Rohingya Muslims tell of abuses by Myanmarese army as some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border
17 July 2017News Agencies
Rohingya Muslim women lined up to tell reporters of missing husbands, mothers
and sons on Saturday, as international media were escorted for the first time
to a village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state affected by violence since
October.
"My son is not a terrorist. He was arrested while doing farm work," said one
young mother, Sarbeda. She had bustled her way, an infant in her arms, through
several other women telling reporters their husbands had been arrested on
false grounds.
In November, Myanmar's army swept through villages where stateless Rohingya
Muslims live in the area of Maungdaw.
Some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to
the United Nations.
U.N. investigators who interviewed refugees said allegations of gang rape,
torture, arson and killings by security forces in the operation were likely
crimes against humanity.
Myanmar's government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most
of the claims, and is blocking entry to a U.N. fact-finding mission tasked
with looking into the allegations.
The government has also kept independent journalists and human rights monitors
out of the area for the past nine months.
This week, the Ministry of Information escorted more than a dozen foreign and
local journalists representing international media to the area under a guard
of officers from the paramilitary Border Guard Police.
The reporters spent nearly two days in Buthidaung, a township in Maungdaw
district of Rakhine state, where they were taken to sites of alleged militant
activity.
They were taken to Kyar Gaung Taung, one of three settlements requested by the
journalists. Officials cited time constraints for the limited access.
Reuters had previously gathered accounts from residents by phone and from
former residents who have fled to Bangladesh, of brutal counterinsurgency
tactics unleashed in Kyar Gaung Taung and several nearby villages in
mid-November.
When a group of journalists insisted on speaking to villagers away from
security forces, allegations of abuses by troops emerged almost immediately.
Kyar Gaung Taung resident Sarbeda, 30, had been able to visit her son, Nawsee
Mullah, 14, at a police camp where he is being held separately from adult
detainees. She was not sure if he had a lawyer, she said.
Reuters reported in March that 13 boys under the age of 18 were detained
during security operations. They were included in a list of 423 people charged
under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act, which outlaws joining or
aiding rebel groups.
At least 32 people from Kyar Gaung Taung village had been arrested and 10
killed, said a village schoolteacher, who asked not to be named for fear of
reprisals. He estimated that half the village's 6,000 residents had fled
during the clearance operation.
Another villager, Lalmuti, 23, pointed to a small pile of ashes where she said
she found her father's remains. She described how he was bound and thrown into
a house and burned to death.
Her mother was later arrested when authorities deemed her complaint about the
killings to be fabricated. She is serving a six-month jail sentence, Lalmuti
and two other villagers said.
Reporters were not given a chance to put these allegations to authorities, and
Reuters was unable to reach officials to confirm the details of the cases by
phone.
In a press briefing on Friday, Brigadier General Thura San Lwin, commander of
Myanmar's Border Guard Police, said some villagers had made what he said were
erroneous claims and were subsequently charged and jailed for lying to the
authorities.
"The media said we torched houses and that there were rape cases -- they give
wrong information," Thura San Lwin told reporters.
He also disputed the U.N.'s estimates for the number of people who fled,
claiming local records showed that only 22,000 people were missing in the
conflict.
Myanmar officials say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint
Swe - a former lieutenant general in the army - and a commission headed for
former U.N. chief Kofi Annan - which is not mandated to investigate human
rights abuses - are the appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State.
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