For more than two weeks, Myanmar’s top leaders and state-run media outlets have bombarded the public with grisly images of the skeletal remains of Hindu villagers unearthed by security forces in Rakhine State. The government claims the villagers were murdered by Rohingya insurgents and has used survivors’ testimonies to justify its assault on Rohingya communities. But the survivors’ stories have changed since then, revealing cracks in the government’s narrative.
On September 24 and 25, Myanmar troops reportedly discovered the decomposing bodies of 45 Hindu men, women, and children in three mass graves outside Ye Baw Kyaw village in northern Rakhine State and learned from locals that another 48 people remain missing.
Senior Myanmar officials, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and government spokesman Zaw Htay, quickly pinned the killings and disappearances on “ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists.”
State media published interviews with the survivors, some of whom said the killings took place on or around August 25, when “300 ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists holding small arms, sticks, swords, and lances…arrested around 100 men and women.”
The words of bereaved families of #Hindus killed by #ARSA #terrorists in Northern #Rakhine #Myanmar
View More : https://t.co/Y2dHyX06bx pic.twitter.com/iw5GyhBtzD— Zaw Htay (@ZawHtayMyanmar) September 27, 2017
ARSA denied the accusations and said the Myanmar government was guilty of “victim-blaming.” The militant group has consistently maintained that it does not target civilians in its war against the “Burmese brutal military regime.”
The government’s narrative began to unravel this week when survivors who fled over the border to Bangladesh were heard telling a different story. A group of Hindu refugees who survived the massacre told the Guardian that it had actually been perpetrated by Myanmar troops and Rakhine Buddhists, suggesting that their previous testimonies were influenced by the presence of Myanmar authorities.
When the survivors were subsequently returned to Myanmar from Bangladesh, they backtracked again, with some blaming Rohingya militants and others saying the attackers were masked and unidentifiable.
However, some returnees said the possibility that Rakhine Buddhists were behind the masks was a reason many Hindus fled to Bangladesh, along with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, rather than inland toward Buddhist communities.
Dirty tricks
Even before the Hindu refugees changed their stories, doubts about the Myanmar government’s account have been raised. On September 28, a statement from Human Rights Watch accused Myanmar of “playing politics with the dead.” The author said the government’s quick conclusions about the massacre “contrast sharply with its own unwillingness to credibly investigate countless alleged crimes committed by its own forces against Rohingya Muslims.”
The Myanmar government maintains a visa ban on the members of a UN fact finding mission assigned to investigate the Myanmar army’s alleged human rights abuses.
This would not be the first time Myanmar has played politics with the Hindu community. In early September, Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay shared a series of images and claimed they showed Rohingyas torching their own homes. Social media users quickly pointed out that the people in the photos were poorly disguised Hindu residents of Rakhine State, suggesting that the photos were staged to deflect numerous accusations that the Myanmar army has been burning Rohingya villages.
Many Rohingya believe the government is attempting a similar deceit in the case of the Ye Baw Kyaw massacre. One Rohingya refugee told the Guardian: “Now they are using some Hindu women to cover up the misdeeds of the security forces and the Buddhist militia. We are sure that the Myanmar government’s dirty trick will get exposed soon.”
