MEIKTILA: The thugs ordered Kyaw not to look as they killed his classmates, but the terrified teenager still caught glimpses of the merciless beatings as a wave of anti-Muslim killing engulfed his school town in central Myanmar, leaving dozens dead.
“They used steel chains, sticks and knives… there were hundreds of people. They beat anyone who tried to look at them,” the 16-year-old told AFP.
Kyaw’s small madrasa (Islamic school) on the outskirts of Meiktila town was razed during sectarian bloodshed in March that triggered an outbreak of Buddhist-Muslim violence across the country.
Officially 44 people were killed — although some fear the toll was much higher — and thousands were left homeless.
Kyaw, whose name AFP changed to protect his identity, escaped serious injury, but his school friends — who he saw as “brothers” — were not so fortunate.
“Five students from my class were killed,” he said, with a quiet precision belying his haunted expression.
March 20 began as usual for the students, who traded jokes as they gathered in the school’s mosque.
But by afternoon the centre of town was already seething after an argument in a gold shop and the brutal murder of a Buddhist monk.
As word spread that Muslim areas were being torched, the students took shelter in nearby undergrowth, hiding overnight as a mob descended and set the school alight.
The next morning, security personnel evacuated local Muslims. Kyaw and his friends were marched through a hostile crowd which hit them with stones and sticks. A few students retaliated. Some strayed or were pulled out and set upon.
The horrors that followed have been pieced together by rights group Physicians for Human Rights who, quoting eyewitnesses, described a Buddhist mob — including men in monks’ robes — hunting down and killing some 20 students and four teachers.
Witnesses recounted seeing one pupil being decapitated and several being burned alive, according to a May report by the US-based group.
Graphic video footage given to AFP by activists shows an embankment next to the school turned into a killing ground.
In one sequence, a man is chased out of the undergrowth by an armed mob. One man hits him so hard with a wooden pole that the weapon snaps in two before a robed monk joins the savage beating.
Several more videos show charred corpses dumped in hastily-made pyres. “When I arrived there I saw piles of bodies still burning,” said local Buddhist political activist Myint Myint Aye, adding that she believes the death toll was closer to 100. (AP)