A Rohingya refugee gang-raped by soldiers before seeing her family slaughtered and burnt to death in front of her never wants to return to Myanmar, a year on from the massacre.
Dildar Begum only has 11-year-old daughter Nur as a comfort and fellow survivor of military-led ‘scorched-earth’ violence that broke out a year ago on Saturday.They are among those who managed to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where it is now estimated almost 1million of Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic-minority Rohingya refugees are living as a result of the latest crisis.
Aid agencies such as Unicef, who have been helping Dildar and others, are warning on ongoing torture, monsoon flooding risks and a lack of access to food, water and medical aid.
Dildar, 30, told how haunting memories of the atrocity - including her husband being stabbed to death in front of her and her daughter being attacked with a machete - are seldom far from her mind but have been exacerbated by the approaching anniversary.
She said: ‘Last night I cried because this time last year, I was cooking chicken for my children and preparing the house for Eid - it was a normal day but a few hours later, I lost my family.’
Soldiers stormed her village of Tula Toli in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, setting homes on fire and prompting her to grab her children and try to run.
She was carrying her three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son, while Nur was holding her brother aged four - but only Dildar and Nur would survive.
Dildar recalled: ‘We didn’t get far because the military were waiting for us.
‘They gathered up the men and slaughtered them.
‘They slaughtered my husband in front of my eyes - I can’t even explain to you the feeling I get when I think of that moment.’
Women and children were ushered into an empty home, where she was ‘hit over the head with a sharp object and fell unconscious’.
Dildar said: ‘When I opened my eyes, I saw that a member of the military was raping me - and then another, and another - but I was unable to move.
‘Finally I managed to crawl across the floor and that was when I saw that my three youngest children had been killed and were lying in their own blood next to me.’
She found Nur, who was bleeding from the head after being attacked with a machete but also urging her mother to flee because the building was on fire.
They clambered over bodies, broke a window and managed to escape.
Dildar said: ‘There was chaos all around us - people were screaming, everywhere seem to be alight, and there was blood everywhere.
‘In total they killed 19 members of my family - they took them all and locked them in a house which they set on fire and everyone burnt to death.
‘That day, I feel like I died alongside my family.’
Some reports have suggestd 200 women and 300 children were killed in the Tula Toli massacre.
The pair managed to hide out in a jungle area for five days without food or water, waiting for military numbers to reduce on the border which they crossed before walking for another seven days.
Dildar later discovered at a Bangladeshi hospital that she was pregnant, but miscarried a few weeks later.
She and Nur found limited refuge at the Hakimpara camp, described by Dildar as ‘a jungle, mud everywhere, no roads - just hundreds of thousands of people’.
They were given some bamboo and tarpaulin for a shelter but still have head pain as well as nightmares from the attack a year ago.
Dildar said: ‘My daughter is all I have now - she is everything to me. I hold her tight every night.
‘When I think of my other children, I just squeeze her so tight.’
Nur attends a Unicef learning centre - one of 1,200 set up - where she can socialise and gain some rudimentary schooling, but Unicef is warning that half a million Rohingya children risk missing out on essential education.
The agency has praised the Bangladeshi government for establishing enough basic services to avert ‘major disease outbreaks - for now’.
But they are urging the international community to not only support improved education services but also put pressure on the Myanmar government to provide better protection, services and conditions for refugees to return home.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week blamed ‘the danger of terrorist activities’ for her country’s crackdown on the Rohingya - but continues to face calls to be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize for the military’s scorched-earth approach.
Dildar, for one, has no plans to go back.
She said: ‘A year on, I wish we could get some justice for what has happened to us - the Rohingya people.
‘One thing I am sure of is that I will never go back to Myanmar ever again.
‘There is no one left in my village anyway.
‘The truth is, we don’t belong anywhere - nowhere is home for us.’
For more information or to support Unicef’s Rohingya efforts, see www.unicef.org.uk/donate/rohingya-refugees
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