By Nurul Islam
KPN News
Du Chee Yar Tan popularly known as Kilaidong is a village 6 miles south
of the border town of Maungdaw in Burma’s Arakan/Rakhine State. It is a farming
society with about 4000 Rohingya people. During recent years a Buddhist Rakhine
settler village with a police outpost was established alongside the Rohingya
settlement.
U Aung Zan
Phyu, a settler Buddhist Rakhine is the chairman of the Du Chee Yar Tan despite
more than its 90% population is Rohingya. Buddhist extremists under him, time
and again, carried out extortion, looting and criminal atrocities against the villagers
in connivance with the police. Helpless people who complained to the
authorities for redress and remedies were met with reprisals. These have been a
regular phenomenon all over Rohingya homeland of North Arakan.
According to the villagers, on 7 January, without any provocation, an organized Rakhine Buddhist gang had seized and looted a small group of Rohingyas who were coming from Buthidaung Township through a mountain pass. Under the instruction of Chairman Aung Zan Phyu, they were brought and held in his Rakhine village. Of them some escaped away from the detainment while the rest numbering 8 were massacred on 9 January. Upon the tragic news when the Rohingya villagers were alarmed the police with Rakhine Buddhists under U Aung Zan Phyu were trying to put them down.
On 13 January the police led by notorious sergeant Aung Kyaw Thein
together with Buddhist mobs started terrorizing the villagers and at one stage
raped a woman and striped her of all ornaments. When the angry people dared
them the marauders and rapists quickly withdrew by gun-firing. Afterwards,
contingents of police, Lon Htin, army and organized Buddhist mobs started
systematic killing, rape, destruction and torture against the peaceful-living
villagers alleging that the police sergeant was missing.
Villagers, most of them male members, deserted the village in search of
safe shelters. On 14 January four truck loads of women, children and elderly
were carried to the Maungdaw police station where they were seriously tortured
into signing blank sheets of papers or to extract confession. The following day
of 15 January women and children were brought back and put in the custody of
the elders of nearby Gowdusara village with stern warning not allow them move
into their homes and village.
The village was sealed off. No Rohingyas, UN staff or media groups were
allowed in except Buddhist mobs equipped with lethal weapons turning the
village a “killing field”.
The precise number of death could not be attained.
However, the UN, NGOs and rights groups estimated the number of death to be
more than 40 although many estimated it to be 60-100 — most of them feeble, old
men, women and children — and many more missing. All their properties, food
grains and cattle were plundered and carried away which they are now selling
below market prices. Even young children were removed from their mothers. It is
a massacre that warrants immediate international intervention, on ground of
humanitarianism, on the doctrine of “Responsible to Protect -R2P” when the
Burmese government is annihilating its own subjects, the Rohingya community.
In an interview with Irrawaddy, U Shwe Maung, a Rohingya MP said “the
entre population of the village, nearly 4,000 people, had fled their
homes…They should let the people get back to inside the village”. He continued
“I just got five photos of dead people…when I get full confirmation; I will
raise it to Parliament.” The Chairman of the Union National Development Party
(UNDP) Abu Tahay called for the authorities to thoroughly investigate and present
their findings in a transparent way.
This savage and excessive killing of people was masterminded by chief of
the No.4 Police Battalion Col. Tin Ko Ko and Maungdaw district administrator U
Aung Myint Soe. Dead bodies lying in the villages, concealing in the jungles
and floating on the creeks were quickly collected and destroyed leaving no
trace of evidence. All these have been done with the knowledge of the State and
Union governments. Yet the government boorishly denied any knowledge of
butchery without feelings of guilt or anxiety although considerable compelling
evidences have had come out.
The murderous Thein Sein government lied when it’s Deputy Information
Minister and spokesman Ye Htut denied any information about killing on the
sideline of ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Burma’s ancient city of Pagan.
It is a shame for the whole ASEAN community to allow Burma/Myanmar, who
rejected with stubborn resistance the proposal to discuss with its ASEAN
friends the longstanding Rohingya problem of regional and international concern
for solution, to take its chair. Instead, it is exacerbating a serious, deadly
situation in Arakan promoting slow-burning genocide on Rohingya population. It
is worried that more such attacks have been planned.
U.N. Special Rapporteur
Tomas Ojea Quintana said the Myanmar government “must, under international law,
conduct prompt, effective and impartial investigation.” 1 In a statement UN human rights
chief Navi Pillay said a “full, prompt and impartial investigation” was needed.
In a joint statement issued by British and US embassies in Rangoon urged the
government “to thoroughly investigate and hold accountable those responsible
for the violence, whether civilian or security personnel…Government actions to
date have clearly been insufficient.”2 Condemning the violence the
British FCO Minister Rt Hon Hugo Swire (MP) said “I am appalled to hear reports
that at least forty people, mainly Rohingya women and children, have been
killed in Maungdaw township, Rakhine State. I call on the Burmese government to
launch an immediate and transparent investigation….The Burmese government must
continue to provide security for all communities in Rakhine State and to create
a situation whereby international assistance can be provided.”3 We welcome all these
statements and other demands and recommendations put up by many other NGOs and
rights groups.
Defying the international opinion the Buddhist Rakhine torched Du Chee
Yar Tan village on the night of 28th January whilst more than one hundred security
forces were still guarding the village deserted by almost all Rohingya male
members. The Rohingya from nearby villages, who rushed to put out the fires
were prevented where, according to eye witnesses, the security forces were
directly involved in setting fire on the houses.
Experts in
international law have warned that eights stages of genocide are in play in the
case of Rohingya. “The tragic events unravelling since May 28, 2012 have made
it obvious that the Rohingya people are victims of eight stages of
genocide—Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization,
Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial, – as clearly
documented by Professor Gregory H. Stanton, President of Genocide Watch.” 4 Here the vexed issue of
priorities is ‘real action’ with ‘proactive policy’ to save the lives of the Rohingya
people before it is too late. While good sense does not prevail in the mind of
the Burmese government, when there is no change of its attitude towards
Rohingya, it would be a futile exercise to seek protection and justice from the
perpetrators who have not the least sense of human rights and democratic values
but who only are interested to exterminate the whole Rohingya population.
In two separate protest rallies in front of the Burmese embassy and
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London organized by the Rohingya
community in the U.K. on 24 January 2014, the Chairman of the Arakan Rohingya
National Organisation (ARNO) charged that the civil-military hybrid government
of Thein Sein is fully responsible for allowing former Yugoslavia-like
genocide. He said Du Chee Yar Tan massacre was carried out as a part of the
“Rohingya Extermination policy” of the Burmese government and in continuation
of the genocidal onslaughts that occurred and reoccurred against Rohingya and
other Muslims from June 2012 killing many hundreds of Muslims and devastating
their large settlements in Arakan and other parts of Burma. This is but a
direct reaction from the Union Government and Rakhine State Authority dominated
by killer Dr. Aye Maung led Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) to
the international outcries and Rohingya’s clamour for justice, tolerance and
protection.
In a press release dated 22 January 2014 ARNO strongly condemned the
organized killings with impunity of the Rohingya villagers of Du Chee Yar Tan
(Kelaidong) and
1. Demanded
Burmese government to end forthwith all killings and violence in Du Chee Yar
Tan and other Rohingya areas, to release all arrested people and to allow all
displaced villagers to get into their homes with full security and humanitarian
supports;
2. Requested to form a
UN Commission of Inquiry to fully investigate the Du Chee Yar Tan massacre and
all other genocidal onslaughts for true findings and to bring the perpetrators
to the book;
3. Requested the
international community for urgent humanitarian intervention in Arakan in order
to prevent further deaths and destruction and to save the life, property,
honour and dignity of Rohingya where the government is the perpetrator.
Last not least how long should Rohingya and other vulnerable people wait?
Will the Rohingya have to wait until they are totally exterminated from their
ancestral homeland where they have their homes, their mosques and their dead
ones?
———————————————–
1. The statement dated
17 January 2014 of the Special Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana
2. Joint
statement of British and US embassies in Rangoon on January 17,
2014
3. Press release
issued by FCO on 23 January, 2014. ,
4. The
Declaration from the first Rohingya Conference in the USA on the Rohingya of
Burma(Myanmar) held in University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee on December 14,
2013. Excerpts from the speech by Prof. Gregory H. Stanton at the conference.