Two Myanmar soldiers have revealed that they were told to ‘shoot what you hear’ as they ‘wiped out’ villages of Rohingya Muslims, raped women and executed children.
The confessions are believed to be the first made by soldiers directly involved in the genocide, which the Myanmar government described as a ‘clearance campaign’ to remove terrorists from Rakhine state.
The privates, one of whom admitted to raping a woman, said they were ordered to ‘exterminate all Kalar’ (a derogatory word for Rohingya) and described how they marauded through villages, slaughtering young and old alike.
More than 700,000 Rohingya had fled Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the atrocities since August 2017. Myanmar’s government has denied accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.
Fortify Rights, which obtained the footage, said privates Myo Win Tun, 33, and Zaw Naing Tun, 30, who served in separate light infantry battalions, gave ‘the names and ranks of 19 direct perpetrators from the Myanmar army, including themselves, as well as six senior commanders they claim ordered or contributed to atrocity crimes against Rohingya.’
The soldiers are believed to be in the custody of the International Criminal Court at the Hague and were filmed in July after they were detained by the Arakan Army, an ethnic guerrilla group in Rakhine fighting against the Burmese. It is not clear whether the allegations by the soldiers were made under duress.
Myo Win Tun said the commander of the 15th Military Operations Center, whom he named as Col. Than Htike, gave an order to ‘shoot all you see and all you hear’ when raiding Muslim villages.
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