Arakan News Agency
The data was collected by Rohingya leaders going door to door in refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, according to people who took part in the effort and who shared the list with BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
“It’s been reported 400 people were murdered in Gu Dar Pyin village, but I can affirm many more were killed”.
The Associated Press released a report on February 1 that said mass graves had been found at Gu Dar Pyin village in Buthidaung township in northern Arakan State.
“This must be done in a principled way that prioritizes the need for these people to be recognized as Rohingya and as citizens of Myanmar”, she said.
Nearly every villager interviewed by the AP saw three large mass graves at Gu Dar Pyin’s northern entrance, near the main road, where witnesses say soldiers herded and killed most of the Rohingya. UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, has been banned from the country following claims from the government that she has been “unfair and biased”.
Some witnesses confirmed two other big graves near a hillside cemetery, close to a school where more than 100 soldiers were stationed after the massacre.
The Associated Press on Wednesday published a report detailing the existence of several previously undisclosed mass graves of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar along with shocking details of the systematic execution of victims and attempts to hide evidence of the crime.
Htun Naing, a local security police officer in Buthidaung township, where the village is located, said he “hasn’t heard of such mass graves”.
The U.S. said it was “deeply, deeply troubled by those reports of mass graves”.
1 February 2018 – What Myanmar’s Government has claimed are military and security operations are “actually an established pattern” of domination and aggression against ethnic groups, the United Nations independent expert on the rights situation there said on Thursday, reporting on her visit to nearby countries, including Bangladesh, which is hosting almost 900,000 Rohingya refugees.
“We don’t have the access we would like to have, and it’s very important for us to have access to verify these reports”, said Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “We remain focused on helping to ensure the accountability for those responsible for human rights abuses and violations”, Nauert stressed. They watched as the military searched Muslim homes and dozens of Buddhist neighbors, their faces partly covered with scarves, loaded the possessions they found into about 10 pushcarts.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW, said the report raised the stakes for the global community to demand accountability from Myanmar.
The U.N. envoy, who visited Bangladesh between January 18 and 24, told a news conference in Seoul on Thursday that she had “received scrolls of names of people who were allegedly killed or missing”.
Khin said he appreciated Malaysia’s effort in setting up the Malaysian field hospital in November previous year to help the Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh.
A violent crackdown by the security forces in response to attacks by militants in the state has caused around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh in recent months.
