“We must listen to the voices we can hear –- the voices of people standing in lines waiting for food, for a tarp, thinking of the living, but holding in their hearts the precious voices of those they’ve left behind. And we must also let those voices be heard. God help us listen well; God help us respond.”
Those are the haunting words of Christian aid worker David Eubank, after interviewing countless victims of the violence in Myanmar. The stories they are telling bring into focus the devastating reality of the staggering numbers.
More than 611,000 Rohingya people facing persecution in Myanmar have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, according to the latest data collected by the United Nations. In a survey of 517,643 of them, the U.N. refugee agency found that one-third are vulnerable.
Incredibly, aside from one short news burst in early September, scant coverage has been dedicated to this horrific scene:
“Fourteen percent are single mothers holding their families together with little support in harsh camp conditions. Others are struggling with serious health problems or disabilities,” UNHCR spokesperson Duniya Aslam Khan told reporters at a press briefing in Geneva on Nov. 7.
The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, are fleeing their villages in northwestern Myanmar to escape persecution, inter-communal violence and an ongoing conflict between insurgents and government forces.
Behind the worrying statistics are families and individuals who have experienced killings, sexual violence and other atrocities.
“These numbers are signposts to shattered lives,” Christian relief worker David Eubank wrote in a post on his organization’s website.
Eubank, a former U.S. Special Forces operative, recently visited Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with his humanitarian group, the Free Burma Rangers, which provides emergency medical care, shelter and food supplies to internally displaced people in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma. During the mission, Eubank conducted interviews and distributed food packs to 150 families.
The first round of interviews were conducted at Kutapalong refugee camp on the Teknaf Peninsula of Bangladesh, where Eubank said he spoke with a group of women through a translator. Their stories were equally heartbreaking and horrifying.
“And so the numbers I’d read began to give way, to faces, to names, to tears, to lives shattered. The first woman had lost her husband and two of her sons. The second had lost her husband. The third was a girl really, and was pointed out in hushed tones as one who had been raped. They were from the same village. They said they had been subject to restrictions for the last four years or so, but in the last year these had increased. There was a Burma Army outpost of about 50 soldiers in their village. They needed permission to travel anywhere, and a 6:30 p.m. curfew had been established. In the days leading up to the attack, they had heard rumors of attacks on villages. Finally, some eye-witnesses said soldiers were coming their way. In the middle of the night, they fled. They hid in a nearby grain barn and the Burma Army found them the next day.
The women estimated around 200 soldiers surrounded the barn and opened fire. The concrete walls mostly repelled this initial burst, though a couple of people were hit by bullets coming through the wooden door. The owner of the barn was found, along with a couple of other men, and executed on the spot. The people were trapped and the soldiers began pulling them out of the barn in groups of ten or so, men and women. They used the women’s scarves to tie the men up and then executed the men. The women were returned to the barn — except for a few of the younger ones who were taken back to the village. As night came the soldiers left, and all those who had survived fled. They reached the border after nine days of walking.
The girl in this group was one of those who had been pulled aside. She is 18. When the soldiers pulled her aside, she had at first tried to run. She was quickly caught and beaten with a rifle. She was taken back to the village, put alone –- that is, separate from any other girls –- in one of the newly abandoned houses, and gang raped by a group of eight or nine soldiers. Some of these she recognized as belonging to the army post that had been stationed in their village. Others were new. Afterward, they left her alone and she too escaped in the night with some of the other girls.
We interviewed one other woman that day, who was eight months pregnant when she fled with others from her village. She told us of meeting on the way a group of young men, not soldiers, dressed identically in white shorts and shirts and armed with guns like soldiers. These ‘boys’ opened fire on their group. Her 19-year-old son was shot next to her, went down; she held his head in her lap until they started coming towards her. She tried to drag him and run but didn’t have the strength. She ran to cover, then turned and watched as they shot him again and again, his body jumping with each bullet. She cried as she told this story, cried at the memory of him calling her, cried at her failure to save him. She had borne a baby girl just three days before I talked to her –- they brought her in and showed her to us with joy! –- but the life she had saved could not make up for the one she’d lost.”
Rohingya Muslims, dubbed by the United Nations as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced decades of discrimination, impoverishment and violence in the predominately Buddhist country. But tensions have worsened in the past year, especially since Aug. 25 when a Rohingya Muslim insurgent group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched a coordinated attack on Burmese authorities. The Burmese military has retaliated with brutal attacks against the entire Rohingya population.
A report released on Nov. 16 by Human Rights Watch found that Burmese security forces had committed widespread rape against women and girls since Aug. 25 “as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing” against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
Members of Myanmar’s security forces “raped and sexually assaulted women and girls both during major attacks on villages but also in the weeks prior to these major attacks sometimes after repeated harassment,” the report said.
Eubank and his team also interviewed two young Rohingya boys, a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old, at a hospital in Cox’s Bazar, a fishing port and district headquarters in Bangladesh.
“One was shot by soldiers in the leg and the other was asleep when soldiers set his house on fire and part of the roof collapsed on his leg before his father rescued him.”
Later, Eubank spoke with a Rohingya man at the hospital who had been shot in the leg.
“He was fleeing his village with his family when his 5-year-old daughter was shot dead right behind him. He turned to help her and soldiers came up and shot him in the leg. His brothers came back for him and carried him in a hammock for eight days to the border. We talked to a man whose wife of 35 years was killed as they fled together. His eyes had a bewildered look as he cried over the life he had lost.”
After the interviews, Eubank said he realized how important it was to meet the faces behind the statistics and listen to their stories.
“We must listen to the voices we can hear –- the voices of people standing in lines waiting for food, for a tarp, thinking of the living, but holding in their hearts the precious voices of those they’ve left behind. And we must also let those voices be heard. God help us listen well; God help us respond.”
To get even more perspective on this issue, and for ways to help, visit http://www.freeburmarangers.org/