Arakan News Agency
A chronic tragedy of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, where the heads of children are cut and civilians burned alive, according to eyewitness accounts amid rumors that the Myanmar army and paramilitary forces were committing “genocide” or “systematic massacre” against the Muslim minority in Arakan state.
Reports indicate that some 200,000 refugees fled across the western border of Myanmar to Bangladesh in just one week following a crackdown on Rohingya, and observers believe the number of displaced is likely to increase, according to the Independent sources.
The fleeing civilians gave horrific accounts of violence and destruction by Myanmar soldiers and other armed groups.
“A group of Rohingya men were rounded up and detained in a bamboo hut that was then set on fire,” Abdul Rahman told the charity organization Fortify Rights.
Abdul Rahman said his brother was killed and burned by the Myanmar soldiers with the group, pointing out that he found other members of his family in the fields and their bodies contain signs of bullets while some suffered from wounds.
He said two of his nephew’s sons had been mutilated , the first was six years old and the other was nine, while his brother’s wife was shot.
Another man from the same village, Sultan Ahmed, 27, said some people had their heads cut off. “We were hiding in the house when armed civilians from a neighboring village came attacking cutting people’s heads. When we saw that, we fled from the back of the house.”
Survivors from other villages in the region also saw heads being cut off or throats cut off.
Satellite images from Human Rights Watch showed the destruction of 700 burning houses in one of village in Arakan.
“These recent images show the complete destruction of a Muslim villages and raise serious concerns that the level of destruction in the northern state of Arakan may be much worse than originally thought,” said Phil Robertson of the organization.
For its part, the Myanmar government has prevented the access of journalists and observers to affected areas.
There are about one million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, but they face years of ill-treatment by the government they do not recognize as citizens.
They also face widespread discrimination from the Buddhist majority, often referred to as Bengalis, in a hint of a common myth that they are illegal immigrants
