Please note: this diary contains graphic first-hand accounts of genocidal violence.
The number of Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing state-sponsored violence in Burma has now exceeded 400,000, mostly women and children. Some correspondents put the number closer to half a million, with the ethnic cleansing still ongoing:
It’s a mass exodus, with no end in sight.
They can barely walk or speak, desperate and starving. Close to half-a-million Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh in the past three weeks, escaping violent attacks carried out by Myanmar troops and Buddhist vigilantes.
Hundreds of people are making their way into Bangladesh right now. And it’s through terrible conditions of mud and rain and immense flooding.
…….
ANUARA KHATUN, Rohingya Refugee (through interpreter): They took us out of our home and lined us up at a school and set our houses on fire. They tortured us. That’s why we’re here.
They didn’t care whether they were shooting cows or people. They just kept shooting. They slaughtered old people. They tortured us, and that’s why we left. They stormed in and burned our homes. The military surrounded us and killed any young men they could find. They killed four to five people in front of me in Lambagouna.
……
WOMAN (through interpreter): The military took a child from me and killed her in front of my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. They beat me with a gun and still feel pain all over my body. They take women into the jungle to rape and murder them. I heard them screaming, which was horrible.
They tie the men to a chair, pour gasoline over their head, and burn them alive. The army calls the children over to give them biscuits. Then they kill them and dump their bodies in the jungle.
Recent reports note that thousands of Rohingyas in remote villages in Rakhine state in Burma are living in fear of attacks from neighboring groups and want to flee to areas considered safer, but the Burmese government is forbidding their passage.
De facto Burmese leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi has failed to condemn the atrocities being committed by the Burmese army. Her failure to acknowledge the violence is contributing to a growing international condemnation of her unwillingness to assert her authority regarding the ethnic cleansing.
The UN is scaling up its efforts to aid the refugees, noting the generosity of local Bangladeshis in helping the Rohingya:
With an estimated 415,000 refugees having arrived since late August the humanitarian challenges have become immense, according to UNHCR, which noted the “remarkable generosity” by many individual Bangladeshis, with people trucking food and clothes to the refugees in the camps and others camping along the single main road.
Britain has suspended its military training program in Burma due to the violence.
Human Rights Watch has posted satellite imagery revealing the destruction of hundreds of Rohingya villages, such as the village depicted here, Yae Twin Kyun [Satellite imagery © 2017 DigitalGlobe]
“These images provide shocking evidence of massive destruction in an apparent attempt by Burmese security forces to prevent the Rohingya from returning to their villages,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “World leaders meeting at the UN should act to end this mounting crisis and show Burma’s military leaders they will pay a price for such atrocities.”
New maps of the damage show near-total destruction of the 214 villages seen in satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch, with more than 90 percent of the structures in each village damaged. The images corroborate accounts gathered by Human Right Watch from refugees who have described arson, killing, and looting by the Burmese military, police, and ethnic Rakhine mobs.
[Brief background in two earlier diaries]