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The Chut Pyin Massacre : Forensic Evidence of Violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar
Report Written by Tamaryn Nelson, MPA, Physicion for Human Rights (PHR), USA.
On August 27, 2017, Myanmar security forces and Rakhine Buddhist civilians attacked the village of Chut Pyin in northern Rakhine state, massacring its Rohingya Muslim residents and burning their homes to the ground. The attackers perpetrated a vast array of human rights violations on the Rohingya villagers, including killings, disappearances, beatings, stabbings, rape, and forcible displacement. It is estimated that some 400 Chut Pyin villagers, including 99 children, were killed that day or are missing – including a group of 50 men who were taken away and never seen again. Similar attacks have killed thousands of Rohingya and pushed at least 720,000 refugees into neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017.
As part of a broad effort to secure forensic evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) interviewed and conducted forensic examinations of 22 survivors – men, women, and children – of the Chut Pyin massacre. The injuries PHR doctors documented, including gunshot wounds, blunt-force trauma, lacerations, and more, serve as clear medical evidence to corroborate the survivors’ accounts of shooting attacks, beatings, stabbings, and other forms of violence which occurred on that day. Based on the forensic examinations and the consistent and detailed testimony of these Chut Pyin survivors, as well as corroborating information from additional credible sources, PHR believes that the savagery inflicted on the people of Chut Pyin is a typical example of the widespread and systematic campaign that Myanmar authorities have waged against the Rohingya people – acts that should be investigated as crimes against humanity.
For centuries, Muslim Rohingya people have lived in Rakhine state on the western coast of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country. Since the Myanmar military junta stripped the Rohingya of citizenship in 1982, the Rohingya have been stateless and subjected to decades of human rights violations, including denial of the right to health and education, limited political participation, restrictions on freedom of movement, forced displacement, arbitrary detentions and killings, forced labor, and trafficking, among other abuses.1
Following alleged attacks on Myanmar security forces by the insurgent Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army in October 2016, and again in August 2017, the Myanmar military unleashed attacks on Rohingya communities2 which have driven more than 720,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh from August 2017 to June 2018.3
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has conducted three visits to Bangladesh since October 2017 to interview and carry out forensic medical examinations of Rohingya survivors of these attacks. This report focuses on the events that occurred in the village of Chut Pyin as an example of what happened in dozens of villages in Rakhine state: the Rohingya villagers faced a host of human rights violations, including killings; detentions and disappearances; physical assault involving beatings, stabbings, and mutilations; rape and other forms of sexual violence; and forced displacement in the form of looting and burning of homes.
Several survivors interviewed by PHR, many of them women and children, faced multiple violations. Most survivors did not have access to adequate emergency medical care. They then endured a 150-kilometer (roughly 100-mile) journey, often walking for up to 10-12 days, to seek refuge in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh.
