Killings, rapes, burnings: Rohingya describe their terror after fleeing Myanmar

The Myanmar soldiers came in the morning, the young mother said. They set fire to the concrete-and-thatch homes, forcing the villagers to cluster together. When some of her neighbours tried to escape into the fields, they were shot. After that, she said, most people stopped running away.

“They drove us out of our houses, men and women in separate lines, ordering us to keep our hands folded on the back of our heads,” said 20-year-old Mohsena Begum, her voice choking as she described what happened to the little village of Caira Fara, which had long been home to hundreds of members of Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community.

She said that when about 50 people had been gathered together, the soldiers, along with a group of local men, pulled four village leaders from the crowd and slit their throats.

Muslims in an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, the Rohingya have long faced persecution in Myanmar, where most are denied citizenship. The latest outbreak of violence was triggered by October attacks on guard posts near the Bangladesh border that killed nine police officers. While the attackers’ identities and motives are unclear, the government launched a massive counter-insurgency sweep through Rohingya areas in western Rakhine state. Most Rohingya live in Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh.

The government, which has implied the attacks were carried out by Rohingya sympathisers, has acknowledged using helicopter gunships in support of ground troops in the sweep. While survivors and human rights groups have tracked waves of anti-Rohingya violence in recent weeks, the Myanmar government insists that stories like Begum’s are exaggerations.

Myanmar’s leader, the Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has accused the international community of stoking unrest.