Alwaght- Myanmar's security forces committed "widespread rape" against Rohingya women and girls as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the country's Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a report.
HRW interviewed 52 female refugees who corroborated reports of systematic rape of women being carried out by Myanmar forces against Muslims amid an ongoing ethnic cleansing.
According to a 37-page report released on Thursday, titled All of My Body Was Pain, 29 out of 52 women and girls who managed to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and who were interviewed by the HRW said that they had been raped by security forces back in Rakhine. Except for one, all the cases had been gang rapes, the New York-based rights group added in its damning report on Thursday.
“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese (Myanmarese) military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at the Women’s Rights Division of the rights group and author of the report. “The Burmese military’s barbaric acts of violence have left countless women and girls brutally harmed and traumatized.”
The HRW added that the government troops committed further acts of violence, cruelty, and humiliation against the persecuted Rohingya. It said many women had also been witnessing the murder of their young children, spouses, and parents.
Myanmar's army had earlier released a report denying all allegations of rape and killings by security forces which was termed "absurd" by a human rights group.
Since Aug. 25, over 610,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh fleeing, according to the UN.
The refugees are fleeing a military operation in which security forces and Buddhist mobs have killed men, women and children, looted homes and torched Rohingya villages. According to Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali, around 3,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown. Other sources put the casualties figure at over 6,000.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has described the plight of Rohingya Muslims as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
