Myanmar troops accused of gang rape of Rohingya women and girls

Human Rights Watch accuses Myanmar security forces of a systematic campaign of sexual crimes, including the rape of women and girls, against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

According to a report by the group, some women described witnessing their young children, husbands and parents being murdered and then beaten and raped.

The allegation is based on interviews with 52 Rohingya women and girls from 19 villages who fled to Bangladesh.

29 of them reported being raped, and all but one of the sexual assaults were gang rapes.

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Hala Sadak, a 15-year-old from Hathi Para village in Maungdaw township, reported how she was stripped naked and then raped by ten soldiers.

“When my brother and sister came to pick me up, I was lying on the floor. They thought I was dead,” she told the human rights group.

In eight cases, women and girls reported being raped by five or more soldiers.

Many survivors reported having to endure days of agonizing walking to Bangladesh with swollen and torn genitals.

“Rape was a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, author of the report.

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She said the “barbaric acts of violence have brutally injured and traumatized countless women and girls.”

The report by the New York-based human rights group comes just days after Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy for sexual violence in conflict, said sexual violence was “commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by Myanmar’s armed forces.”

She called on the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar and targeted sanctions against military leaders responsible for human rights violations, including sexual violence.

The recent statements from survivors add to the growing evidence of what has been described as an alarming humanitarian crisis.

This month, a Sky News team filmed the first independent evidence of the shocking distress and desperation among thousands of stranded Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, including emaciated women and newborns abandoned on beaches and left to die .

Our crew also spoke to a man Recruitment of vulnerable Rohingya women and children in camps in Bangladesh who had fled persecution by the Burmese army because of the country’s notorious sex trafficking.

He said this latest exodus was “good for business.”

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims were forced to leave their homes in the predominantly Buddhist country due to the military measures.

The government insists the crackdown is aimed at tracking down the Rohingya “terrorists” responsible for the attack on 30 police posts in late August that left 12 security forces dead.

The UN described the recent mass exodus of Rohingya as “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world” and “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, sees herself International criticism for lack of direct condemnation of the violence by the country’s security forces.

However, there have been few measures taken by the international community to stop this process.