Sofian Khan: Myanmar’s military and local Buddhists responded to a Rohingya Muslim separatist attacks on military outposts with a campaign of rape, massacre and arson driving about 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.
According to over a dozen of teachers, elders and religious, educated Rohingyas are subject to the systematic and widespread harassment, arrests and torture were singled out, part of Myanmar’s operation to drive the Muslim Rohingya from majority Buddhist Myanmar.
They targeted the educated class so no one if left to speak up against the pervasive abuse.
Hasim, interviewed at one of the teeming Bangladesh refugee camps along the hilly border with Myanmar said, “My brother apologised and pleaded with the military not to kill him; he showed them his ID card and said, `I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher.’ But the government had planned to kill our educated people, including my brother.”
Also a teacher, Hashim, ran for the hills and hid after the military surrounded his hamlet in northern Rakhine state, where most of the Rohingya lived. Others told similar accounts.
After the attacks on August 25, soldiers in Maung Nu village asked villagers: “Where are the teachers?” The penalty for standing up to authority can be harsh.