Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organisation, said on Wednesday that the Myanmarese security forces had killed, raped, and arrested a score
of Rohingya Muslims. It also said that the security forces had failed to protect the Rohingyas and the Arakan Buddhists during the deadly sectarian violence in western Myanmar in June 2012.
Government restrictions on humanitarian access to the Rohingyas have compelled more than 100,000 people to leave their homes amid need of food, shelter, and medical
care, the human rights body said in a report.
The 56-page report, “The Government Could Have Stopped This: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State”, describes how the Myanmarese authorities
have failed to take adequate measures to prevent the rising tension and outbreak of sectarian violence in the Arakan state.
Though the army eventually contained the mob violence in the state capital, Sittwe, both Arakan and Rohingya witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the government
forces were silent spectators to the rampage caused by the riot.
“The Burmese security forces failed to protect the Arakan Buddhists and Rohingyas from each other, and unleashed a campaign of violence and mass arrest against the
Rohingyas,” said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“The Burmese government claimed that it is committed to ending the ethnic strife between the religious communities. But recent events in the Arakan state demonstrate
that state-sponsored persecution and discrimination still persist,” he added. The Myanmarese government should take urgent measures to end the abuses caused by its
security forces, ensure humanitarian access, and permit independent international bodies to visit the affected areas to investigate abuses, said the HRW.
The report is based on 57 interviews conducted in June and July. A number of victims of the sectarian violence, some persons in Myanmar and Bangladesh were
interviewed.
The violence erupted in early June after reports circulated that three Muslim men had raped and killed an Arakan Buddhist woman in the town of Ramri on May 28. Details
of the crime were circulated locally in an incendiary pamphlet, and on June 3, a large group of Arakan villagers in Toungop stopped a bus and brutally killed 10
Muslims on board.
The HRW confirmed that the local police, as well as the army, were mute witnesses of the violence. In retaliation, on June 8, thousands of Rohingya Muslims started a
riot in Maungdaw town after Friday prayers and killed several Arakan Buddhists. This caused the violence to spread through Sittwe and its surrounding areas.
The rioters ransacked unsuspecting villages and neighbourhoods, killed a number of people, and destroyed homes, shops, and houses of worship. They armed themselves
with swords, spears, sticks, iron rods, knives, and other basic weapons. Inflammatory anti-Muslim media accounts and local propaganda fanned the violence. Several
Arakan Buddhists and Rohingyas told The HRW that the authorities could have prevented the violence.
Courtesy of The Independent
