Myanmar’s army said on Sunday that a mass grave of 28 Hindus had been discovered in violence- wracked Rakhine state, blaming the killings on Muslim Rohingya militants.
The announcement could not be independently verified in a region that has been seized by communal violence since Rohingya militant raids on August 25 triggered a sweeping security crackdown.
“Security members found and dug up 28 dead bodies of Hindus who were cruelly violently and killed by ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists in Rakhine State,” a statement posted on the army chief’s website said.
Hindus living in Ye Baw Kya village said that militants entered the village on August 25, killed many people and carried others off into the forest, the report stated.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) is the group whose raids on police posts in August triggered a military backlash that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing for Bangladesh.
Hundreds of Hindus are caught in the crossfire between Myanmar's military and Rohingya insurgents. They have fled to Bangladesh, and are placing their hopes on the Narendra Modi government in India.
Nearly 500 are sheltered in a cleared-out chicken farm in a Hindu hamlet in Bangladesh's southeast, a couple of miles from where most of the Rohingya Muslims who have also fled violence in Myanmar since August 25 are living in makeshift camps.
The Hindu refugees say they are scared of going back to their villages in Buddhist-majority Myanmar's restive Rakhine state, but also wary of staying in mostly Muslim Bangladesh.
The Indian government, meanwhile, is making it easier for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other minorities from Bangladesh and Pakistan to gain citizenship in India.
