The Myanmar army executed dozens of Rohingya Muslims in a single village in Rakhine State on August 27, according to survivors of the massacre now staying in refugee camps in Bangladesh. They told Human Rights Watch that Myanmar soldiers beat, sexually assaulted, stabbed, and shot villagers who had gathered in a residential compound for safety.
The massacre was carried out in Maung Nu village, Buthidaung Township, two days after the Rohingya militant group ARSA attacked several military outposts in the area. The government said ARSA killed 11 security personnel using “swords, firearms and bombs.”
The 14 survivors of the Maung Nu massacre who spoke to HRW said that when they heard of the ARSA attacks, they and their families took shelter in the compound to avoid retaliation by the army.
In the late morning of August 27, several Myanmar soldiers entered the compound, while others surrounded it. The soldiers, led by a man identified by witnesses as Staff Sergeant Baju, ordered the men and boys to come out of the buildings where they were hiding. He used the Rohingya language to assure them they wouldn’t be killed.
Next, according to witnesses who escaped to the hills overlooking the compound, the soldiers brought the Rohingya men and boys into the courtyard, bound their hands, and then beat them, stabbed and slashed them with long knives, and shot them.
Muhamedul Hassan, 18, told HRW that a dozen soldiers, led by Staff Sergeant Baju, took him and two male relatives to a nearby courtyard where he saw hundreds of men and boys tied up. He said: “Four soldiers took [me and my relatives] to the corner of the courtyard and shot us each twice in the back. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I saw many men still tied and [the soldiers] were still killing people. Many were stabbed to death. When I tried to flee, I was shot in the chest but was able to escape.”
Muhamedul showed HRW his bullet wounds and said he lost nearly 30 male relatives that day, in addition to the two executed beside him.
Witnesses also said they saw the soldiers execute children. A witness named Mustafa, 22, said he saw a pit filled with 10 to 15 bodies of children under the age of 12 who had been hacked to death.
One witness named Khotiaz, 28, recounted the killing of her nephew: “When Baju entered the room, there was my nephew, Mohammod Tofail. He was 10 years old. He was a student of class two. First Baju shot him in the head, his skull shattered into four pieces. Then he fell down. I saw there were brain and blood on the floor.”
When the killing was over, soldiers gathered the bodies on green tarps and loaded them onto pushcarts, then brought the bodies to military vehicles. “I saw outside that there were piles of dead bodies,” said Mustafa. “I could see the soldiers using carts [to move the bodies], and I recognized one of the carts was mine.”
He said he heard them moving the bodies for four hours.
Women who were at the compound at the time of the massacre also reported being subjected to invasive body searches, non-consensual touching, and sexual assault while the soldiers were searching for valuables.
One 30-year-old woman said: “One soldier put his hand inside my chest, and he took my cellphone and money. Then he opened my thami [lower part of a woman’s dress], and there was some gold and money, which he took. Then he touched me everywhere.”
“All the horrors of the Burmese army’s crimes against humanity against the Rohingya are evident in the mass killings in Maung Nu village,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW. “These atrocities demand more than words from concerned governments; they need concrete responses with consequences.”
