Those who escaped fled to the hills in the west to make the three-day trek to Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh. The rest were buried in a mass grave, villagers said.
Myanmar, where the majority of people are Buddhist, has blocked access to the area, meaning the Guardian cannot independently corroborate the villagers’ accounts. Many of the interviews were conducted separately over two days, however, and the villagers confirmed details of each other’s statements without prompting.
The story of Tula Toli, while horrific, is not unique. The army, in retribution for guerrilla-style ambushes on 25 August by an emergent Rohingya militant group, has led a huge counteroffensive across northern Rakhine state. Many Rohingya had already escaped. Communal clashes with Buddhists in Rakhine prompted 140,000 Rohingya to leave their homes in 2012. Thousands have since died either at sea or in brutal jungle camps run by people smugglers. A
United Nations report released this year detailed what happened to those that stayed. The report described mass killings and gang rapes by the armed forces in actions that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity. The current wave of violence is the worst so far, and rights groups have said it could constitute a final campaign to rid Myanmar of the Rohingya. Satellites have recorded images of whole villages burnt to the ground.
Here are their
stories:
Khaled Hossein, 29, labourer
Three days before the massacre,
Hossein said about 90 soldiers ordered the village’s several hundred residents
to an area east of the settlement, a place locals call “the sands” for its
infertile ground.
“Their leader had two stars on
his shoulder. He told us: ‘Rumours are being spread around by people in the
village that soldiers have been killing people in Rakhine. But you should all
keep farming and fishing. The one thing we ask is that if you see soldiers, you
don’t run away. If you run, we will shoot.’
“After the speech, the soldiers
went from house to house. They were with [local Rakhine Buddhists] and took
everything they could find that was valuable: gold, cash, clothes, potatoes and
rice. They smashed up houses of three or four people they said had been
spreading rumours. They were looking for fighters. The Buddhists had told them
about fighters, but there were none there.”
Petam Ali, 30, rice
distributor
A day before
the attack, people from a village across the river called Dual Toli swam over
to escape the army. More than 10 died in the river, according to Petam Ali, who
sheltered some of the displaced in his family home. They watched their village
burn from across the river.
Advertisement
At 3.30am the
next day, Ali heard shooting but was not sure of the direction.
“I live on the
north side of the village and the army had crossed the river further north and
were marching down. I left my family to run out to the jungle to try and spot
the soldiers. We waited until 8am and then they moved in, wearing dark green
clothes. All of them were on foot.
“I ran back to
get my family, but we were too rushed and my grandmother was too old to run.
From the forest, we watched them burn our house. It was the first in Tula Toli
to be burned.”
Ali’s home, an
eight-bedroom wooden structure that he built with his three brothers for 16
members of their extended family, went up in flames fast. Its roof was covered
in straw and leaves.
“The soldiers
used rocket-propelled grenades, and they set fire to the houses with matches.
Once they had gone past, I went back. All the houses were burned. In the road,
I saw a dead man I recognised called Abu Shama. He had been shot in the chest.
He was 85.”
In the ruins of
his house, Ali saw the singed and decapitated corpse of his grandmother. “Her
name was Rukeya Banu. She was 75. When I returned to the jungle, I described
the whole incident to the rest. They burst into tears. We walked for three
days.”
Kabir Ahmed, 65, rice farmer
“When I heard the army attacking
to the north, I jumped into the river,” said Kabir Ahmed. “My two sons came
with me. They are 10 and 12.”
Eight members of his family died,
he said, and two of his other sons who are unaccounted for.
“They threw the children into the
river. My three-year-old granddaughter, Makarra, and Abul Fayez, my
one-year-old grandson. I was hiding on the south side of the river. They
gathered everyone together and told them to walk away. Then they shot them.
“We were on hills, hiding behind
trees. In the evening, they collected all the bodies on the river bank, dug
into the sands and burned them. It happened 40 metres away from me, on the
other side of the river. They are buried two to three metres from the
riverside.”
Zahir Ahmed, 55, rice
farmer (Kabir’s brother)
When
the army arrived, Kabir Ahmed’s brother, Zahir, was also down by the river but
in another spot. His son ran out of their home out in a panic.
Advertisement
“‘Leave us!’ he
shouted. I jumped into the river and swam to the other side.
“I waited in
the jungle, listening to the military firing. I was right next to the water. My
son had gone to save other members of the family.” But he says all were killed.
He starts to
count on his fingers those who died: “My wife, Rabia Begum, 50; my first son,
Hamid Hassan, 35; his daughter, Nyema, two to three, and his son, Rashid, six
to seven months; my second son, Nour Kamel, 12; my third son, Fayzul Kamel, 10;
my fourth son, Ismail, seven; my eldest daughter, Safura 25; her husband, Azhir
Hassan, 35; my second daughter, Sanzida, 14; my third daughter, Estafa, six; my
fourth daughter, Shahina Begum, five; my sixth daughter, Nour Shomi, two to
three; my seventh daughter, Hasina, six months old.
“I waited for
five hours and then left.”
Mohammed Idriss, 35
In Bangladesh, the refugees from
Tula Toli have made camp on hills that were empty just a few days before.
Several thousand Rohingya have felled the trees, levelled out the beige mud and
erected tents using sliced bamboo frames and black tarpaulin bought in the
market.
Advertisement
All are hungry,
and hundreds mob the rickety open-back trucks that local mosques have deployed
to hand out donated clothes and food. For fear of being overwhelmed, volunteers
throw shirts and trousers into the heaving crowd as they slowly drive along.
Children sleep
on the mud in tents, their parents looking on anxiously, worried about flu or
diarrhoea. At a clearing nearby, liquid excrement soaks the ground.
When heavy
rains arrive, Tula Toli’s displaced shower in the open. Women and children hold
dented metal pots at the side of the tent to collect fresh water. Thousands
have come to these hills, but the area is almost entirely absent of any
belongings. Many fled in terror and few made it out of Myanmar with anything.
Mohammed Idriss
lived on the western side of Tula Toli, which borders an area thick with trees
and he was able to collect some things before leaving. He holds up a white sack
that has two large holes in it.
“I had a bag
filled with oil, sugar, flour, 10,000 kyat, rice – things I had taken from the
house when we left. When we got to the Naf river [the Bangladesh border], the
Myanmar army started shooting.
“I jumped into
the river and then hid behind a sandbank. The soldier came and shot at the bag,
opened it and took everything. Once we got to the Bangladesh border, the guards
told us to head here.”
He says he
carried the bag for three days during the 10-mile trek through the trees and
hills from Tula Toli.
At camp, Idriss
gets a phone call to a dusty mobile, being charged by a cheap solar panel
someone found in the market. On the line was another Rohingya refugee near the
border. They had found a woman with a gunshot wound to her arm who matched the
description of his missing sister.
“They thought
she might have been Rabia, but she wasn’t,” he said. “We’re not sure if she was
killed or not. We are hoping.”
Comments
Post a Comment