The bodies of 28 men, women, and children in two mass graves were unearthed by Myanmar security forces outside Yebawkya village in northern Rakhine State. The army said they are “Hindus who were cruelly and violently killed by ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists.”
According to the Office of the Commander-in-Chief, the military received a report from some Hindu villagers that “around 300 ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists holding small arms, sticks, swords, and lances entered Yebawkya village at 9:30pm on August 25 and arrested around 100 men and women.
When they were about one kilometer outside the village, the villagers told security forces, the “terrorists killed almost all men and women brutally. Then, terrorists forced eight women to convert to Islam and took them to Bangladesh.”
Based on this information, troops stationed at a nearby village went to Yebawkya, which lies near a cluster of Hindu and Muslim communities in northern Rakhine called Kha Maung Seik. They encountered a “foul smell” about 1.2 kilometers northwest of the village. They excavated the area where the smell was emanating from and found two 13-square-foot pits about 10 feet away from each other. Inside the first pit were the bodies of 12 women. In the second pit were the bodies of six boys under the age of 10, two men, and eight women.
Hindu villagers who accompanied the troops during the excavation identified the bodies as those of other Hindu villagers.
Thousands of Hindus have fled their homes in northern Rakhine State since the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) carried out a series of attacks on military and police installations on August 25, which thrust the entire region into violence.
The military has responded with clearance operations that several rights groups and foreign governments have labelled “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya population. More than 430,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh in under a month, many recounting stories of Myanmar soldiers teaming up with vigilante mobs to slaughter civilians and burn entire villages to the ground.
Since the beginning of the violence, the area has been largely closed-off to independent journalists and investigators by the military, while the government, including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and her staff, have been accusing international media of exaggerating the plight of the Rohingya and ignoring the suffering of Buddhists and Hindus in Rakhine State.
