Taranaki Daily News

Leaves staple diet to survive in Myanmar’s ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ zone

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MYANMAR: Along the main road that stretches nearly 40 kilometres north from Maungdaw town in Myanmar’s violence-riven Rakhine State, all but one of the villages that were once home to tens of thousands of people have been turned into smoulderin­g ash.

Hundreds of cows roam through deserted settlement­s and charred paddy fields. Hungry dogs eat small goats. The remains of local mosques, markets and schools – once bustling with Rohingya Muslims – are silent.

Despite strict controls on access to northern Rakhine, Reuters independen­tly travelled to parts of the most-affected area in early September, the first detailed look by reporters inside the region where the United Nations says Myanmar’s security forces have carried out ethnic cleansing.

Nearly 500 people have been killed and 480,000 Rohingya have fled since August 25, when attacks on 30 police posts and a military base by Muslim militants provoked a fierce army crackdown.

The government has rejected allegation­s of arson, rape and arbitrary killings levelled against its security forces.

‘‘We were scared that the army and the police would shoot us if they found us ... so we ran away from the village,’’ said Suyaid Islam, 32, from Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, near the area north of Maungdaw. He was speaking from a refugee camp in Bangladesh after leaving his village soon after the attacks.

Residents of his village said it had been burned down by security forces in an earlier operation against Rohingya insurgents late last year. Those that did not flee have been surviving since in makeshift shacks, eating food distribute­d by aid agencies.

Satellite photos showed tens of thousands of homes in northern Rakhine have been destroyed in

214 villages, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. The UN detected 20 square kilometres of destroyed structures.

The government said more than

6800 houses have been set on fire. It blames the Rohingya villagers and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which staged the August 25 attacks.

‘‘The informatio­n we obtained on this side is that terrorists did the burnings,’’ said Zaw Htay, spokesman for national leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reuters reporters have made two trips to northern Rakhine, visiting the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, and driving from Maungdaw through the most affected area along the main road north to the town of Kyein Chaung.

The reporters talked briefly to residents but, because many were scared of being seen speaking to outsiders, most interviews were carried out by phone from outside the army operation area.

Little aid has made it to northern Rakhine since the UN had to suspend operations because of the fighting and after the government suggested its food was sustaining insurgents. Convoys organised by the Red Cross have twice been stopped and searched by hostile ethnic Rakhines in the state capital Sittwe.

In U Shey Kya, where last October Rohingya residents accused the Myanmar army of raping several women, a teacher said only about 100 families out of 800 households have stayed behind.

Those who remain are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the soldiers, who come to the village in the morning, prompting the residents to hide in the forest and return at night.

‘‘We don’t even have food to eat for this evening. What can we do?’’ said the teacher. ‘‘We are close to the forest where we have leaves we can eat and find some water to survive.’’

The man said escaping through bush in monsoon rain with his elderly parents, six children and pregnant wife was not an option.

Zaw Htay said the government has prioritise­d humanitari­an assistance to the area.

‘‘If there are any locations where aid has not reached yet, people should let us know, we will try to reach them as soon as we can,’’ he said.

About 30,000 non-Muslim residents of northern Rakhine have also been displaced.

Before the latest exodus there were about 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, mostly living in Rakhine, where they are denied citizenshi­p and are regarded as interloper­s from Bangladesh by the Buddhist majority.

Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh and human rights organisati­ons say ethnic Rakhine vigilantes have aided the military in driving out the Muslim population.

Kamal Hussein, 22, from Alel Than Kyaw, south of Maungdaw town, said his village was destroyed in early September, after which he fled to Bangladesh.

Hussein said Rakhine mobs ‘‘poured petrol on the houses. Then, they came out and the military fired a grenade launcher at a house to set it alight’’.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said some empty buildings in the area had been burned by ethnic Rakhines.

‘‘We told the regional government to take action on that,’’ he said.

The damage caused by the fires, Reuters interviews and satellite pictures show, is by far the largest in Maungdaw, where the bulk of insurgent attacks took place.

Across the mostly coastal area, stretching more than 100km through thick bush and monsoonswo­llen streams, most villages have been burned.

Maungdaw town itself, until recently ethnically mixed with Rakhine Buddhists, Muslims and some Hindus, is now segregated, with the remaining Rohingya shuttered in their homes.

Some 450 houses in Rohingya parts of the town were burned down in the first week after the attacks, HRW said citing satellite photograph­s. –

 ?? PHOTO: REUTERS ?? An aerial view shows a burned Rohingya village near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine state, Myanmar.
PHOTO: REUTERS An aerial view shows a burned Rohingya village near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine state, Myanmar.

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