The massacre of 99 Hindus by Rohingyas could qualify as an international crime, a UN investigator has said during a press briefing. Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), while responding to media questions on the situation in the country, said that the incident is a very serious one and could qualify as an international crime.
This significant statement by the United Nations (UN) is perhaps the first one acknowledging just one of the many crimes against Hindus albeit it comes three years after Amnesty International finally confirmed the massacre.
Referring to Amnesty International’s investigative report, a journalist asked the UN investigator, “Are you also investigating other crimes by non-state actors, for example, Amnesty International documented the massacre of 99 Hindus in August 2017. Do you have anything to report on that?”
Nicholas Koumjian responded by saying, “Our mandate is to investigate crimes regardless of the ethnicity, religion, and citizenship of the victims over the perpetrators. So we are looking at the non-state actors and the incident that you’re talking about we are very well aware of. I am not going to go into this cause I don’t list every incident we are working on for a variety of reasons. But I would say we are looking at actions by non-state actors, the particular incident you talk about was very serious and deserving of attention.”
“There are many other reports more recently also about assassinations or killings of people who are suspected to be informants for the military authorities. We are very concerned with that and we are looking at that. There are issues about whether those qualify as serious international crimes but we will continue to look at those. But the incident you are talking about massacre of close to a hundred people is very serious and could qualify as an international crime,” he added.
An investigation carried out by Amnesty International in May 2018 revealed that an armed Rohingya group is responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu men, women and children as well as unlawful abductions in August 2017.
The report gives details of the massacre in Kha Maung Seik in August 2017, killing Hindus, executing style, sparing those who agreed to ‘convert’ to Islam. The report also states other killings and violent attacks against other ethnic and minority communities by the Rohingya terrorists.
“Eight Hindu women and eight of their children were abducted and spared after ARSA fighters forced the women to agree to “convert” to Islam. The survivors were forced to flee with the fighters to Bangladesh several days later, before being repatriated to Myanmar in October 2017 with the support of the Bangladeshi and Myanmar authorities,” an excerpt from the report read.
Amnesty reportedly based its report on dozens of interviews conducted in Rakhine and across the border in Bangladesh and threw light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters, who have sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks.
The report was significant in the face of the Hindu genocide denial by Left-liberals and Islamists especially considering that it came from their ilk. Amnesty International shut shop in September 2020 after the Indian government froze all its accounts on the charges that the so-called NGO circumvented FCRA regulations.
Mass graves with bodies of Hindus showed the bloodbath that they were subjected to
The Myanmar Army stated on 24 September 2017 that a mass grave of 28 Hindus had been discovered in the Rakhine state. The Myanmar Army confirmed that they found 20 dead women and eight men in the graves, including six boys under the age of ten.
“They slaughtered the men. We were told not to look at them … They had knives. They also had some spades and iron rods. … We hid ourselves in the shrubs there and were able to see a little … My uncle, my father, my brother – they were all slaughtered,” Time quoted an 18-year-old Raj Kumari from the Amnesty report.
Another 46 Hindu villagers disappeared, suspected to have been killed by the Rohingya terrorists. Time claimed that Amnesty said that there were inconsistencies in several refugee accounts after Hindu survivors escaped to Bangladesh. These inconsistencies, it said, were the result of “pressures and threats to personal safety,” with ARSA forcing the victims to pin the Hindu massacres on Buddhist Rakhine villagers’ return.
After the Hindu survivors returned to Myanmar in October, they “unambiguously asserted that Rohingya believed to be ARSA fighters, were responsible”. The witness testimony was reportedly backed by forensic analysis of 31 photos of exhumed bodies done by Amnesty.
Just a day after the 28 bodies were recovered, another mass grave with 17 bodies of Hindus was found barely 200 metres from the previous mass grave. According to a report by Times Now, 300 Rohingyas had abducted 100 Hindus on 25th August and killed 92 of them. This was the same time when Rohingyas were using their battle with Myanmar forces to slaughter Hindus.
According to several Hindu refugees, they fled their lands after the Rohingya terrorists came to attack them with weapons like swords, guns and even spears. The hundreds of attackers reportedly burnt the Hindus’ homes and even shouted that Rakhine is an Islamic state.
The report even quoted a Bangladeshi aid worker who claimed that the Rohingya terrorists have problems with both the Myanmar military and the common people who inhabit the region. The aid worker also claimed that the terrorists were evicting, torturing and killing the Hindu families.
Rohingyas have infiltrated Indian states
The carnage the Islamists unleashed on Hindus in Rakhine state was not enough that the Rohingyas, in the garb of refugees, illegally entered India and have settled in Muslim-dominated areas including Nuh, where Hindu hatred runs rampant.
Security agencies in Uttar Pradesh reportedly detained 16 Rohingya Muslims in Western UP between January 2021 and 22nd June 2022. According to data, the UP ATS apprehended at least one Rohingya illegal immigrant each from Unnao, Noida, and Aligarh on 2nd March 2021.
The illegal influx of Rohingyas is a serious problem given what happened in Rakhine and also given the several cases of smuggling, human trafficking and anti-social, anti-India, and anti-Hindu activities the community is known to have been indulging in.
The community has also illegally taken shelter in several areas in Northeastern states. Many continue to live across India with forged identities including fake Aadhaar cards, and voter IDs, and receive financial aid too.
