Jolie to visit Rohingya women

Filmstar Angelina Jolie has condemned sexual violence inflicted on Rohingya women in Myanmar's Rakhine State, where a military operation has sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees across the border to Bangladesh.

Jolie, a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a Bangladesh delegation in the Canadian city of Vancouver that she planned to visit the Rohingya victims of sexual violence.

“Later she mentioned accordingly in her keynote speech about the sexual violence faced by almost each female Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh and condemned the armed conflict in Myanmar,” Bangladesh foreign ministry said in a statement yesterday.

It, however, gave no details of Jolie's proposed trip.

The Myanmar army released a report on Monday refuting all allegations of rape and killings by security forces, days after replacing the general in charge of the operation.

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since late August, driven out by the military's actions that a top UN official has described as a classic case of "ethnic cleansing".

There were already about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the most recent exodus.