“My village was under a genocidal attack. We had no escape but to run to Bangladesh.”
Anika*, 29, recalled how she had fled her home—located in Buthidaung Township’s Taung Bazar village in northern Rakhine State—along with her husband and daughter in 2017, escaping the lethal, targeted violence of a “clearing operation” that the Myanmar military carried out on August 25.
She remembered how the army troops had entered the village, arresting at least 50 people on suspicion of links to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya armed group that had claimed responsibility for attacks on police outposts in the township.
The military’s response, inflicted indiscriminately on entire Rohingya communities, was brutal.
