NPR

Rohingya Militants Massacred Hindus, Amnesty Says: 'They Were All Slaughtered'

Amnesty International alleges a Rohingya insurgent group killed dozens of villagers last August. Afterward, Myanmar launched a campaign that one U.N. official says bears the "hallmarks of genocide."
Hindu women cry at the site of a mass grave that Myanmar troops said they found last September in Maungdaw township. Amnesty International says local village leaders identified dozens of corpses unearthed from the graves the week before.

Last September, military officials in Myanmar told international journalists that they had found a mass grave of Hindus in Rakhine state, a month after the country began a bloody crackdown on the minority Rohingya Muslim population.

There, in the center of a region already submerged in widespread violence, troops gathered local Hindus in a field to identify dozens of bodies, many of whom were the residents' friends and family.

The Myanmar military blamed the massacre on on security outposts the month before. But the military's announcement made little impression at the time. Myanmar was already allegedly of its own in response to the attacks, opening a brutal operation described by the United Nations and others as ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

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