[BenarNews] Authorities in Myanmar have launched an investigation after a group of women made a gruesome discovery while on their way to the market in the Yangon region early Monday morning — 13 broken and waterlogged corpses believed to be members of the Rohingya ethnic group.The bodies were found near a trash pile in Hlegu township’s Ngwe Nant Thar village around 3 a.m., an eyewitness told RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns.
"They are definitely not from this village," the witness said, adding that the victims appeared to range in age from 17 to 30 years old.
"I think they are Rohingya people. I heard that more than 70 of them were arrested in Hlegu yesterday as well."
A second source, who also declined to be named, told RFA that the women who discovered the bodies immediately contacted local authorities, who launched an investigation into the identities of the victims and the cause of death.
"We think they are Rohingya people ... so we called a Moslem volunteer group and other volunteer groups from [nearby] Pale village," the source said.
"They went there to take the dead bodies to the hospital and have them examined to determine the cause of death and to open a case in the matter ... According to the groups, the dead bodies exhibited signs of injuries."
The source said at least one of the victims had a "gash on his forehead," while another had one on his leg, and that all of them "appeared to have been submerged in water for a long time," despite there being no bodies of water in the area.
"Their hands and feet were wrinkled from water," they said.
"Some had welts on their backs. Their skin was torn from injuries, as if they had been beaten. The hospital said that they had been dead for more than 48 hours — at least a day before they were found."
The source told RFA that residents of the area believe the victims may have been killed by local authorities or by brokers they had hired to help them flee squalid conditions in refugee camps in western Myanmar's Rakhine state and neighboring Bangladesh.
"I heard that the brokers who brought them beat them when they didn’t get the money they wanted," they said.
"Another possibility is that they were arrested and then killed ... [But] I think that it is more likely that brokers killed them."