Rohingya refugees: Myanmar hiding five other mass graves

More than two dozen Rohingya Muslims now in refugee camps in Bangladesh confirmed the existence of at least five mass graves in the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin following the military’s clearance operations, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Myanmar’s military in August launched attacks against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state days after militants attacked security posts. More than 650,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh, detailing stories of mass assaults and killings. The Myanmar government denied the accusations and acknowledged only one mass grave in the village of Inn Din. But several villagers in interviews and time-stamped videos confirmed at least three mass graves near the village’s northern entrance, where witnesses said soldiers gathered and killed a majority of the Rohingya. Some other witnesses said the soldiers dug graves close to a hillside cemetery near a school, where more than 100 soldiers stood guard after the massacre. Kadir, a 24-year-old firewood collector who survived the massacre, found two of his friends among the bodies in two graves. “It was a mixed-up jumble of corpses piled on top of each other,” he said. “I felt such sorrow for them.” Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special envoy on human rights in Myanmar, also known as Burma, said the military operations against the Rohingya bear “the hallmarks of a genocide.”