Two members of same family killed by police in Buthidaung town

May 25, 2017

Buthidaung- A grandmother and her grandson were killed by armed police in Buthidaung last month, according to testimonies of surviving family members who have escaped to Bangladesh.

On Monday, Nurul Islam alleged that his mother and son were killed by armed police on April 27 near their home in Jabbar para hamlet, Ward 4 of Buthidaung town.

“Shortly after asr prayers, a rickshaw puller informed us that my mother had been killed by police near our home,” says Nurul Islam.

Hearing the account, Islam and some of his family members rushed to the spot. Howerver, his son 18 year Jaber who was more headstrong than the others rushed to the scene without taking any precautions. As soon as armed police saw him, they attacked him with sharp weapons. Jaber also died from the attack.

Following the incident, Nurul Islam, took off with his wife and two daughters and ran away from Buthidaung town. They reached Don Khali in Maungdaw South and hid in the hills for days before getting the opportunity to cross over in to Bangladesh, around two weeks after the murder of their two family members.

Nurul Islam says there is a chance that he and his other family members would have been killed by police had they stayed on in Myanmar.

The case has so far not been documented.

Information from Buthidaung area is often hard to get because of the remoteness and absence of telecommunications.

Many recently arrived refugees from Buthidaung are relaying gruesome accounts of atrocities committed by the Tatmadaw and other security forces, but very few of these accounts have been documented so far.