Witnesses Provide New Details of Killings of Hindus in Myanmarâs Rakhine
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Eight Hindu women and their children, who were abducted by Muslim militants and taken to a refugee camp in Bangladesh, have returned to Myanmar, Oct. 5, 2017.
Photo courtesy of Information Committee of Myanmar's State Counselor's Office
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Local Hindus and the Myanmar government in late September said that ARSA militants detained nearly 100 people from several Hindu villages in the Kha Maung Seik village tract the same day, killed most of them, and dumped their corpses in mass graves.
The militants also forced some of the young Hindu women to convert to Islam and took them to a Muslim refugee camp in neighboring Bangladesh.
Myanmar security forces found the mass graves on Sept. 24 and 25. Fifty-two Hindus were killed, and 192 others are still missing.
The eight Hindu women who witnessed the killings of residents of Yebaw Kya village returned to Myanmar with a police escort following a Myanmar government demand and the countryâs de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyiâs instruction to bring them back, said a statement issued by the State Counselorâs Office.
Myanmarâs official account of the incident could not be independently confirmed, and the government has not allowed outside observers or media close, unfettered access to the conflict zone.
The eight women, who range in age from 15 to 25, told authorities that a group of about 500 Muslims militants led by a foreigner dressed in black and a local named Noru Lauk from Khamaungseik village entered their homes at about 8 a.m. on Aug. 25. They took their belongings, including their jewelry and mobile phones.
According to the women, the militants said, âThis is not your village. It is our territory. We are the sole owners of this land. You are all the same as the Myanmar Armed Forces and police members. We will murder Buddhists and all of you who worship the statues made of bricks and stones.â
The militants then divided the villagers into two groups according to gender, tied their hands, and took them to Bawtala village, the women said, according to the governmentâs statement.
They slashed the throats of the men, sliced up their bodies, and threw them in nearby pits, the women said.
The ARSA attack and subsequent crackdown by the Myanmar military prompted about 30,000 Hindus and other non-Muslims living in northern Rakhine to flee south to Mrauk U, Sittwe, Kyauktaw, and Minbya, while more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh, the statement said.
Converted to Islam
The Hindu women also said that the lives of eight girls and women were spared because the militants considered them beautiful and decided to convert them to Islam.
In the presence of the eight young women who were spared, ARSA militants killed Hindus from Yebaw Kya village, they said. A group of eight Hindu females and their children from the village were then taken to a cow ranch near Bawtalar village where they were killed.
A three-year-old boy named Phawlar, who was included in the group, saw the militants slash his fatherâs throat before he was killed, they said. Local Muslims, whose names they recalled, guarded some other Hindu girls and children, while others left to set fire to police camps.
After some of the militants returned, they took the eight Hindu women and young children to a house in Bawtalar village and forced them to eat rice and meat, the latter of which their religion prohibits them from consuming, the women said.
The militants also instructed them about the lifestyle and behavior of Muslim women before taking them to the Bangladesh border on Aug. 27, where they passed through cut barbed wire and spent the night on a hill so they would not be detected by Bangladeshi border guards.
Early on Aug. 28, the group crossed the border into Bangladesh and were taken by car to Kutuparlaung refugee camp where they were housed with Muslims and forced to wear burqas, the women said....
Witnesses Provide New Details of Killings of Hindus in Myanmarâs Rakhine
murder, rape and enslavement of hindus by muslims DON'T COUNT----ask
Coyote. The fact that hindus do not count was a lesson I learned circa
1970------when I asked Pakistanis and Muslim Indians about the war that resulted
in the splitting of India in 1948. I was candid about the fact that I am a jew-----
so the HINDU "IDOLS" were a big issue ---ostensibly for my benefit