When army helicopters fired on Rahim’s village in northwest Myanmar one day last November, the Rohingya schoolteacher told his pregnant wife to take their three young daughters and leave. He stayed behind with his 72-year-old mother.
At dawn the next morning soldiers encircled and then entered the village. Rahim and his mother crept into a rice field. Crouching, Rahim said they saw the soldiers set fire to homes and shoot fleeing villagers.
“I thought we were going to die that day,” said Rahim, who like many Rohingya identifies by a single name. “We kept hearing gunshots. I saw several people shot dead.”
His account, told in a Bangladesh refugee camp where thousands of Rohingya are sheltering, was corroborated by four people from his village.
The attack on Rahim’s village, Dar Gyi Zar, on November 12-13, claimed dozens of lives, Rohingya elders said. The killings marked the start of a two-week military onslaught across about 10 Rohingya villages in northwest Rakhine State, a Reuters reconstruction of events has found.
Rohingya elders estimate some 600 people were killed. A United Nations report from February said the likely toll was hundreds. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed, Human Rights Watch satellite imagery shows. Countless women were raped, eyewitnesses and aid workers said.
Doctors in Bangladesh told Reuters they treated women who had been raped.
It was the latest round of ethnic bloodletting in Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country where the roughly one million Muslim Rohingya are marginalized, often living in camps, denied access to healthcare and education and uprooted and killed in pogroms.
Myanmar’s march to democracy, beginning in 2011, uncorked long-suppressed ethnic and religious tensions between Rakhine’s Buddhists and the Rohingya. Clashes between the two communities in 2012 killed at least 192 people and displaced 140,000, mostly Rohingya.
This latest eruption of violence drove some 75,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, the United Nations said. Myanmar’s government has conceded some soldiers may have committed crimes but has rejected charges of “ethnic cleansing.” It has promised to prosecute any officers where there is evidence of wrongdoing.
The military assault involving a little under 2,000 soldiers has presented Aung San Suu Kyi with the first major crisis since her party won elections in late 2015. Many hoped Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, would bring a new era of tolerance after five decades of military rule.
While generals remain in control of a significant part of the government, she now faces accusations of failing to oppose human rights abuses.
Suu Kyi’s National Security Adviser Thaung Tun said some individuals may have committed abuses “in the heat of the confrontation.” But he stressed the government did not approve of such conduct. Suu Kyi did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about events in Rakhine.
The army began its “clearance operation” in Rakhine after Rohingya militants attacked border posts there on Oct. 9. For a month, it tried to pressure villagers to hand over the rebels, without success. That approach changed on Nov. 12-13 in Dar Gyi Zar and the neighboring village Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, marking a sharp escalation of the military operation.
This article pieces together how events unfolded, drawing on interviews with Rohingya refugees, diplomats, aid workers and Myanmar government officials. Reuters also gained rare access to Myanmar security officials and spoke with a Rohingya militant leader.
The reconstruction of the military operation contains previously unreported details about army negotiations with villagers over the insurgents, a shift in military strategy and the army units involved. Reuters also learned new details about investigations into alleged atrocities that are being conducted by Myanmar’s army and by the home affairs ministry.
The violence was brutal. A 16-year-old girl assaulted in the village of Kyar Gaung Taung, said two soldiers raped her. Speaking in a Bangladesh refugee camp, she said she still suffers anxiety and trauma after the attack.
“I am angry with myself for being Rohingya,” said the teen, whose name Reuters is withholding. “If I had been Bangladeshi or American, I would never have been raped. But they did it to me because I was born Rohingya.”
The army has denied there were widespread abuses and said it was carrying out a legitimate counterinsurgency operation. The army and the ministry of home affairs did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about events in Rakhine.
“It is possible that individual security officers or individual policemen may have reacted in an excessive manner,” Thaung Tun, the security adviser, said. “But what we want to make clear is that it’s not the policy of the government to condone these excesses.”
After years of persecution, some Rohingya have begun to fight back. A militant group called Harakah al-Yaqin, or “Faith Movement”, was formed by Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia after the 2012 violence, according to the International Crisis Group.
Its leader, Ata Ullah, said hundreds of young Rohingya men have joined the ranks of the group, which now wants to be known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Myanmar’s government estimates it has about 400 fighters.
“In 2012, they killed us and we understood at that time, they would not give us our rights,” said Ata Ullah, speaking by video link from an undisclosed location in Myanmar.
Before dawn on Oct. 9, Rohingya militants staged attacks on border police. The army set about trying to capture the rebels. For a month, it attempted to pressure villagers to give up the insurgents, according to Rohingya elders and villagers.
The village of Kyet Yoe Pyin, located on the main road north to Bangladesh in northwest Rakhine, was one of the first to draw the army’s attention on Oct. 13, according to a military intelligence source.
Insurgents had used logs to erect roadblocks near the settlement of 1,300 houses, blocking the way for military vehicles, residents and the military intelligence source said.
In retaliation, about 400 soldiers burned down a part of Kyet Yoe Pyin and shot several people, according to four villagers. Officials have blamed insurgents and villagers themselves for the burning of homes.
After a few days of trying unsuccessfully to capture the insurgents, the soldiers asked village elders to negotiate. The meeting took place in western Kyet Yoe Pyin. About 300 soldiers crowded the road while four commanders led the talks with five Rohingya men, according to a village elder who attended the meeting.
The talks, confirmed by the military intelligence source, were an example of the army’s attempts in those early weeks to pressure the villagers to help identify the rebels.
“Their first question was: ‘Who cut the trees?’ We told them we didn’t know,” the village elder recounted. “They told us: ‘We will give you a chance: You can either give us the names of the insurgents, or we will kill you’.”
The officers visited Kyet Yoe Pyin on several further occasions, asking about insurgents and taking money in exchange for leaving the remaining houses untouched, the villagers said. A variation of this scene was repeated in other villages in the weeks leading up to Nov. 12, residents said.
TWO WEEKS
On November 12, this low-grade violence escalated abruptly when the army clashed with rebels north of two villages in northwestern Rakhine – Rahim’s village Dar Gyi Zar, a settlement of more than 400 houses, and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, with some 600 houses.
“I am angry with myself for being Rohingya. If I had been Bangladeshi or American, I would never have been raped. But they did it to me because I was Rohingya,” said a 16-year-old girl from the Myanmar village of Kyar Gaung Taung
Muhammad Ismail, another Rohingya teacher from Dar Gyi Zar, said the army spotted insurgents a few kilometers to the north of his village at around 4 am After a two-hour shootout, the militants fled towards neighboring Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, where fighting resumed in the afternoon. The area is densely forested, and residents could not say how many militants there were.
The leader of the insurgents, Ata Ullah, said he and his men found themselves surrounded. “We had to fight,” he told Reuters. He did not say how many insurgents were involved in the clash.
During a day-long battle, some villagers joined the insurgents, fighting the security forces with knives and sticks, according to Ata Ullah and the military. A senior officer was killed and the army brought in two helicopters mounted with guns as back-up, according to official accounts, which described the incident as an ambush by the insurgents.
The helicopters swooped in around 4 pm, hovering low over the road connecting Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, according to eyewitnesses. The villagers dispersed in panic as one of the helicopters sprayed the insurgents with bullets. The other helicopter fired indiscriminately on those fleeing, five eyewitnesses said. The military intelligence source confirmed that the helicopters dispersed the crowd but denied they shot at civilians.
It marked the start of an offensive across a section of northwest Rakhine that lasted about two weeks, according to villagers, aid workers and human rights monitors and a review of satellite imagery from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Security and administrative officials confirmed the scope of the sweep but said they were not aware of abuses.
Whole communities fled north towards larger villages and then west to Bangladesh, pursued by the army. Women who were raped said the soldiers shouted “go to Bangladesh.”
Three doctors from small clinics near refugee camps in Bangladesh have described treating some three dozen cases of Rohingya women whom they say were raped.
“I treated one woman. She was so badly raped she had lost sensation in her lower limbs,” said John Sarkar, 40, a Bangladeshi doctor who has worked with Rohingya refugees for eight years.
National Security Adviser Thaung Tun said a commission, set up by Suu Kyi in December and chaired by vice president Myint Swe, a former head of military intelligence, needed time to investigate.
“We find it really difficult to believe that the Myanmar military would use (sexual violence) as a tool, sex slaves or rape as a weapon. In Myanmar this is repulsive, it’s not acceptable,” he said.
The Suu Kyi-appointed investigation is one of several. The army is conducting an internal probe and the ministry of home affairs, which is controlled by the army, is also carrying out an inquiry. Separately, the United Nations has ordered a fact-finding mission to examine allegations of human rights abuses.
A senior government source and a senior military source said the commander of the army division that led the operation, Major General Khin Maung Soe, had been questioned by investigators in the army probe. The army did not respond to Reuters questions about Khin Maung Soe’s role and Reuters was unable to contact him directly.
The ministry of home affairs, meanwhile, is examining 21 cases, including five suspected murders, six rapes, two cases of looting and one case of arson and seven unexplained deaths, according to police colonel She Thaung. Investigators were seeking the army’s cooperation to interrogate soldiers.
LEFT BEHIND
When the sun went down on the villages of Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son on Nov. 12, the fighting stopped. “The night was tense. Some people sneaked out to neighboring villages. Others were preparing to move first thing in the morning,” said Muhammad Ismail, the Rohingya teacher who witnessed fighting.
But at dawn the next day, soldiers encircled the two villages and set the houses on fire, five eyewitnesses said. Those who could, fled. But the elderly and the infirm stayed. From the rice field where he hid, Rahim said he saw soldiers shooting indiscriminately.
Police reports from the period confirm that security forces focused their attention on about 10 villages – Dar Gyi Zar, Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son and other settlements nearby. They detained nearly 400 people between Nov. 12 and 30, according to a senior administrator in the state capital of Sittwe who received the daily dispatches.
Suu Kyi’s defenders, including some Western diplomats, say she is hamstrung by a military-drafted constitution that left the army in control of key security ministries and much of the apparatus of the state.
The administrator, who briefed Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the reports described a lawful counterinsurgency operation.
One of the villages that bore the brunt of the post-November 12 crackdown was Kyar Gaung Taung, a settlement of about 300 houses in northwest Rakhine.
Residents say that for five days starting around Nov. 16, security forces swooped in, searching for men. As in neighboring villages, they arrested or killed most working-age men, and gathered the women in groups, carrying out invasive body searches.
Reuters talked to 17 people from Kyar Gaung Taung from November through March by telephone and in person in Bangladeshi camps, including five rape victims, three close relatives of those raped and several village elders. They corroborated one another’s accounts.
Shamshida, a 30-year-old mother of six, was ordered to come out of her house.
“One of the soldiers put a machete to my chest and bit me on the back. Then, they started picking women from the group gathered on the road. I was selected and pulled inside the house. I knelt down thinking that may help and the last thing I remember was one of the soldiers kicking me in the head,” said Shamshida, who identifies with a single name.
When her husband and her sister found her several hours later, she was stripped naked, unconscious, covered in bruises and bleeding from her mouth and her vagina.
They carried her to the neighboring village of U Shey Kya several hundred meters away, where she regained consciousness, was showered and taken care of by a village doctor. After eight days, she returned to her village, where there were no men left and many houses were burned down.
Doctors in Bangladesh said the Rohingya women they treated had torn vaginal tissue and scars inside their mouths from having guns inserted. In some cases, the women couldn’t walk and had to be carried by relatives to the clinics. Many were covered in bruises and bite marks.
Sarkar, the Bangladeshi doctor, and others administered abortion-inducing kits, painkillers and antibiotics. In cases where the kits didn’t work, they referred the women to regional hospitals for abortions.
As thousands of Rohingya were fleeing across the river border to Bangladesh, Suu Kyi was not in the country. In early December she went to Singapore, attending meetings and a ceremony to have a purple orchid named after her in the city-state’s botanic gardens.
Suu Kyi’s defenders, including some Western diplomats, say she is hamstrung by a military-drafted constitution that left the army in control of key security ministries and much of the apparatus of the state. Suu Kyi may be playing a long game, these diplomats said – back the military for now and coax the generals into accepting a rewriting of the constitution to reduce their power.
During her trip, Suu Kyi gave an interview to state broadcaster Channel News Asia, in which she accused the international community of “always drumming up cause for bigger fires of resentment,” adding it didn’t help “if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation.”
She appealed for understanding of her nation’s ethnic complexities, and said the world should not forget that the military operation was launched in response to the Rohingya insurgents’ attacks on border posts.
Rahim, the village schoolteacher, and his family were among thousands of Rohingya who made the two kilometer river crossing to Bangladesh. On April 8, in a Bangladesh refugee camp, Rahim’s wife Rasheda gave birth to their first boy, Futu, or “little son.” Rahim doesn’t know whether Futu will ever see his homeland.
(Reuters)
Asia Times downplayed the jihadi attack 9th October (confirmed by International Crisis Group (ICG)) as if it was a "road side accident" when in fact the terrorists raided Myanmar’s armory and subsequently a dozen of Myanmar security forces were killed and all the arms and ammunition were looted. Myanmar sees this jihadi attack as its 9/11. ICG identifies that the islamic terrorists were supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan through Bangladesh. Subsequently, the terrorists are now playing the victim hood card and Muslims all over the world are joining in the chorus of anti Buddhist and anti Myanmar demonstrations producing fake news as documented by BBC and Daily Star (Bangladesh).
In the 19th century the British Empire organised the mass migration of Bengali Muslims to Burma to work plantations in the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine State. The purpose of the migration was to create an artificial ruling class that would depend on the protection of the British Empire. The result was more than a century of tension with the indigenous Buddhist inhabitants and the Muslim settlers, a tension that has led to the ethnic cleansing of today, whereby Takfiri fanatics, financed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are committing genocide against local Buddhist peasants with the full complicity of UN, ‘human rights’ organizations and noble laureates, NGOs (George Soros) and the mass media as part of a US geostrategic initiative to "kossovise" the Rakhine State by separating it from Myanmar, thereby securing a foothold for Western neo-colonial interests in the highly strategic Bay of Bengal. The so-called ‘Rohingya crisis’ attests to a new phase in imperialist policy; namely, the ruthless weaponization of the refugee….
The real victim here are the small indigenous Rakhine ethnic people from Myanmar (of about 3 million) who remain voiceless and unknown but who have been clinging to their Buddhist religion for over 2,500 years (the only people on earth who can claim that to be Buddhists since the time of Buddha) against the continuous onslaught of jihadi terror for centuries, while other countries in south east Asia like present day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.. have succumbed to islamization.
ICG has no credibility in Burma whatsoever. Thein Maung gives one lie after another. The Burma Army and the Burma Police have committed genocide against the Rohingya, who are legitimate citizens of the country. They have also committed genocide in the past against other ethnic nationality groups, including the Shan, Karenni and Karen. They are conducting a Civil War of colonial aggression against still other ethnic groups in the North and Northeast. Burma deserves its own Nuremberg Trial. There are literally thousands of Burma Army and Police rapists. The regime murderers and rapists should all be imprisoned. The people of the country should settle for nothing less than real freedom and democracy and real justice, not the Sit-tut’s "disciplined dictatorship."
Roland Watson is providing cover for islamic terrorism in Myanmar by using the typical islamic "play book" tactics – "don’t like the truth, therefore smear the messenger". Typical of Stage 2 jihad – When there are enough Muslims and resources to defend the Islamic community, Muslims are called to engage in defensive Jihad and the tactic used are portraying Muslims as victims, forging alliances (with future enemies as necessary) and terrorism. In defensive Jihad, any critical expression that portrays Islam in negative light must be suppressed by all means necessary. “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam” Koran 5:33.
How strange is that some Christians are supporting islamic Bengali terrorists in Myanmar while the Christians are being beheaded and killed by islamic terrorists all over the world. Following Palm Sunday bombing of churches by islamic terrorists that killed 45 Christians, the Pope had to make a special visit to Cairo; which shows how helpless the Christians are against islamic terrorists. Now the question every one of us must be asking is, why do Muslims kill Christians? Why do Muslims kill Muslims? pretty much everywhere in the world. None of the Buddhists we know did/ does / wants to kill Muslims, at least not because of any religious reasons.
Abharamic religions use deceit by trying to misdirect one’s misfortune and anger. As in the case of Myanmar, a axis of evil has developed among some Christians, jihadists, NGOs (George Soros) and western imperialist governments bent on regime change with the obvious target being the Myanmar Army (Tamadaw). They even targeted U Wirathu, a Buddhist monk, for speaking the truth about the teachings of Islam, as they want the natives to remain naïve about their evil intent. After the election of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK), these axis of evil were besides with joy which eventually turn into sour grapes as DASSK was found to be "tough nut to crack". Which leads "the axis of evil" to lump DASSK together with Tamadaw as the "Nazi", without realizing the Nazis were Christians who collaborated with muslims to annihilate the jews. The greatest irony is that throughout the history, Christians and Muslims have used their religion to be constantly at war and persecuted indigenous peoples throughout the world. ON THE OTHER HAND, BUDDHISTS HAVE NEVER GONE TO WAR BECAUSE OF BUDDHISM. If you are a humanist and love peace, would you not identify yourself as a Buddhist. Maybe it is time for a change …
Meanwhile, the Reuters reporter of Asia Times based in muslim Bangladesh should be reporting on the ethnic cleansing in that country than the propaganda being dished out by islamic terrorists and their collaborators. Bangladesh is included in a list released by White House of 78 terrorist attacks "executed or inspired" by the Islamic State. The list does not include the thousands of native Buddhists, Hindus and Christians killed by islamic terrorists. The minority population of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians in Bangladesh have been decimated and their property confiscated with connivance from local authorities and the government. The case is specially disheartening for Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where an area of 13,295 square kilometers, is now part of Bangladesh, belonged in 1947 to mostly indigenous Buddhists. CHT is now heavily militarized and outsiders are not allowed in by Bangladesh government and Buddhists and other minorities are in an apartheid conditions. The Bengali Muslims have since infiltrated the area (killed, raped and burnt the villages with impunity) with the help of the Bangladesh security forces. http://www.angelfire.com/ab/jumma/ and http://kapaeeng.org/
In "moderate" Bangladesh, even minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community have been targeted and their mosques bombed. Anti jihadist secular bloggers have been slaughtered in broad daylight. Western and Japanese diplomats/ visitors / journalists have been murdered without cause. Even, the current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, was almost killed in a grenade attack by jihadist in 2004. The sadder part is that practically none of the terrorist killers and murderers have been brought to justice.
The population of minorities (Hindus, Buddhists and Christians) in Bangladesh has decreased from over 35% in 1950 to less than 10%; while the muslim population in Myanmar has increased at an astounding rate (70%); which reinforces the fact that the muslims are playing the victim hood card. The same victim hood card is being played globally, as non-muslims in muslim countries are being annihilated while muslim population has increased in non-muslim countries and are aggressively imposing the islamic sharia law.
Reposting in two parts: Part 1
Meanwhile, the Reuters reporter based in muslim Bangladesh should be reporting on the ethnic cleansing in that country than the propaganda being dished out by islamic terrorists and their collaborators. Bangladesh is included in a list released by White House of 78 terrorist attacks "executed or inspired" by the Islamic State. The list does not include the thousands of native Buddhists, Hindus and Christians killed by islamic terrorists. The minority population of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians in Bangladesh have been decimated and their property confiscated with connivance from local authorities and the government. The case is specially disheartening for Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where an area of 13,295 square kilometers, is now part of Bangladesh, belonged in 1947 to mostly indigenous Buddhists. CHT is now heavily militarized and outsiders are not allowed in by Bangladesh government and Buddhists and other minorities are in an apartheid conditions. The Bengali Muslims have since infiltrated the area (killed, raped and burnt the villages with impunity) with the help of the Bangladesh security forces. http://www.angelfire.com/ab/jumma/ and http://kapaeeng.org/
In "moderate" Bangladesh, even minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community have been targeted and their mosques bombed. Anti jihadist secular bloggers have been slaughtered in broad daylight. Western and Japanese diplomats/ visitors / journalists have been murdered without cause. Even, the current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, was almost killed in a grenade attack by jihadist in 2004. The sadder part is that practically none of the terrorist killers and murderers have been brought to justice.
The population of minorities (Hindus, Buddhists and Christians) in Bangladesh has decreased from over 35% in 1950 to less than 10%; while the muslim population in Myanmar has increased at an astounding rate (70%); which reinforces the fact that the muslims are playing the victim hood card. The same victim hood card is being played globally, as non-muslims in muslim countries are being annihilated while muslim population has increased in non-muslim countries and are aggressively imposing islamic sharia law.
Reposting in two parts: Part 2
Roland Watson is providing cover for islamic terrorism in Myanmar by using the typical islamic "play book" tactics – "don’t like the truth, therefore smear the messenger". Typical of Stage 2 jihad – When there are enough Muslims and resources to defend the Islamic community, Muslims are called to engage in defensive Jihad and the tactic used are portraying Muslims as victims, forging alliances (with future enemies as necessary) and terrorism. In defensive Jihad, any critical expression that portrays Islam in negative light must be suppressed by all means necessary. “Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam” Koran 5:33.
[Even Bertil Lintner acknowledges that at least 80% of the so-called "Rohingyas" nowadays are illegal immigrants or new settlers coming from Bangladesh because of natural catastrophes, hunger and other reasons. Bertil Lintner also stated that the so-called Rohingya issue cannot be compared with the Karen, the Kachin, the Shan and ethnic problems in Burma basically because the "Rohingyas" do not fall under the same category of ethnic minorities.]
How strange is that some Christians are supporting islamic Bengali terrorists in Myanmar while the Christians are being beheaded and killed by islamic terrorists all over the world. Following Palm Sunday bombing of churches by islamic terrorists that killed 45 Christians, the Pope had to make a special visit to Cairo; which shows how helpless the Christians are against islamic terrorists. Now the question every one of us must be asking is, why do Muslims kill Christians? Why do Muslims kill Muslims? pretty much everywhere in the world. None of the Buddhists we know did/ does / wants to kill Muslims, at least not because of any religious reasons.
Abharamic religions use deceit by trying to misdirect one’s misfortune and anger. As in the case of Myanmar, a axis of evil has developed among some Christians, jihadists, NGOs (George Soros) and western imperialist governments bent on regime change with the obvious target being the Myanmar Army (Tamadaw). They even targeted U Wirathu, a Buddhist monk, for speaking the truth about the teachings of Islam, as they want the natives to remain naïve about their evil intent. After the election of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK), these axis of evil were besides with joy which eventually turn into sour grapes as DASSK was found to be "tough nut to crack". Which leads "the axis of evil" to lump DASSK together with Tamadaw as the "Nazi", without realizing the Nazis were Christians who collaborated with muslims to annihilate the jews. The greatest irony is that throughout the history, Christians and Muslims have used their religion to be constantly at war and persecuted indigenous peoples throughout the world. ON THE OTHER HAND, BUDDHISTS HAVE NEVER GONE TO WAR BECAUSE OF BUDDHISM. If you are a humanist and love peace, would you not identify yourself as a Buddhist. Maybe it is time for a change …