Case Number

20241118KE

Case Date of Filing

18/11/2024

Suspected/Known Time of Incident

Local Time and Date: Exact time unknown.

12 to 13 November 2016

Case Researcher(s)

Kennan McAndrews and Genevieve Wilhelm

Summary

After about a month of pressuring villagers to hand over suspected “rebels,” soldiers entered Dar Gyi Zar, a village of more than 400 houses, on November 12. The army reportedly spotted militants several kilometres north of the village and engaged in a two-hour shootout before the militants fled to neighboring Yae Khat Ghaung Gwa Son. At around 4 pm that afternoon, helicopters swarmed the road connecting Dar Gyi Zar with Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son and sprayed bullets across a crowd that had gathered. Fighting stopped that night, but at dawn the next day (November 13), the villages were encircled by the military, who fired at villagers. Groups of men, women, and children were taken into paddy fields where they were separated by gender. The men and boys were then summarily executed. Soldiers reportedly raped the women. The violence was not limited to Dar Gyi Zar, with surrounding settlements also targeted. Bodies were burned using petrol, hay, rice, and clothes as fuel for the flames.

Case Location

Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son

Town/Region/Country:

Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, Maungdaw District, Rakhine State

Location: 20.954016437721, 92.32762439821771

Evidence of Burning: The NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) tracks active fires and thermal anomalies on the earth’s surface using infrared and spectroradiometer imaging from satellites. Data collected can be viewed on the FIRMS Fire Map. Between November 12, 2016 and November 15, 2016, the FIRMS map recorded several active fires in the villages of Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, corroborating reports of the destruction of property and houses through burning.

Location of Grave:

While videos and images from social media and other news sources show several locations where victims were killed, they also show the bodies being moved from these locations. Testimony from survivors also indicates that some bodies were burned where they were executed in the fields, while videos clearly show bodies being retrieved from riverbanks. Our investigation could not determine where those bodies were relocated to and if they were buried or cremated. Traditional Islamic burial practices indicate that the bodies were likely buried.According to Google Maps, there are two mosques in Dar Gyi Zar- the Southern Mosque and the Salefarang bor Mosque. Additionally, there is a mosque North of the village. These locations may have associated graveyards where individuals were buried. Analysis of the mosques in the village did not show notable signs of excavation following the attack, suggesting that there was not a mass grave constructed at either site (although this cannot rule out the presence of individual graves).Photos of skeletonized bodies surfaced on social media platform X in January of 2017 claiming to be from mass grave uncovered in Dar Gyi Zar. A specific location was not attached to the photos and no further information was able to be obtained about this discovery or the bodies depicted in the photos.

Potential Location #1:

Southern Mosque: 20.94838907489724, 92.3304727729308

Potential Grave Location

Potential Location #2:

Cemetery: 20.962277705910452, 92.34492777435884

Northern Mosque: 20.953384270096105, 92.32365818916136

Casualties

Total Suspected/Known Number of Casualties:

170 (PBS Frontline)

Injured:

unknown

Fatalities in Incident:

170

Fatalities in Grave:

unknown

Further Casualty Information:

Age Range: infants as young as one year old to adults

Genders: Males and Females

Ethnicity/ies: Rohingya

Religion: Muslim

Suspected or Known Aggressors

Group/Tribe/Militia/Organisation:

Tatmadaw - Myanmar Armed Forces, umbrella term for the combined armed forces including the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Border Guard Police – a department of Myanmar Police Force which operates in the northern Rakhine State along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Distinct from the Border Guard Forces, which are a branch of the Myanmar Army

Suspected/Known Quantity of Participants:

Approximately 250 (KPN 13)

Aggressor Evidence Below:

Testimony of Sau Raw Gazi Bil, inhabitant of Dar Gyi Zar - “They entered our village early in the morning. All the people were ordered to come out and go into a field. Everyone was made to put their hands behind their heads. When we came out, they burned our houses. There were about 250 soldiers. They separated the men and the women. They burned down all the houses, but left one house. All the women, including me were made to go into that house. It was a large store house. They shut the door. Then I heard gunshots and men screaming. At sunset, the military left, and we came outside, and we saw that all the men had been killed and their bodies burned. There were 29 bodies. They were all my relatives, including my husband. I went and searched among the bodies. I found my husband’s charred remains. I had a stick and when I touched the body with it, it disintegrated. I could recognize my husband, my four brothers, and my nephew. We all lived together. The bodies were in different places in the field. Someone smelled petrol. Some of those killed were young boys, aged twelve to fourteen. Out of all the 14 houses in our section, they killed all the men and boys.”

(Source: Witness to Horror: Rohingya Women Speak Out About Myanmar Army Rape and Other Atrocities in Maungdaw, published by Kaladan Press Network, interviews conducted by Razia Sultana (lawyer in Chittagong, Bangladesh))

Testimony of Sau Raw Gazi Bil, inhabitant of Dar Gyi Zar[1] – “It was in the morning at 8 am. There were more than 15 soldiers. We saw people running from the other side of the village. We tried to run to the east of the village. 2 groups of soldiers surrounded us. We were made to sit down, heads bowed, hands behind our back. The ground was wet. They separated men and women. There were about 40 men including some children in one group, and 40 women and children in the other group. They shot the men and boys. They threw some of the bodies into houses and then set fire to the houses. And some bodies were burned in the field. My husband was shot in that group. Also two of my sons, aged eleven and seven, who were clinging to him so they went with the “men’s” group. They were shot too. My two younger sons were in my group, so they were saved.”

[1] Source lists two interviewees from Dar Gyi Zar with the same name. It is believed that these two interviewees are two separate people given the differences in their testimonies and their different recorded ages.

Conclusion:

In November 2016, the Myanmar Armed Forces began a crackdown in response to an armed insurgency conducted by a small, poorly armed militant group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). This crackdown provided the backdrop for a wide variety of human rights abuses. On November 12, soldiers entered the villages of Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, where they killed civilians of all ages, raped women and girls, and burned houses and property. While some of the killing was indiscriminate, testimony of survivors also indicates that men were a particular target, as men separated from women and summarily executed. Testimony also indicates that the bodies of the men executed were burned in the fields where they were executed. There is also evidence that bodies that were not burned were retrieved by survivors, but the final resting place of these individuals and whether they were given individual burials or a group burial is unknown. It is possible that they were interred in graveyards associated with mosques in the area of the two villages. Photos of skeletonized bodies accompanied by the claim that a mass grave had been discovered in Dar Gyi Zar appeared on the social media platform X in January 2017, but there was no way to verify their origins or if a mass grave had indeed been found. The skeletons may have been the remains of those who were executed and then burned in the fields surrounding the villages.

While a massacre resulting in many casualties took place, it is not possible to definitively establish the existence of a mass grave in the villages of Dar Gyi Zar and Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son.