Ready to work on Rohingya repatriation: EU to Suu Kyi

No Rohingya woman safe as rapists run rampant in Myanmar

FE Team | Published: October 20, 2017 23:58:41

Two UN special advisers have called upon the government of Myanmar to take immediate action to stop and address the commission of "atrocity crimes" that are reportedly taking place in northern Rakhine state, report agencies.
The expression "atrocity crimes" is used by the UN Special advisers to refer to three crimes - genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes - under international law.
Meanwhile, Vice president of the European Commission (EC) Federica Mogherini has urged Myanmar's State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi to stop the violence in Rakhine state and start the processing to take back Rohingyas from Bangladesh.
Mogherini had a phone conversation with Suu Kyi and conveyed her the EU decisions to work on Rohingyas repatriation.
The Amnesty International has urged donor countries to pledge support for Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar, who have no prospect of returning home any time soon.
The two UN special advisers said any further delay in implementing the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine state, headed by Kofi Annan, including on issues of citizenship, will mean further violence and destabilisation for the region.
"True commitment will come with implementation," UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng and UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, on the situation in northern Rakhine state, Ivan Simonovic said in a statement.
The UN advisers acknowledged as positive the appointment by the Myanmar government of a ministerial committee to follow up on these recommendations.
They also urged the international community to support the Myanmar government in this regard.
The Special Advisors urged the government of Myanmar to work towards a national identity in which all populations of Myanmar, including those that identify themselves as Rohingya, feel part of.
Another report adds, EC VP Mogherini informed the Myanmar State Counsellor that the EU Foreign Affairs Council on October 16 discussed the situation in the Rakhine state.
In the conclusions, the ministers stressed the need for an immediate stop of violence, full humanitarian access to Rakhine state and the start of a process for return of the refugees from Bangladesh as well as the support for the implementations of recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine (Annan Report) in order to address the root causes of conflict.
The High Representative and the State Counsellor, during the phone conversation on Wednesday, also discussed the preparations for the ASEM Foreign Ministerial Meeting that will be hosted by Myanmar and will take place in Nay Phi Taw on November 20-21.
In a statement on Friday the Amnesty International said more countries, particularly those in South Asia, need to play a much bigger role and share the burden of responsibility, said the rights group said in a statement on Friday.
The call to support the nearly 600,000 new refugees from Myanmar comes before a meeting of high-level representatives at the UN office in Geneva on Monday.
"Bangladesh, a poor country which has shown extraordinary generosity, cannot be left to deal with this situation alone," said Omar Waraich, deputy South Asia director at Amnesty International.
"The international community must mount a response that addresses both their immediate and long-term needs," he said.
Listing the urgent needs being felt at the camps, it said Rohingyas who walk for days to reach the border should be given transport to camps.
For the children who make up 61 per cent of the new arrivals, life-saving assistance for curing cases of severe acute malnutrition and schooling was urgently required, said the Amnesty statement.
Further medical response is needed to protect camp populations from the risk of diseases such as cholera due to poor water and sanitation conditions.
There should also be safe spaces for women in the camps that are overcrowded and require "adequate land and infrastructure" to allow site planning, which can enhance aid access and reduce chances of conflict, the statement added.
According to a report of Thomson Reuters Foundation, rape is being used as a weapon of war in the Rohingya crisis, with no woman safe from the risk of sexual attack as Myanmar's Muslim minority is driven out of its homeland, according to experts in the field and those caught up in the crisis.
Doctors treating some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in recent weeks have seen dozens of women with injuries consistent with violent sexual attacks, according to UN clinicians.
And women interviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation tell of violent rape by Myanmar security forces as they flee their homes, part of a mass Rohingya exodus.
"The Burmese (Myanmar) military has clearly used rape as one of a range of horrific methods of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya," said Skye Wheeler, a sexual violence expert with Human Rights Watch who has assessed the fast-filling camps.
"Rape and other forms of sexual violence has been widespread and systematic as well as brutal, humiliating and traumatic," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Myanmar dismisses all such accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying it has to tackle insurgents, whom it accuses of starting fires and attacking civilians, as well as the security forces.
Yet villagers fleeing the violence say rape is a routine weapon in the military's armory, with the United Nations now deliberating whether the violence amounts to genocide.
Whatever the legal definition, 18-year-old Nurshida knows only too well what happened to her.
Speaking to Thomson Reuters Foundation from the relative safety of her camp, Nurshida recalled how her class of 30 was marched in silence to their school last month, held at gunpoint by uniformed soldiers, then manhandled into the main auditorium.
The schoolgirls, she said, cowered as one in a corner; the men - breathing heavily and dripping sweat - occupied another.
The gang rape began immediately.
Fair-skinned Nurshida, with bangles looping her wrist and a loose scarf shrouding her hair, said she was chosen first by the group, six clean-shaven soldiers carrying guns and machetes.
"One of the men held me tightly on the floor. I started screaming, but a second soldier hit me in the face with his hand and undressed me fully. I was silent when they raped me, there was nothing I could do," Nurshida said.
Her two friends were thrown to the floor next. As they were raped, smoke was rising in the distance - her native Naisapru village was on fire, one of many set alight in the exodus.
"All of the schoolgirls were raped and there were loud screams everywhere," said Nurshida, sitting in a mud hut in Bangladesh's Kutupalong camp where she is waiting to register as a refugee.
Authorities say her story fits a horribly familiar pattern.
"The stories we hear point to rape being used strategically as a weapon of war," aid Rashed Hasan, a lieutenant colonel in the Bangladesh army.
Women of all ages and backgrounds have reported similarly brutal sexual assaults - as well as witnessing family killings, losing children and being forced from their homes.
"Rape is an act of power. It knows no discrimination in terms of age, sex or ethnicity," Saba Zariv of the United Nations Population Fund told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
At nine months pregnant, Jannet says she was brutally tortured and raped at her home in Myanmar.
"My husband was killed five days before soldiers attacked our village. Our three children have never been seen again since," she said, cradling five-day-old Fatima in the flimsy makeshift tent she now calls home.
Fatima, who was delivered in a rice field, is her only remaining family member.
Late into her pregnancy, Jannet said she was alone when the army marched into Fakira Bazaar village. While everyone scattered into the jungle, the 22-year-old chose to hide.
"Several soldiers broke the door. They saw that I was pregnant, but they all raped me." At the end of the day she was left naked, beaten, her children gone.
"I cried and screamed for them, but I still don't know where they are," she said. "I never want to go back to Myanmar ... I have lost everything."
Yet safety is not guaranteed in the chaotic Rohingya refugee camps that are quickly becoming the world's largest.