Rights group: Rohingya rebels massacred Hindus
BANGKOK — Myanmar’s army was not the only group that slaughtered civilians in the country’s volatile west last year, Amnesty International said in a new report accusing ethnic Rohingya insurgents of massacring dozens of Hindus during an escalation of a longrunning communal conflict in Rakhine state.
The London-based rights organization said it had investigated the widely reported killing of dozens of minority Hindus on Aug. 25 in a village called Ah Nauk Kha Maung Sei and concluded Rohingya militants were responsible. It’s unclear why, but some suspect the militants believed the Hindu community sympathized with the predominantly Buddhist government’s antiRohingya stance.
Claims that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, had carried out a massacre there were first made by the government and security forces just hours after it occurred. It was the same day Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base in the volatile region, provoking a bloody army counteroffensive that eventually drove nearly 700,000 Rohingya civilians into Bangladesh.
At the time, Myanmar officials said they had discovered two mass graves containing dozens of bodies, and that around 100 Hindus were missing in all.
Amnesty International said the findings in its report released Wednesday were based on “a careful review of evidence” that included the testimony of dozens of people and images analyzed by forensic pathologists.
“Our latest investigation on the ground sheds much-needed light on the largely underreported human rights abuses by ARSA during northern Rakhine state’s unspeakably dark recent history,” said Tirana Hassan, the group’s crisis response director.
“Accountability for these atrocities is every bit as crucial as it is for the crimes against humanity carried out by Myanmar’s security forces,” Hassan said.
Though nobody knows for sure how many people were killed in Rakhine state since August — the government generally prohibits independent reporting from the area — the vast majority of those who died are believed to be Rohingya killed by security forces. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed during the first month alone.
ARSA could not be reached for comment on the Amnesty International report.