Myanmar Crackdown: Military Using Landmines to Harm Fleeing Rohingya
Local Editor
Amnesty International and Bangladeshi officials slammed Myanmar's military for using landmines against the Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence at home, causing many of the refugees to sustain serious injuries or lose their body organs.
In this respect, the United Nations said 300,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since the Myanmar military unleashed another deadly campaign against the Rohingya-majority Rakhine State two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, both Bangladeshi officials and Amnesty International experts believe new landmines have been recently planted, including one that the rights group said blew off a Bangladeshi farmer's leg and another that wounded a Rohingya man. Both incidents occurred Sunday.
AP reporters in Bangladesh on Monday saw an elderly woman injured by a landmine. She had devastating leg wounds: one leg with the calf apparently blown off and the other also badly injured. Relatives said she had stepped on a landmine.
Amnesty said, based on interviews with eyewitnesses and analyses by weapons experts, there was "targeted use of landmines" along a narrow stretch of the northwestern border of Rakhine State that is a crossing point from Myanmar to Bangladesh for fleeing Rohingya Muslims.
Myanmar's forces have been attacking Rohingya Muslims and torching their villages in Rakhine State since October 2016. The attacks have seen a sharp rise since August 25, following a number of armed attacks on police and military posts in the troubled western state.
The latest eruption of violence in Rakhine has killed more than 1,000 people, according to the UN.
International criticism of Myanmar's atrocities against Rohingya Muslims has been mounting, with protests around the world decrying the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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