Eight Hindu women likely to become witnesses for Hindu massacre case

28 September 2017
Eight Hindu women likely to become witnesses for Hindu massacre case
Photo: Thura/Mizzima

A total of eight Hindu women said to have been taken to Bangladesh will be called on to be brought back to stand as witnesses in a case in which Hindu villagers in Rakhine State were murdered and buried in makeshift graves.
A mass grave of many Hindu corpses was found in Khamaung Seik Village tract in Maungdaw area recently.
The Myanmar government claims the people were murdered by the ARSA terrorist group.
Tatmadaw News Information Committee spokesman Major General Aung Ye Win says, “A sure thing is that they did not murder their relatives. In the long run… when we make an investigation, the truth will be known. This is true story.”
On September 27, local and foreign journalists, including a team from Mizzima, brought to see the burial site and corpses.
Spokesman Major General Aung Ye Win said that the government was making efforts to bring back the alleged eye witnesses to Myanmar.
It is said that a person from Yebaw Kya village who fled to Bangladesh telephoned a Hindu leader Ni Maw from Maungdaw and currently in Sittwe to alert him to the mass grave.
According to a government statement on September 24: “On August 25, about 300 ARSA terrorists arrested about 100 people from Yebaw Kya Village. And when they arrived about 100 metres from the village, they killed the men and women, and then they forced eight Hindu women to convert to Islam.”
A local police official attempted to explain what happened to the visiting journalists at the site on September 27.
“Men were put here. And women were put in the hut, on the left side, we saw on the road. Seven or eight women were forced to covert to Islam. The religious leader from here will tell about how they were forced to convert to Islam. After forcing them to convert to Islam, those women were not killed and they were brought to the neighbouring country,” Police Colonel OkkarKo told the visiting media.
As a result of the violence that began on August 25, 93 Hindus from Yebaw Kya and Ta Mann Tha villages in Khamaung Seik Village-tract in Maungdaw area went missing, according to the authorities. 
The ARSA terrorist group this week issued a statement on Twitter denying involvement in the massacre of the Hindu villagers.