Tula Toli: first glimpse of massacre village after two years

Screen capture from video of Tula Toli, August 2019

Amateur video footage has emerged of present-day Tula Toli, a village in northern Rakhine state, and the site of one of the worst massacres in the August 2017 Rohingya crisis. The mobile phone footage, taken by two Rohingya refugees who live in the camps of Bangladesh, provides the first glimpse the world has seen of what present-day Tula Toli looks like two years after the massacre of 30 August 2017. In a series of thirty-four video clips, ranging from a few seconds to one minute twenty-seven seconds, and totaling 16 minutes, the men walk around Tula Toli and environs and film the remains of their once 4350-people-strong village.

In August 2017, in what was to become an unprecedented exodus, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya started fleeing the violence and persecution unleashed by Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, and other Burmese security forces in Rakhine state. On 1st and 2nd September 2017, hundreds of survivors from…