Rohingya Muslims massacred 99 Hindu men, women, children in August: Report
Amnesty International has said that it had gathered evidence that a Muslim Rohingya group killed scores of Hindus in August last year. The report says that as many as 99 Hindus near a village called Cha Maung Seik were killed in a coordinated attack.
Based on dozens of interviews conducted there and across the border in Bangladesh, as well as photographic evidence analyzed by forensic pathologists, the organization revealed how Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks.
"Our
latest
investigation
on
the
ground
sheds
much-needed
light
on
the
largely
under-reported
human
rights
abuses
by
ARSA
during
northern
Rakhine
State's
unspeakably
dark
recent
history," said
Tirana
Hassan,
Crisis
Response
Director
at
Amnesty
International.
The
report
post
on
Amnesty's
website
states,
"at
around
8am
on
25
August
2017,
ARSA
attacked
the
Hindu
community
in
the
village
of
Ah
Nauk
Kha
Maung
Seik,
in
a
cluster
of
villages
known
as
Kha
Maung
Seik
in
northern
Maungdaw
Township.
At the time of the attack, the Hindu villagers lived in close proximity to Rohingya villagers, who are predominantly Muslim. Rakhine villagers, who are predominantly Buddhist, also lived in the same area."
Armed men dressed in black and local Rohingya villagers in plain clothes rounded up dozens of Hindu women, men and children. They robbed, bound, and blindfolded them before marching them to the outskirts of the village, where they separated the men from the women and young children. A few hours later, the ARSA fighters killed 53 of the Hindus, execution-style, starting with the men.
Eight Hindu women and eight of their children were abducted and spared, after ARSA fighters forced the women to agree to "convert" to Islam. The survivors were forced to flee with the fighters to Bangladesh several days later, before being repatriated to Myanmar in October 2017 with the support of the Bangladeshi and Myanmar authorities, the report further stated.
Bina Bala, a 22-year-old woman who survived the massacre, told Amnesty International, "[The men] held knives and long iron rods. They tied our hands behind our backs and blindfolded us. I asked what they were doing. One of them replied, 'You and Rakhine are the same, you have a different religion, you can't live here. He spoke the [Rohingya] language. They asked what belongings we had, then they beat us. Eventually I gave them my gold and money."
You can read the full report here: