Barbaric!

Myanmar army `beheading children and burning people alive`: Crackdown on Rohingyas continues: 400 killed: 90,000 enter BD so far

Rohingya refugees carry an old woman from Rakhine state in Myanmar along a path near Teknaf in Bangladesh.
Rohingya refugees carry an old woman from Rakhine state in Myanmar along a path near Teknaf in Bangladesh.
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Staff Reporter :
Fears of mass atrocities against Rohingya civilians in Myanmar were growing after eyewitness accounts emerged of children being beheaded and people burned alive.
The reports followed a week of violence and “inflammatory” government statements that led the UK’s ambassador to the UN to urge Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of Myanmar’s government, to “set the right tone, according to international news portals and agencies on Monday.
Soldiers reportedly arrested a large group of Rohingya men, marched them into a nearby bamboo hut, and
set it on fire, burning them to death.
“My brother was killed – Myanmar Army men burned him with the group,” Fortify Rights quoted 41-year-old Abdul Rahman of Chut Pyin as saying.
“We found my other family members in the fields. They had marks on their bodies from bullets and some had cuts. My two nephews, their heads were off. One was six years old and the other was nine years old. My sister-in-law was shot with a gun.”
Nearly 90,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since violence erupted in Myanmar in August, pressuring scarce resources of aid agencies and communities already helping hundreds of thousands of refugees from previous spasms of violence in Myanmar.
The violence in Myanmar was set off by a coordinated attack on Aug 25 on dozens of police posts and an army base by Rohingya insurgents.
The ensuing clashes and a major military counter-offensive have killed at least 400 people.
They were still entering Bangladesh though several points including Amtoli border, Tumburu Border, Anjuman Para, Hwaikong Ghat.
Meanwhile, a Rohingya woman’s body was recovered from the Naf river in Teknaf upazila of Cox’s Bazar on Monday morning, according to our district correspondent.
With this, a total of 54 Rohingyas so far were killed in recent boat capsizes when the minority community people fleeing from violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State tried to enter Bangladesh territory through the Naf river.
Members of Coast Guard arrested over 2000 Rohingyas conducting a drive in some houses at St Martin’s Island.
Suu Kyi, also the Nobel Peace Laureate, has faced international condemnation for failing to address ongoing rights abuses of the Muslim minority and for online statements by her “information committee” that have been accused of inflaming public sentiment against the wider Rohingya population and aid workers in the country.
“Aung San Suu Kyi hits a new low with this potentially deadly inflammatory propaganda. Leadership failure,” Phelim Kine, a deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.
The August 25 attacks came just hours after a commission appointed by Aung San Suu Kyi and led by Kofi Annan delivered its recommendations on how to end long-running ethno-religious tensions in Rakhine. The assaults by Arsa were widely condemned by the UK and the international community.
On Friday, Bangkok-based rights group Fortify Rights published harrowing eye-witness accounts from Rohingya who escaped the village of Chut Pyin in Rathedaung township.
They claimed around 200 Rohingya men, women and children had been killed by Myanmar’s security forces and local ethnic-Rakhine villagers.
The Myanmar military reported on Friday that some 400 people – around 370 Rohingya insurgents, 13 security forces, two government officials and 14 civilians had died in the violence since August 25.
Rycroft said the members had condemned the violence and called on all parties, including Suu Kyi, to de-escalate the situation in Rakhine.
“We look to her to set the right tone and to find the compromises and the de-escalation necessary in order to resolve the conflict for the good of all the people in Burma,” Rycroft said.
A spokesman for the government could not be reached yesterday, but previously told The Telegraph that the information committee represented the views of the entire government – not just those of Suu Kyi.
He also said that the government was aware of the need to protect “innocent Muslims” while tackling Arsa.
Mark Farmaner, director of London-based NGO Burma Campaign UK, welcomed the Security Council discussion but called on the British government to go further in its objections to the current situation in Rakhine.
“Supporting Aung San Suu Kyi and reforms in Myanmar doesn’t mean the British government has to stand by and do nothing as hundreds of Rohingya are slaughtered by the military,” he said.

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