KALADAN NEWS

Dated: June 22, 2005

 


Army and Mob Kill Children, Demolish Houses

 

Buthidaung, June 22: 3 children were murdered and 3 houses in the village were also ransacked at the hands of an unruly mob comprising army personnel and Natala (model) villagers, said a villager who recently crossed border into Bangladeshi soil, confirmed to Kaladan Press network.

 

Hamid Bokshu, 40, a senior assistant teacher of Taung Bazar Government High School under Buthidaung Township had grown a garden of 4 acres of land near a mountain. It has been planted many kinds of trees including fruit bearing trees.

 

A Natala villager was appointed as a gate keeper since 2002 for the garden to avoid disturbances from nearby army camp and Natala villagers, he further said.

 

Every year, the garden had been normally cleaned 2 to 3 times by at least 10 laborers and this year also engaged the same laborers to clean up the garden, but the gate keeper barred them to do the same as before on June 4, 2005. So, some laborers furiously tied up the gate keeper with a rope to a tree and worked all the day. However, laborers set free the gate keeper at the time of their return, said a relative of Village Peace & Development Council (VPDC) Chairman.

 

Being released, the gate keeper immediately appraised the event of arrest to the battalion No.522 and his Natala villagers.

 

Following the matter, the next day, 10 soldiers from Battalion No.552 accompanied by 20 other Natala villagers went to the house of the owner of the garden and the VPDC Chairman's house to arrest them on June 5, 2005, while they arrested 15 males and 20 females including children from nearby 13 houses and completely destroyed 3 houses as their failure of to arrest the VPDC chairman and the owner of the garden.

 

The arrestees were tied with ropes and kept them in a field in the open sky while the temperature was very high.  The arrestees were also severely beaten up by the army while they were affected by the fluctuation. In the meantime, 3 children were dead on the field for the cause of high temperature.

 

In the evening, 8 males and all the females including children were set free by army but 7 others male were brought to the (their camp) army camp, later they were sent to Buthidaung police station on June 7, 2005.

 

Hamid Bokshu, the owner of the garden, his wife Latifa Begum and VPDC Chairman Noor Hossain were going into hiding to avoid the arrest. But their whereabouts are still unknown.

 

Natala villages means model villages which were established in Arakan State by the present ruling military junta calling non- Rohingya Buddhists from proper Burma and within Arakan State even from Bangladesh. They are mostly notorious; drug addicts and long term jailors. They were brought to Arakan State giving them promise by ruling junta that if they went to Arakan, they would be set free from long term jails. ##



For more information, please contact at:

Phone: +880 11 227 138

Email: kaladanpress@yahoo.com

Website: www.kaladanpress.org