Rohingya villagers tell of Myanmar forces’ reprisal killings after insurgents’ deadly attack
Husbands, neighbours, grandsons – police and troops dragged them from their homes in Myo Thu Gyi, Rakhine state, and executed them. All were innocent civilians say witnesses to the killings, revenge for police deaths in a rebel raid
Early on the morning of October 10, last year, two military men stormed into the small wooden house of Noor Begun (not her real name), a fragile Rohingya woman, in Myo Thu Gyi, a village in Maungdaw township, in the north of Rakhine state, Myanmar.
“They beat up my husband in front of me and my seven children, we cried and pleaded with them, but they didn’t listen to us. They kept beating him and I passed out. When I regained consciousness, he wasn’t there,” she recounts to Post Magazine, speaking in the covered porch of her house and trying to contain her tears.
Her husband, Tayoub Ali, was dragged by the soldiers to a spot near the cemetery, about 100 metres from his house, and executed by the security forces with a shot to the head. His brother was also dragged from his house, but he had been beaten so badly he could barely walk, so he was shot midway to the execution ground. Fatima, a woman in her 20s, saw the killings unfold from her house.
“[The area] was full of soldiers and Border Guard Police; I couldn’t distinguish who was which because all of them were wearing dark green raincoats,” she says. “They were dragging that man, but he could not walk, so they just shot him right there, in front of me. They just left him there.”
The previous afternoon, Ali had told his family that they shouldn’t leave their house, let alone the village, as he foresaw trouble. In the early hours of October 9, insurgents had attacked three Border Guard Police facilities, including the force’s Maungdaw headquarters, about 4km from Myo Thu Gyi. The attackers killed nine policemen before making off with arms and ammunition. According to his widow, Ali, a farmer in his 50s, returned home immediately after learning of the attack to warn his family.
The new insurgent group that carried out the attacks was called Harakah al-Yaqin (“faith movement”) but, according to a recent statement, it has rebranded itself as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.