Not Just Muslims, Rohingya Hindus Too Are Victims of Widespread Violence in Myanmar

Like Muslims, Rohingya Hindus were looted, tortured and killed by armed men in Rakhine.

Hindus from Myanmar have too joined Rohingya Muslims to seek refuge in Bangladesh, leaving the conflict-torn Rakhine state in northwestern Myanmar. Like Muslims, Rohingya Hindus were reportedly looted, tortured and killed by armed men in Rakhine. Hindu women were raped and killed before their villages were burnt. Those who could manage to cross the hilly terrain and jungle to seek refuge in Bangladesh have nothing but a tale of horror and violence.

Akhira Dhar is living with hundreds of Rohingya Hindu refugees in Hindupara, a Hindu settlement within the Kutupalang Camp in Bangladesh and she is yet to overcome the kind of brutality and violence she witnessed in Myanmar’s Rakhine. Her husband and in-laws were hacked to death before her eyes. “Hadi felay (They kill everyone),” Akhira was quoted as saying by Times of India.

Rikha Dhar, another refugee in Hindupara, has a similar disturbing story to tell. She recounted how masked men hacked her husband to death before looting their gold shop. The survivors of the attack on Hindu settlements say the masked men were not the armed forces as they speak the Rakhine dialect. “My husband told them about the jewellery when they threatened to kill our children. They then took him blindfolded towards the hills. When we were fleeing, we found his blood-soaked body along with hundreds of others,” Rikha recalled.

Bijay Ram, a Rohingya Hindu who managed to escape along with 120 more families from Oti Roah village in Myanmar, said masked men held them captive in their own houses for at least seven days. They fled towards Bangladesh border after the armed men went to a nearby village. Speaking to the exodus of Rohingya Hindus, Swapan Sharma Roni, member of Haladia Palang Parishad (III), the administrative body of a block of villages, said the minority among Rohingyas were targeted for the first time in recent years.

“In the past few years, we have not seen any Hindu refugee crossing the border to enter Bangladesh. It seems no Rohingyas were spared this time,” Roni was quoted as saying. According to the United Nations, 370,000 Rohingyas had fled to Bangladesh since the violence broke out last month, which is 9,000 more than the last count. A majority of the new arrivals, around 188,000, had been put up in makeshift camps, said the Inter Sector Coordination Group in a report.

The current crisis erupted on August 25, following an attack by the insurgent Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on police and military posts in the northwestern Burmese state of Rakhine that had led to a violent offensive by the Myanmar Army. The recent exodus follows another similar one last October after an aggressive military offensive by the Myanmar Army — following an attack by Rohingya rebels on border posts — triggered the exodus of more than 80,000 Rohingyas.