(Lisa Schlein’s article from The VOA NEWS on 25 May 2024.)
“We are receiving frightening and disturbing reports
from northern Rakhine state in Myanmar of the impacts of the conflict on
civilian lives and property,” Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, said Friday in a briefing to journalists in
Geneva.
“Some of the
most serious allegations concern incidents of killing of Rohingya civilians and
the burning of their property,” she said, noting that tens of thousands of
civilians have been displaced in recent days by fighting in Buthidaung and
Maungdaw townships.
She said that information gathered in testimony from victims, eyewitnesses, satellite images, and online video and pictures over the last week indicate that “Buthidaung town has been largely burned. We have received information indicating that the burning started on 17 May, two days after the military had retreated from the town and the Arakan Army claimed to have taken full control,” she said.
Speaking in Bangkok, James Rodehaver, head of Myanmar Team, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said his team had spoken to many sources on the ground and reviewed numerous materials, many of which “were deemed to be credible.”
“Our offices are corroborating information further,
particularly in establishing who were the perpetrators of the burning. One
survivor described seeing dozens of dead bodies as he fled the town. Another
survivor said that he was among a group of displaced persons numbering in the
tens of thousands, who attempted to move outside of the town to safety but were
blocked by the Arakan Army,”
Rodehaver said, pointing out that the Arakan Army
had abused survivors and extorted money from them as they fled the town. The
Arakan Army is an armed ethnic group fighting as part of an alliance against
the Myanmar military.
 |
| Arakan Army had taken Buthidaung. |
Rodehaver said, “In the weeks leading up to the burning of Buthidaung, the Myanmar team of the U.N. human rights offices has documented renewed attacks on Rohingya civilians by both the Arakan Army and by the military in northern Rakhine state,” including many by aerial strikes and drones.
He said his
office also has received reports of shooting at unarmed fleeing villagers,
multiple disappearances and burnings of homes, and has confirmed four cases of
beheadings. Rodehaver said the military has been actively targeting the
Rohingya for years and has “actively enforced draconian and discriminatory
restrictions affecting all aspects of their lives.”
“It is one of
the reasons why the Rohingya, whenever they were asked to leave Buthidaung and
other villages, have been very reluctant to move because they have needed
special permission to move outside of their township of residence. They also
have nowhere else to go. They, of course, have learned very hard lessons in
2017, knowing that whenever movement starts, it usually ends [with] them
leaving their homes, never to see them again,” he said.
In August 2017, more than a million Rohingya fled to
Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh to escape violence and persecution in Myanmar.
Currently, an estimated 600,000 Rohingya live in Rakhine state. Although they
have lived in Myanmar for generations, the government considers them illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh and refuses to grant them citizenship.
The Myanmar
junta, which has been at war with its people for decades, recently has suffered
many defeats. One consequence is young men have been conscripted from the
Rohingya to fight its battles, by promising them many benefits, such as more
food rations for their families and a promise of citizenship.
Rodehaver calls
that an insidious ploy by military leaders. “They know that most of these men
have never had any sort of combat training or self-defense training. So, they
are largely being sent to the front lines as human shields or as cannon fodder,
and the military knows that very well.
“The military
also told the Rohingya, if you run away and you do not serve, we will arrest
you or cut the rations to your family. So, they use a variety of pressures to
convince the Rohingya to join. We have had reports that from 1,500 to 2,000 men
have been recruited at this point,” he said.
Tom Andrews, the
U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, warned
Thursday of “ominous signs of another Rohingya bloodbath in Rakhine state” if
the international community were to continue to turn a blind eye and fail to
take action to save the lives of thousands of Rohingya.
“Once again, the
world seems to be failing a desperate people in their hour of peril, while a
hate-driven unnatural disaster unfolds in real time in Myanmar’s Rakhine
state,” he said.
Mirroring that
assessment, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk is calling for “an immediate
end to the violence, and for all civilians to be protected without any
distinction based on identity. “Prompt and unhindered humanitarian relief must
be allowed to flow, and all parties must comply fully and unconditionally with
international law,” he said.
[According to Ye Lin Thu’s Facebook Post on May-26 the Arakan Army (AA) declared so-called Martial Law with a strcit Dusk-to-dawn curfew on those two Bengali-Majority towns Buthidaung and Maungdaw on April-26. On May-11 AA shells landed on the Buthidaung Hospital and killed 3 Bengalis (so-called Rohingyas) and wounded nearly a dozen.
On May-11 Myanmar Army troops withdrew from
Buthidaung under the week-long concentrated attacks from AA. In the evening of
May-17 AA troops shelled Buthidaung heavily again and killed 10 Bengalis and
wounded more than 50. That night at 21:30 AA troops entered Buthidaung and
drove all the resident Bengalis out of the town and then Burned down the the
whole town.]