Qualla: Kha Maung Seik Massacre

Kha Maung Seik Massacre: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The phone call came from Bangladesh. One of the eight Hindu women who had been abducted from her village reached a community leader back in Myanmar and told him what had happened -- and where the bodies were buried. On 25 August 2017, in the cluster of villages known as Kha Maung Seik in northern Rakhine State, masked men had attacked the Bengali Hindu settlements, killing 99 civilians and dumping their bodies in hastily dug pits. A month would pass before search teams unearthed the first mass graves. The massacre, eventually attributed to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army by Amnesty International, revealed that Rakhine's violence was not a simple story of one group against another. It was a crisis in which the smallest minorities could be caught between forces on every side.

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Kha Maung Seik Massacre: The Smallest Minority

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bengali Hindus in Maungdaw District numbered roughly 5,000 people -- about one percent of the local population. They lived in small agricultural settlements alongside much larger Muslim communities, practicing their faith in a landscape dominated by other religions and other conf...

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Kha Maung Seik Massacre: Black Masks at Dawn

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Eyewitnesses described the attackers as men in black masks who spoke multiple languages, including the dialect shared by Rohingya and Hindu communities in the region. They moved through the village cluster known locally as Fwaira Bazar or Fakira Bazar, rounding up villagers. Thre...

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Kha Maung Seik Massacre: Uncovering the Graves

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The massacre went largely unnoticed for weeks. Rakhine State was consumed by a much larger crisis -- the Myanmar military's campaign against Rohingya communities, which drove hundreds of thousands across the border into Bangladesh beginning on the same day. In the chaos, the kill...

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Kha Maung Seik Massacre: Accountability and Denial

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In May 2018, Amnesty International published a report based on dozens of interviews in Rakhine State and Bangladesh, along with photographic evidence reviewed by forensic pathologists, attributing the massacre to ARSA. Tirana Hassan, Amnesty's Crisis Response Director, described ...

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Kha Maung Seik Massacre: Scattered in Every Direction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The aftermath sent Hindu communities fleeing along every available route. Three thousand Hindus from Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships were internally displaced within Myanmar. Five hundred crossed into Bangladesh, where local Bengali Hindus from Ukhia Upazila in Cox's Bazar Dist...

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