Dhaka, Oct 4: The Myanmar military executed several dozen Rohingya Muslims in Maung Nu village in Burma’s Rakhine State on August 27, 2017, Human Rights Watch said here on Wednesday. The Burmese soldiers also sexually assaulted several women while they were taking shelter in a building in the country, said the international human rights group in a report full of shocking details.
“Witnesses said that Burmese soldiers had beaten, sexually assaulted, stabbed, and shot villagers who had gathered for safety in a residential compound, two days after Rohingya militants attacked a local security outpost and military base,” HRW said in the report which carries testimonies of several Rohingya Muslims who are now sheltered in Bangladesh. HRW has not been able to verify estimates of the number of villagers killed.
It sought global sanctions against Myanmar.
“All the horrors of the Burmese army’s crimes against humanity against the Rohingya are evident in the mass killings in Maung Nu village,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “These atrocities demand more than words from concerned governments; they need concrete responses with consequences.”
On September 28, the United Nations Security Council met to discuss Burma publicly for the first time in eight years, but took no action.
Human Rights Watch has repeated “its call for the council and concerned countries to adopt an arms embargo and individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Burmese military commanders implicated in abuses.”
Human Rights Watch spoke with 14 survivors and witnesses from Maung Nu and surrounding villages in the Chin Tha Mar village tract of Buthidaung Township. The witnesses, now refugees in Bangladesh, said “that after the militant attacks they feared Burmese military retaliation. Several hundred gathered in a large residential compound in Maung Nu. Several Burmese soldiers entered the compound while others surrounded it. They took several dozen Rohingya men and boys into the courtyard and then shot or stabbed them to death. Others were killed as they tried to flee. The soldiers then loaded the bodies – some witnesses said a hundred or more – into military trucks and took them away.”
Over 500,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape mass atrocities by Burmese security forces. The crackdown followed after militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), on August 25, attacked a military camp and about 30 security force outposts throughout northern Rakhine State. The government reported that the militants killed 11 security force personnel during the attacks. The Burmese government reported that over 100 militants took part in that attack. Human Rights Watch could not verify the government’s figures.
Human Rights Watch received credible reports that soldiers subjected women to invasive body searches, non-consensual touching, and sexual assault at the compound in Maung Nu.
Khotiaz, a 28-year-old woman living in a Bangladesh camp, said that soldiers targeted women hiding on the property, including the large building where she hid: “They entered the room and stripped some of the women naked. They snatched everything I had. They touched [me] everywhere and tried to take off my clothes.”
HRW has demanded that the UN should send a fact-finding team to Myanmar to investigate these atrocities.
“Burmese military commanders cannot use the excuse of militant attacks to avoid justice and punishment,” Robertson said. “The UN fact-finding mission needs to investigate these atrocities, including commanders who ordered the attack or failed to punish those involved.”
