Page 74 - Beautiful Rohingyas

72 Rohingyalar Güzeldir

The captain of the small fishing vessel has spent most of
his life helping fellow Rohingya Muslims escape persecu-
tion and hatred in Myanmar, but now even he is worried
about the panicked pace the exodus has taken in
recent weeks. "Everyone is going now," Puton Nya said.
"I'm afraid that soon, no one will be left."
Puton Nya indicated that he helped Rakhine Muslims by
taking them to the ships waiting in the Bay of Bengal. A
neighbor of Puton Nya told him that the human traffick-
ers raped women and brutally beat men on the cargo
boats.
Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project which was
formed to defend the rights of Arakanese Muslims, also
added that more than 15,000 people left Arakan to go
to Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries since 15
October. This figure is twice as much as those who left
the region in the same period last year.
Noting that almost 100,000 people fled Myanmar in the
last two year, Lewa emphasized that soldiers and border
protection units increased acts of violence in order to
"cause fear in the region and incite the Arakanese Mus-
lims to escape" in the last months.
Lewa stated that four people were tortured to death,
young people taken into custody for no reason were
battered by soldiers and more than 140 people from 24
villages were arrested for opposing to the migration law
and having connections with extremists in the last two
months.

(Quoted in Turkish from www.risalehaber.com )