Myanmar military denies atrocities against Rohingya Muslims
By ESTHER HTUSAN, Associated Press
Published: November 14, 2017, 8:52pm
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A view of the Hakim Para camp of Rohingya refugees in Ukhiya, Bangladesh, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017. More than 600,000 members of the Muslim minority have fled to Bangladesh since August, when Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar police and paramilitary posts, and security forces responded with a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad) Photo Gallery
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — Myanmar’s military issued its most forceful denial yet that security forces committed atrocities during “clearance operations” in the west of the country, saying an internal investigation had absolved them of any wrongdoing in a crisis that has triggered the largest refugee exodus in Asia in decades.
The report contradicts consistent statements from ethnic Rohingya Muslim refugees now in Bangladesh — some with gunshot wounds and severe burns — who have described massacres, rape, looting and the burning of hundreds of villages by Myanmar’s army and civilian mobs.
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