Myanmar army admits killing of Rohingya for the first time

12, Jan 2018 | CJP Team

The BBC reported that Myanmar’s army has for the first time acknowledged that its personnel “were involved in the killing of Rohingya Muslims” in its Rakhine state. Myanmar’s army said that an enquiry had revealed that four members of Myanmar’s security forces “were involved in the killing of 10 people in Inn Din village near Maungdaw,” the BBC said. In December, the military had said it would probe a grave with ten skeletons that was discovered near the village. The military posted the investigation’s outcome on its commander-in-chief’s Facebook page, saying, “It is true that both the villagers and security forces admitted they killed the 10 Bengali terrorists,” which is how they typically refer to Rohingya militants, the BBC said. Myanmar does not consider the Rohingya as “an indigenous ethnic minority,” with the military claiming to fight Bengali insurgents, Newsweek has noted. “This incident happened because ethnic Buddhist villagers were threatened and provoked by the terrorists,” the military said. A military crackdown in late August 2017 sent more than 650,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, “with terrible stories of mass murder, rape and torture,” the BBC said, adding that they have alleged that military, supported by Buddhist mobs, burned their villages and killed civilians. In November, Myanmar’s army released the results of an internal probe, and cleared itself of any wrongdoing, denying that it killed any Rohingya, razed their villages, or raped women and girls, making its recent acknowledgement of killings a rare one, according to the BBC.