Myanmar Refugees Tell of Atrocities; ‘A Soldier Cut His Throat’

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Bleak memories...
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She had just finished taking the cows to pasture that morning when soldiers in olive-green uniform stormed her village in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. She said her absence saved her life.

“The military shot my father, and then as he lay on the ground a soldier cut his throat,” she said.

In a refugee camp on the border, Sukhutara, who goes by one name, sobbed as she described how troops dragged her mother and several other women into a hut. She heard screams from inside. Then the soldiers came out and set the hut ablaze.

In recent weeks, Myanmar’s army has launched a counterinsurgency in Rakhine, clearing villages inhabited by the Rohingya Muslim minority and prompting at least 500,000 people to flee into Bangladesh, the United Nations said Thursday. The military and army-backed militias have killed about 3,000 people, according to Bangladesh’s government and rights groups.

The U.N. Security Council met Thursday to debate the crisis as a bipartisan group of senators in Washington urged the Trump administration to help resolve it. “Despite international condemnation, the Burmese authorities incredibly continue to deny the atrocities,” they said in a letter.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar, says troops have been hunting militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who attacked police posts and an army base Aug. 25.