gabriel gatehouse tells the story of one massacre in the village of tula toli. this programme contains distressing and graphic accounts and images of violence from the beginning. these people have just crossed the border. they're in no man's land, they've been driven from their homes in myanmar. now, they're waiting for permission to enter bangladesh. the rohingya are a people that neither country wants. what happened in your village? theyjust burnt our houses. these are some of the survivors. they're hungry, they're sick, and they're scared. across the river, there's a deliberate campaign of terror going on. a campaign from which no one's safe. well, we don't know how many people have been killed. but we do have some idea of how many have been burnt and chased out of their homes. these are just a tiny fraction of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who have fled. in our investigation, we're going to focus on the events of one day, of one massacre in one village, and its name is tula toli. since august, more than 600,000 people have sought refuge in the camps in bangladesh. people who brought little with them but the nightmarish memories of their experiences at the hands of the burmese military. we've come here to find survivors of the tula toli massacre. we've spoken to six of them. we've cross—referenced their testimony with video evidence. absolutely horrific pictures. with maps of the local area, as well as with interviews collected by human rights organisations. what emerges is a picture of systematic violence. violence that has been described as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. using a satellite photograph of the area, a rohingya elder showed me how the massacre unfolded. the village of tula toli consists of a number of settlements surrounded on three sides by the meandering flow of a river. in previous days soldiers had set fire to other villages on the opposite bank. that wednesday morning, the 30th of august, they crossed into tula toli. there was panic. everyone mentions the river. with the soldiers advancing from the north west and a police post to the south, many of the villagers ran east. they ended up on the river bank. they were trapped. and you yourself were on the other side of the river? anora showed me and others where she swam across the river. to a point downstream where it was narrow enough to cross. they used banana trees and plastic canisters as life rafts. did you see this with your own eyes? from a hill on the opposite bank, they watched the horror unfold. the horrific scenes she witnessed still give her nightmares. anora watched the bodies of her neighbours' children wash up on the river bank. a scene that was filmed by another villager. the children's names were rashida, five years old, kushida, three, and zahidia, who was 11 months. anora begum, her husband and her four children all managed to escape with their lives. mohammed was not so fortunate. he and his youngest daughter survived but three of her sisters were killed, and so was their mother. the violence began five days before the massacre at tula toli, on the 25th august, when members of a rohingya militant group attacked a number of police posts inside myanmar, killing 12. in response, the burmese military began what they called clearance operations. that was three months ago. boats filled with refugees have been coming over since. the overwhelming majority of people in myanmar are buddhists. rohingya muslims make up only a small minority overall. but in rakhine state, the region that borders bangladesh, they might be in the majority, if it weren't for the fact so many have fled. even before the latest violence, the rohingya of myanmar were denied the most basic rights. the right to vote, the freedom to travel, and access to decent education and health care. now, some have accused the burmese government of using the attacks by the rohingya militants as a pretext. a pretext for a vicious and indiscriminate crackdown against rohingya civilians. the bangladeshi authorities monitor what goes on on the other side of the border. and i've been told that from the beginning of august, so about three weeks before the violence started, they noticed an increase in military activity on the myanmar side. now, if that's true, that would suggest an element of preparation for the violence that followed. and this is the suggestion that we've heard corroborated by some of the witnesses we've spoken to, as well. we were told about an incident that happened nearly two weeks before the massacre in tula toli. also before the attacks by the militant group known as the arakan rohingya salvation army which, the burmese military claims, prompted their clearance operations. were they trying to recruit people in the village? was there some truth to that? witnesses said the policemen were called in by the village administrator, a local buddhist government official. a few days later that same official called a meeting — elders from both communities were asked to sign a kind of peace treaty. was that unusual, to be asked to do something like that? the rohingya of tula toli saw that document as an explicit guarantee of their safety. it's because of this that they stayed in their homes even when they saw other villages being burnt. now they believe the administrator double—crossed them. almost everyone we spoke to mentioned this village administrator, the local government representative. his name is mr singh. he would accuse the villagers of supporting the militants some said, others that he tried to force them to register as foreigners. another rohingya elder told me that before the massacre he and mr singh had been in regular contact. do you have his phone number, can you call him? human rights investigators and journalists have been trying to talk to this man for months. none have managed to contact him, until now. mr hussein lost a son and three grandchildren in the attack. now, over a crackly phone line, he accuses the village administrator of complicity in the massacre. at the end of the conversation, mr hussein seems unconvinced. do you believe him? the majority of myanmar‘s rohingya muslims have by now already fled. dispossessed and stateless, the mud—soa ked camps of bangladesh are what they must, for now, call home. the burmese government says its military operations, just across the border from here in are a response to attacks by militants on 25th august. but what about those reports of troop movements weeks earlier, before the rohingya militant attacks? well, we are on our way now to meet an officer in the bangladeshi border guard who might know more about this and might be willing to talk to us. hello, major. how's it going? yeah, fine. good. well, the major said he wasn't authorised to speak to the bbc on camera but we did have a conversation off camera. and he said i could quote him with the following. that they saw from around 5th august, a huge concentration, those were his words, of myanmar military in the border area. he said apart from burning people's homes, they extorted valuables, took their money. i asked him what the purpose of all of this was. he said they are trying to make rakhine state rohingya —free. there are members of the arakan rohingya salvation army in these camps. we spoke to two of them. they said they lacked weapons. experts who've studied the group tend to agree. they almost certainly carried out some of the attacks that sparked the latest violence. but they were unlikely to be capable of the kind of co—ordinated action attributed to them by the burmese military. here's another thing that the officer we spoke to in the borderforce said to me. he said that there is some merit in the claim that at least some of those attacks were staged. he said, to our knowledge there are hardly any active members of this group. but even if the militants did do all the things that the burmese government said it did, nothing, surely, could justify the horrific nature of the response that followed. by late morning on the 30th august, on the river bank at tula toli, dozens of people had already been murdered. but it wasn't over yet. some villagers had escaped by swimming across the river, but many remained behind, especially younger women who had been separated from the rest by the soldiers. those who survived endured an ordeal of almost unimaginable horror. severely burned and wounded, mumtaz managed to crawl to safety and eventually escape under cover of darkness. she came to bangladesh with her seven—year—old daughter. her daughter was beaten by the soldiers, but survived. the others did not. one of her children, she said, was burned to death. at least one other survivor of the tula toli massacre has reported her young child was thrown into a fire. others had infants torn from their arms. mumtaz is only 30 years old. the men who raped her, who killed her children, were soldiers. but she, like others, told us that non—rohingya civilians took part in the attack that day as well, demanding money and valuables. i wondered about the buddhist village administrator. no one we spoke to said he personally took part in the attack, and it seems unlikely a local civilian official could have stopped the powerful burmese military. but there remains the question of whether he deliberately misled the rohingya villagers into believing they would be safe in their homes. hello sir, it's the bbc here, just to say we are recording this call. can i ask you why did you not warn the villagers that the army was going to come in? the people here say that you wanted the rohingya out of the village, that you wanted them gone. the burmese government doesn't regard the rohingya muslims as citizens of myanmar. stuck in the camps in bangladesh without official status, it will be hard for them to return home, even if they felt it was safe to do so. the united nations has called this ethnic cleansing. others prefer the term genocide. by whatever name you call it, the massacre at tula toli was a monstrous crime. a crime the burmese authorities is not investigating. every evening on the border, more people try to cross from myanmar to safety in bangladesh. new arrivals say their villages are still being burned. that they are still being chased and terrorised from their homes. we asked the burmese government for a response to the evidence of a massacre at tula toli. they never got back to us. for now, the violence continues with impunity. if it goes on like this there won't be many rohingya left in myanmar. and perhaps that's exactly what the burmese government wants. hello. saturday was pretty much a cold day right across the british isles and for that, you have to thank a supply of cold north—westerly wind coming between an area of low pressure up towards the north—east, high pressure down towards the south—west. and on that run of north—westerlies, there were quite a few showers across northern and western parts. if you had some overnight, then ice could be a problem first thing on sunday, especially on untreated surfaces. here we are first thing on sunday morning. still that wind across the north—east of scotland, showers there. showers too coming through the north channel down across the irish sea into the north and west midlands, through the north—west of england. we will come back to those in a second. but further east or south, dry, fine, sunny, chilly to start off the new day, and perhaps a little more in the way of cloud already at this stage across parts of the south—west and the far west of wales. cloudy right from the word go across northern ireland. this is all coming ahead of a set of weather fronts which make themselves known in northern ireland late on in the afternoon. the wind ahead of those fronts just beginning to come a bit more westerly so maybe not as cold as the north—westerly wind of saturday. but that the supply of showers i was talking about coming out of the irish sea could be a bother at burnley and at also huddersfield. not such an issue down at southampton — gloriously clear here. kilmarnock, just the first signs of the cloud spilling in from northern ireland to temper the sunshine then rob you of it altogether as you get on through the afternoon. certainly by evening, wet and windy fair piling its way down and across the british isles. notice the number of isobars there, 40mph gusts perhaps inland and on some of the western—facing hills, 30—a0 millimetres of rain, but at least this is mild air. so we have a spell of relatively mild conditions for the new week. but then it turns much colder and there will be a noticeable biting wind coming in from the north. so monday, a day of transition. it will take a while before we see the last of the overnight rain getting away from the south of england and wales. double—figure temperatures here. but slowly but surely, once all of the fronts have moved on through, that allows those isobars to bend back into a much more northerly direction and along that, that is the highway for the cold air to percolate its way down from nearly the arctic across all parts of the british isles. i'm showing you here the middle part of the week, cold air absolutely dominant. and that extends probably towards next weekend. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is gavin grey. our top stories: sirens wail pakistan's government calls on the army to restore order in the capital islamabad following violent clashes between police and islamist demonstrators. at least 31 migrants have drowned off the coast of libya after their boat capsized on saturday morning. airlines have issued a warning over fears that mt agung on the indonesian island of bali might erupt. thousands of women take to the streets around the world in support of efforts to end violence against women.

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