Crimes against humanity
As more Rohingyas pour into Bangladesh to escape torture and death, one of the most horrifying realities have come to light—that hundreds, perhaps thousands of young women and girls have suffered the worst kind of sexual violence at the hands of the Myanmarese security forces. This has been revealed through gruesome testimonies given to the media by women and girls who have managed to survive. Doctors treating Rohingyas in the camps have also confirmed that many of the women and girls they have treated have injuries that show that they have been sexually assaulted and raped. Doctors of a UN organisation working at a refugee camp have said they have treated hundreds of women with injuries from sexual violence during the army operation in October and November.
The accounts given by survivors who have either been subjected to sexual violence or have witnessed others going through it, reveal a diabolic collusion among the members of the Myanmarese army to encourage each other to rape and gang-rape. One of the most important conclusions drawn is that rape and sexual assault were used systematically by the security forces as a strategy to humiliate and terrorize the Rohingya people. Such strategies have been employed in other cases of ethnic cleansing; the wide-scale rapes of women by Pakistani forces in during our Liberation War, in the war in Bosnia, in Rwanda and other countries, serve as chilling evidence.
It is shocking that the Myanmarese government and its de facto leader Aung Saan Suu Kyi, refuse to acknowledge these horrific crimes despite the eye witness accounts and the findings of medical professionals at the camps. The scale of the sexual violence warrants proper documentation of the cases and number of victims so that the evidence can be introduced in an international tribunal to try such crimes against humanity.
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