Myanmar searches for more bodies as mass grave of Hindus unearthed

YANGON — Myanmar troops yesterday searched for dozens of missing Hindu villagers feared dead after the discovery of a grave containing 28 corpses in Rakhine state, evidence of what the army says is a massacre by Rohingya Muslim militants.

Northern Rakhine has been ravaged by communal violence since Rohingya insurgents staged deadly raids on police posts on Aug 25, unleashing an army crackdown that has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The vast majority — more than 430,000 — are Rohingya Muslims who have fled across the border to Bangladesh from a military campaign that the United Nations says is likely to amount to ethnic cleansing of the stateless minority.

But tens of thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and the region’s small population of Hindus, have also been internally displaced, saying they were attacked by Rohingya militants.

On Sunday, the army said it had discovered two mud pits filled with 28 Hindu corpses, including 20 females and eight males, outside the village of Ye Baw Kyaw in northern Rakhine.

The government’s Information Committee said on its Facebook page that all eight were boys, including six under 10 years old.

“The security troops continue searching for remaining Hindu people around the places of the pits,” said a statement posted on army chief Min Aung Hlaing’s Facebook page yesterday, blaming Rohingya militants for the killings.

Displaced Hindus from the area told AFP last week that Rohingya fighters stormed into their communities on Aug 25, killing many and taking others into the forest.

They showed AFP a list of 102 people from two villages — Ye Baw Kyaw, where the bodies were found, and Taung Ywar — feared dead by distraught relatives, who wept as they described the bloodshed.

A Hindu community leader in the area, Mr Ni Maul, confirmed to AFP that the search was in progress.

“Soldiers and police are here with us to find the rest of the bodies around this area,” he said, adding that authorities are still working to identify the 28 corpses exhumed on Sunday.

With the government blocking access to the conflict zone, it is difficult to verify the maelstrom of accusations that have further fuelled ethnic hatred in Rakhine.

But the army has blamed the violence on the Rohingya — a Muslim minority it has been trying for years to eject from Myanmar — while highlighting the suffering of other ethnic groups swept up in the violence.

The focal point of the unrest, northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw district, was once home to a fragile mosaic of religious communities, dominated by the Rohingya.

Vast swathes of the border region are now emptied of Muslim residents, with nearly 40 per cent of Rohingya villages abandoned in under a month. “I do not dare go back to the village,” said Mr Kyaw Kyaw Naing, one of hundreds of displaced Hindus taking shelter in a derelict football stadium in Rakhine’s state capital, Sittwe.

“We still do not know yet how many of those dead bodies include relatives from our camp,” added the 34-year-old, whose Hindu name is Shu Bown.

In Bangladesh, relief agencies are struggling to meet the vast needs of the Rohingya cramming into shanties in Cox’s Bazar, an influx the UN has described as the “fastest and most urgent refugee emergency in the world”.

Analysts say the repression by Naypyidaw helped give rise to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, whose raids plunged the region into crisis. AFP