps for the returnees, but the first pictures to emerge of plywood homes surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers have reinforced claims by rights groups that the Rohingya will be forced into grim ghettos. The plans sparked demonstrations among refugees, whose leaders want a say in their own future, and that their rights and citizenship are guaranteed.
The UN Refugee Agency, which is not party to the bilateral repatriation talks, warned that any return should be based on informed and voluntary choice. Even the bleak misery of Bangladesh’s Kutupalong, now the most densely populated refugee camp in the world, is not proving to be an incentive to push fearful refugees back home.
Refugees interviewed by The Daily Telegraph last week said they had been too traumatised by the military’s violence to go back. “My house was burnt down, properties were lost, my ninemonth-old
‘My house was burnt down, properties were lost, my nine-month-old daughter was burnt alive by the army’
daughter, Nur Kalima, was burnt alive by the military,” said Gul Bahar, 35, from Udong in Rakhine’s Maungdauw district. She said her 70-year-old mother had drowned during the desperate escape into Bangladesh across the Naf river. “If I go back, they will persecute us even more harshly than before and will force us to flee again. There is no safety,” she said.
Mariam Khatun, 25, from Buthi- daung township, said she would prefer to eke out a living in the ramshackle huts sprawling across the dusty wasteland of the camp, where food supplies are scarce and privacy non-existent.
“My brother Feruz Ahmed was burnt alive in our home. There is nothing left. I witnessed killing, burning and the rape of beautiful women,” she said.
“When I remember what happened, my mind tells me not to return at all.”
Abul Kalam, a community leader from Alaytankyaw in Maungdaw, said: “The military burned down my house. My son Mohammed Ruman, 17, was shot to death by the military on August 27. It’s not safe there.”
Uk-based Rohingya activists have urged the international community to pressure Burma to ensure the refugees get justice. Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, pointed out that attacks were still taking place against villages in Rakhine’s Buthidaung township.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said the revelations of mass graves in Gu Dar Pyin “raised the stakes” for the international community to act.
“It’s time for the EU and the US to get serious about identifying and levelling targeted sanctions against the Burmese military commanders and soldiers responsible … and for the UN to lead the charge for a global arms embargo,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director.