Myanmar massacre: ‘My family died in front of my eyes’

Warning: This article contains facts some readers may find disconcerting.

When the weapons started falling, Fayaz and his family believed they were moments away from health, saying,” We were getting on the boat one after another; that’s when they started bombing us.”

Howls and shouts filled the air around 17: 00 local period on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as hundreds of terrified Rohingyas made their way to the bankers of the Naf valley in the area of Maungdaw.

Attacks on settlements earlier in the area meant this was what hundreds of families, including Fayaz’s, saw as their only choice- that to get to health, they had to leave from northern Myanmar to Bangladesh’s safer shores.

Fayaz carried sacks full of whatever they had gathered. His family was carrying their six-year-old girl, their eldest was running alongside them. His sister’s girl was walking ahead, with the child’s eight-month-old child in her arms.

The primary weapon killed his sister-in-law quickly. The child was terribly injured- but dead.

” I ran and carried him… But he passed away while we waited for the bombing to end.

Nisar* had even made it to the river by about 17: 00, having decided to leave with his family, spouse, son, daughter and girl. ” We heard robots behind and then the loud noise of an explosion”, he recalls. ” We were all thrown to the ground. They dropped bombs on us using robots”.

Only one of his household members survived, Nisar.

Fayaz, his partner, and child escaped and had finally cross the river. Despite his demands, the boatman resisted allowing Fayaz to take the baby’s body with them. He claimed that there was no purpose in bringing the dying, so I dug a tunnel by the river bank and quickly buried him.

They are currently all in Bangladesh’s comparative safety, but they could be sent back if they are apprehended by the government there. In a single moment, Nisar clutches a Quran, unable to comprehend how his entire world was destroyed.

” If I’d known what would happen, I would never have tried to leave that day”, Nisar says.

It is extremely challenging to part along the civil war in Myanmar. However, the BBC has been able to capture the events of August 5 through a number of exclusive interviews with more than a hundred Rohingya escaped to Bangladesh and the video they shared.

All of the survivors, who are armed Rohingya civilians, report experiencing numerous bomb explosions over the course of two hours. Some people claimed they were hit by cement and gunfire, while the majority of people described the drones being dropped, a tool that is extremely being used in Myanmar. In the days that followed, the MSF office working in Bangladesh reported that it saw a significant increase in Rohingya wounded in the days that followed; half of the injured were women and children.

The river lender is covered in bruised bodies, many of whom are children and women, according to survivors ‘ videos that BBC Verify analyzed. Numerous witnesses have reported seeing numerous body to the BBC despite there being no official count of how many people have been killed.

Victims reported to us that the Arakan Army, one of the strongest rebel groups in Myanmar, attacked them, which had recently forced the defense out of nearly all of Rakhine State. They claimed that as they ran away from their villages, the creek bank attacked them once more before they were forced to flee.

The AA declined to be interviewed, but Khaing Tukha, its spokeswoman, denied the charge and responded to the BBC’s inquiries with a speech that stated” the affair did not occur in areas controlled by us.” He even falsely accused the AA and accused Rohingya protesters of carrying out the massacre.

Nisar stands by his consideration, yet.

” The Arakan Army are lying”, he says. ” They carried out the attacks. On that day, it was only them in our neighborhood. And they’ve been kicking us in the face for days. They do n’t want to leave any Muslim alive”.

Most of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims live as a majority in Myanmar – a Buddhist-majority position, where the two areas have long had a fraught relationship. Local Rohingya men also participated in the problems in 2017, when the Myanmar military killed thousands of Rohingyas in what the UN referred to as” a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Rohingyas once more find themselves trapped in a spiraling conflict between the coup and the AA, which enjoys solid support from the cultural Rohingya population.

Rohingya survivors told the BBC they wished to share details of the violence they experienced so it would n’t go undocumented, especially as it took place in an area that is no longer accessible to rights groups or journalists, despite the risk of being caught and returned to Myanmar by the Bangladeshi authorities.

” My heart is broken. Nowadays, I’ve lost anything. I do n’t know why I survived”, Nisar says.

As the shooting increased close to his Rakhine home, he sold his land and home. But the issue intensified faster than he expected, and on the morning of 5 August, the family decided to leave Myanmar.

He is crying as he points to his mother’s body in one of the movies:” My child died in my hands saying Allah’s title. She looks but calm, like she’s sleeping. She loved me but much”.

He also mentions his wife and sister, both of whom were seriously hurt but still alive when the picture was captured on camera. Because the weapons were also falling, he had to make the agonizing decision to leave them behind. They eventually passed away, he discovered.

” There was nowhere left that was healthy, so we ran to the valley to cross over to Bangladesh”, Fayaz says. Fayaz gave all of his wealth to a fisherman to transport them across the valley after the gunfire and weapons had spread from village to village.

Devastated and unhappy, he holds up a picture of his father’s wounded brain.

” If the Arakan Army did n’t fire at us, then who did”? he asks. I am aware that the Arakan Army was present where the weapons came from. Or was it” torn falling from the sky”?

These charges raise serious questions about the Arakan Army, which claims to represent every member of Rakhine’s population in a revolutionary action.

The AA, a member of the larger Three Brotherhood Alliance of military militants in Myanmar, has made significant gains since late last year in opposition to the military.

However, the army’s costs have added new problems to Rohingyas, who have previously claimed they were being violently recruited by the junta to combat the AA.

This has strained now subpar relations between the two communities and made Rohingya civilians prone to punishment as a result of the Rohingya militant group ARSA’s decision to unite itself with the coup against the Rakhine insurgents.

One veteran of the 5 August attack claimed that ARSA extremists who had allied themselves with the coup had been among the frightened crowd, which might have led to the attack.

There was a significant usage of power, according to the statement. There were children, girls, the elderly that were killed that morning. It was also indiscriminate”, says John Quinley, a chairman of the human rights team Fortify Rights, which has been investigating the incident.

” So that would lead us to conclude that there are valid grounds to believe that the 5 August incident occurred. The Arakan Army may be subject to criminal justice, and top Arakan Army commanders may be held responsible.

The Rohingya group is at a perilous time right now. More than a million of them fled to Bangladesh in 2017, where they continue to be restricted to densely-packed, dirty camps.

More people have been arriving in recent months as a result of the Rakhine combat, but it’s no longer 2017, when Bangladesh’s borders were opened. The government has stated that it is against the law to accept any more Rohingyas.

So survivors who can find the money to pay boatmen and traffickers must pass through Bangladeshi border guards and chance their luck with locals, or hide in Rohingya camps. The BBC was told it would cost$ 600,000 ($ 411 ) per person.

The frontier guards gave Fayaz and his family a meal when they arrived in Bangladesh on August 6 before loading them onto a vessel and returning them.

” We spent two days upright with no food or water”, he says. I pleaded with some of the others on the boat to provide my daughters a few cakes from the boxes they had and gave them water from the river to drink.

On their next test, they entered Bangladesh. But at least two canoes have capsized because of congestion. One person, a lady with 10 kids, said she had managed to hide her home during the attack, but five of her children drowned when their boat overturned.

” My spirit was surrounded by my kids,” I said. When I think of them, I want to die”, she says, weeping.

Her granddaughter, a wide-eyed eight-year-old child, sits beside her. Both his younger brother and parents passed away.

What about those who were forgotten, though? Although the Maungdaw telephone and internet connections have been down for weeks, the BBC finally got in touch with one man who wanted to remain unnamed for safety.

He claimed that the Arakan Army has forced us to leave our homes and that they are keeping us in universities and temples. In a small apartment, I am being cared for by six different people.

In response to fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, the organization reported to the BBC that it had rescued 20, 000 residents from the area. It said it was providing them with foods and health care, and include that” these activities are conducted for the safety and security of these people, not as forced evictions”.

The caller rejected their assertions. The Arakan Army has promised to take us if we attempt to leave. We are running out of food and drugs. I am ill, my family is unwell. A lot of people have vomiting and are vomiting”.

He broke down, pleading for help:” Tens of thousands of Rohingya are under risk around. If you can, please preserve us”.

Across the river in Bangladesh, Nisar looks up at Myanmar. He can see the beach where the murderer’s community was killed.

” I never want to go back”.

Aamir Peerzada and Sanjay Ganguly provided extra monitoring.

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