By August 1991, there were an estimated 10,000 refugees from Arakan, mostly Rohingyas, in Bangladesh. On December 21, 1991, Burmese troops from the Lon Htein security forces crossed into Bangladesh and attacked a well-marked Bangladesh border post. Four Bangladeshis were killed and twenty-two wounded. In response, Bangladesh massed troops along the border, and SLORC was reported to have sent an additional 50,000 to 70,000 troops to Arakan. These included the Lon Htein forces, who had played a key role in the bloody crackdown in Rangoon in 1988. The increased military presence spelled more suffering for the Rohingyas. Against this backdrop, Human Rights Watch conducted interviews among then newly arrived refugees in several camps outside the Bangladeshi town of Cox's Bazaar in mid-March 1992, documenting, among other atrocities, rape of Rohingya refugee women by members of the Burmese army.
Rape of women after their husbands or fathers had been taken for forced labor was common. Sometimes the rapes occurred in the homes of the victims with children and relatives left to watch; other times the women were taken to a nearby military camp where they were sorted out by beauty. In some cases, the women were killed; in others they were allowed to return home.22 The following testimonies, taken in March 1992, reveal how sexual and physical violence by the Burmese military against Rohingya women was a direct cause of the exodus to Bangladesh of women, their families and even entire communities.
Eslam Khatun (E.K), thirty-one, mother of six children, was the wife of the village headman of Imuddinpara, Rama Musleroi, Buthidaung. About February 1, 1992, she was at home with her children, brother-in-law and sister-in-law named Layla Begum (L.B), aged sixteen; her husband had been taken by the Burmese military for forced labor and had not returned home. It had been cold, and the family was sitting next to the fire, about to get ready for bed. It was about 9:00 p.m. when they heard the sound of soldiers' boots andvoices speaking Burmese outside. When the soldiers forced open the door, the fire lit up E.K.'s face, and they saw her. First, they pulled her up by her arms, and her brother tried to stop them. They began beating him, while undressing and violently molesting E.K., though not raping her there. When they dragged her and her brother from the house, the brother was bound and E.K. was naked.
Eslam Halim's (E.H.) husband, Abdul, returned from forced labor duty to learn of his sister's and brother's abductions. He had been regularly forced to work for the military but, since he was a village headman, he was also obliged to provide male laborers to the soldiers. Hoping he had a more privileged position than most villagers, he decided to go to the local army camp to ask about E.K. Eight days later, E.H. found E.K's body in the jungle near their house. She appeared to have bled to death from her vagina. "The soldiers had been satisfied with her," E.H. said.
About twenty-one days later, the bodies of Abdul Halim and his brother were found dumped in the same area. E.H. herself buried her husband. She said his genitals had been cut off, his eyes gouged out, both hands cut off and he was cut down the torso into two pieces. A few days later, E.H. and her six children walked for two days with 250 other villagers to reach the Naaf River. Soldiers opened fire on the boats in her group, but she was uninjured. About two-thirds of her village fled to Dechuapalang 1 Camp in Bangladesh.
Jahura Khatu (J.K), thirty, is the widow of a farmer in Naikaengdam village, Buthidaung. She arrived in Bangladesh on February 1, 1992. Over the last decade, she said, Muslim villagers had been harassed continuously by local SLORC military personnel and told they were not Burmese. J.K's only Burmese identification card indicated she was a Muslim foreigner. Chickens, cows, rice harvest and cash were taken freely by soldiers at any time. If there was no cash in the house when they appeared and demanded it, she said, the women were beaten and raped.
At the start of 1991, a military camp with some 1,200 soldiers was established in Naikaengdam on the site of the local mosque and cemetery, which had been just next to Jahura's house. Men were abducted house-to-house for forced labor; J.K's husband Fazil Alam, forty-five, had been taken many times for road construction, usually for two or three days of service. In December 1991, her husband was taken for labor again. One day soldiers appeared at her house to give her a bundle of bloody clothes she recognized as Alam's. They said he had been unable to carry the assigned load, and they had beaten him to death.
After that, soldiers came back to her home again and again to rape her and to demand money and food. A month after they brought the clothing, several soldiers came late one night and raped her again. Afterward, they took her out of her house and forced her at gunpoint along with three young women, all unmarried, to walk to Naikaengdam Camp, about fifteen minutes away. The women were kept together, given no food or water, and raped by officers throughout that night and the following day. J.K noted that an officer named "Arbanku" was in charge. They were told that if they promised to bring other women to camp, they would be released. After sunset the women were let go, and decided on the walk home they would escape to Bangladesh.
Half the village left at the same time, in broad daylight. One hundred families walked for seven days, most carrying nothing but a little rice. On the eighth day they met soldiers at the river bank; their pillows, bedding and household items were all confiscated, and they crossed the Naaf River to Bangladesh.
Jaharu Begum (J.B.), twenty, from Lapia, Devina in Akyab district arrived in Bangladesh on February 11, 1992. She said that in November 1991, four or five Burmese soldiers came to her house at about 1:00 a.m. They ordered the door to be opened. J.B., knowing they were abducting forced laborers, said her husband, Animullah, was not home.
The soldiers then kicked down the door, spotted her husband in the room, and tied his hands. They dragged him outside the house and beat him badly. After three days J.B. still had no word about her husband. That night the same soldiers came back at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. This time they took her alone to the small camp, punching and hitting her with rifle butts during the one-hour walk. At the camp various soldiers raped her continuously for about sixteen hours, until they appeared to be "satisfied," as J.B. stated. The village head was at the camp at the time. He happened to recognize her and convinced the soldiers to release her.
After a month at home with no information about her husband, J.B. decided to flee to Bangladesh. She had no children and no remaining relatives other than her mother who had escaped to Bangladesh over a year and a half before and of whose whereabouts J.B. had heard nothing. She joined five or six families in the trip to the river and believed only two or three families remained in her village of Lapia.
Aisha Khatun (A.K.), twenty-five, from Labadogh village, Buthidaung, crossed into Bangladesh with her five children and her father. She explained that about a year and a half previously [toward the end of 1990], the Burmese army had set up camp in the village rice fields. They gave notice to thevillagers to leave, announcing the local Muslims were all "Bangladeshi." They forced abducted male laborers to destroy their village mosque and build a Buddhist temple in its place. Unable to cultivate their fields because of the camp, many farmers stayed idle in their homes. Sometimes the soldiers ordered them out. When they refused, their homes were burned. Everyone lived in fear.
One afternoon in early December 1991, Burmese soldiers announced that all Muslims must leave. A.K. and her husband made no preparations to do so because they had no place to go. That night, while her husband and children were sleeping under their blankets, five soldiers kicked down the door of their house. They said they were collecting laborers. A.K. told them her husband was not there. "Then we'll take you," she said they told her. They then carried her outside, tore off her clothes, blindfolded her with a rag and while two or three held her, each of the five took a turn raping her.
At some point during the violence, she was aware of her husband emerging from the house to defend her. There were blows, and her husband briefly appeared to escape the group of soldiers. Two or three of the rapists chased him, he was caught and brought back. Using a long-blade work knife, the soldiers then hacked him to death, leaving his body in front of A.K. She herself lay on the ground injured and bleeding. The soldiers said they would return for her. When she had recovered enough to travel, she gathered her five children and father, and left on foot. They caught a boat to Bangladesh at Parampur Crossing.
Having abandoned their homes to escape rape and other physical violence, Rohingya refugee women continued to be terrorized in other ways during flight.
Mohammad Shah (M.S.), thirty, from Azarbil, Maungdaw, arrived in Bangladesh on February 13, 1992. He recounted what happened to a group of about 200 Muslims from the Azarbil area in Burma who left for Bangladesh about January 3, 1992. The group included M.S.'s best friend, his uncle and many neighbors.
His friend returned to Azarbil in a panic later the same day, describing how the group was stopped by Burmese civilians and soldiers, and how he had fled the scene. A day later, a villager reported to M.S. that his uncle was now in the military post called Napru Camp. He went to the camp but learned nothing. He distinctly recalled the screaming of women from buildings at the camp. On January 5, M.S. himself discovered his uncle's body floating on the river near their village. The following day, M.S. found more bodies, this timefour females, floating near the same place. He recognized them as his neighbors, from the group that had departed for the border.
Fatema Khatun (F.K.), thirty, arrived in Bangladesh on March 5, 1992. She left Goalangi village, Buthidaung, on February 26, together with her son, husband, father, father-in-law, mother-in-law, and two brothers-in-law, and a group of 600 to 700 people. F.K. and her son had trouble keeping up, as she suffers from high blood pressure and her son had injured his left foot badly on the trail.
On March 3, as the group of refugees neared the Daijarkhal river, they saw SLORC soldiers for the first time on the trip. There were about forty to fifty armed soldiers on both sides of the stream, and soon the crowd was completely surrounded. F.K. and her son had fallen behind, and separated from the group on the top of a little hill, were not spotted. Suddenly, the soldiers began firing into the crowd. Everyone tried to flee or drop to the ground as the firing continued. F.K. kept her eyes on her family members in the group as best she could. She clearly saw her father shot in the chest and saw her husband take at least one bullet as well.
F.K. and her son hid until the firing stopped and then had no choice but to continue their escape on foot, alone. They walked for two more days; by then they had no food. Over the whole nine-day trek, the two of them ate rice only three times. Eventually they met a small groups of refugees also traveling to the river, but F.K. could find none of her family among them. At Balukhali Crossing, 200 to 250 people had gathered to hire boats to Bangladesh. F.K. could identify just about one hundred from her original group.
22 For other testimonies, see Asia Watch, "Burma: Rape, Forced Labor . . ."
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