A 13 year old Mro boy was found killed near the village of Tola Tuli of Maungdaw North two days after he went missing.
Maung Paw Wei, son of U May San went missing after going to the forest near the village’s grazing fields on April 25.
Local villagers say the boy along with three others were attending to their livestock in the grazing fields. The other three boys tending their own cattle returned to the village at around 4 pm and said their friend had followed two cows who had strayed into the woodlands. However, when after some time the boy did not return, his family became worried and alerted the whole community.
The villagers then gathered and combed the forests but did not locate the boy. The search continued the next day but yielded no results.
However on April 27, the villagers found the corpse of the boy with his throat slit near the abandoned Rohingya village of Tola Tuli.
Incidentally, men, women and children from Tola Tuli were massacred in the hundreds during the 2017 operations and the few survivors fled to Bangladesh, turning the area into a ‘ghost town’.
Villagers however claim smugglers frequently move around the area. The mountainous region provides cover to access well into Bangladesh territory where smuggled cows can be sold at considerably higher prices. It is also a rout for the smuggling of yaba tablets. The circumstances behind the boy’s murder can however not be confirmed.
The isolated Mro tribes inhabit remote hill regions and generally avoid contact with outsiders. They have refused continuous directives from the Tatmadaw to come down from their mountainous habitats and take over abandoned Rohingya settlements.
The murder has however shaken the Mro village and many fear whether the violence of Arakan would finally catch up with their secluded and peaceful community.
