Cattle from abandoned Rohingya villages sold to displaced
YANGON, Myanmar — Thousands of cows and goats grazed in abandoned fields and wandered through charred-out Rohingya Muslim villages after a military crackdown sent nearly a half-million members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted religious minorities fleeing across the border.
Now, more than a half-dozen witnesses told The Associated Press, soldiers and police are cashing in on the humanitarian catastrophe. They all spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
In violence-wracked northern Rakhine state, where village after village has been burned to the ground, security forces and local administrators have been collecting the livestock and bringing it by foot, truck and sometimes boat to Buddhist-controlled areas. The prized beasts are then being sold to traders and residents for $200 a head — a quarter of their value.
From there, cows are being taken to the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, where more than 120,000 Rohingya Muslims displaced by earlier violence in 2012 have been living in sprawling, apartheid-style camps that have been denied access to food and medical assistance. The AP has photos of seized cows being traded behind the state parliament building.