Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday called on Myanmar to punish army and police commanders if they allowed troops to rape and sexually assault Rohingya girls and women.
The New York-based campaign group said it had documented rape, gang rape and other sexual violence against girls as young as 13 in interviews with some of the 69,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since Burmese security forces responded to attacks on border posts four months ago.
“The sexual violence did not appear to be random or opportunistic, but part of a coordinated and systematic attack against Rohingya, in part because of their ethnicity and religion,” a Human Rights Watch news release said.
Photo: EPA
Reuters was unable to contact a Myanmar government spokesman to respond to the allegations.
An estimated 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western state of Rakhine, but have their movements and access to services restricted. Rohingyas are barred from citizenship in Myanmar, where many call them “Bengalis” to suggest they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Independent journalists and observers have been barred from visiting the army’s operation zone in northern Rakhine since the Oct. 9 attacks that killed nine border police.
The government has so far dismissed most claims that soldiers raped, beat, killed and arbitrarily detained civilians while burning down villages, insisting instead that a lawful operation is under way against a group of armed Rohingya insurgents.
The HRW report comes just days after UN investigators said Burmese security forces had “very likely” committed crimes against humanity, posing a dilemma for de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner took charge of most civilian affairs in April last year after a historic transition from full military rule, but soldiers retain a quarter of seats in parliament and control ministries related to security.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Friday said that Aung San Suu Kyi had promised to investigate the UN’s allegations.
HRW said it had gathered evidence on 28 separate sexual assaults, including interviews with nine women who said they were raped or gang raped at gunpoint by security forces during the army’s so-called “clearance operations” in northern Rakhine.
The women and other witnesses said the perpetrators were Buremese army troops or border police, whom they identified by their uniforms, kerchiefs, arm bands and patches, the rights group said.
“These horrific attacks on Rohingya women and girls by security forces add a new and brutal chapter to the Burmese military’s long and sickening history of sexual violence against women,” HRW senior emergencies researcher Priyanka Motaparthy said.
“Military and police commanders should be held responsible for these crimes if they did not do everything in their power to stop them or punish those involved,” Motaparthy said.
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