Ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas

UN says it gets reports daily of killings and rapes in Myanmar

Geneva: The United Nations is getting daily reports of rapes and killings of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar and independent monitors are being barred from investigating, the UN human rights office said on Friday.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra`ad al Hussein said in a statement that the government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, had taken a "short-sighted, counterproductive, even callous" approach to the crisis, risking grave long-term repercussions for the region.

At least 86 people have been killed, according to state media, and the United Nations has estimated 27,000 members of the largely stateless Muslim Rohingya minority have fled across the border from Myanmar`s Rakhine state into Bangladesh.

"The repeated dismissal of the claims of serious human rights violations as fabrications, coupled with the failure to allow our independent monitors access to the worst affected areas in northern Rakhine, is highly insulting to the victims and an abdication of the Government’s obligations under international human rights law," Zeid said in the statement.

“If the authorities have nothing to hide, then why is there such reluctance to grant us access? Given the continued failure to grant us access, we can only fear the worst.”

UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the UN human rights office had submitted a formal request for access to the area, which had not yet been granted.

Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said his colleagues in Bangladesh had spoken to more than 1,000 newly-arrived refugees in the past few weeks who gave accounts of houses being burned, targeting of civilians and traumatised women and children who had witnessed the killing of family members.

UNHCR could not verify the accounts first-hand but it was extremely concerned and it urged the Myanmar authorities to investigate and the government of Bangladesh to give the refugees a safe haven, he said.

Zeid said in June this year that crimes against humanity may have been committed and if the government did not handle the situation very carefully and address the grievances of the Rohingya minority, violence could ensue, Shamdasani said.

"Unfortunately this is exactly what has happened in the past couple of months," she added. "We are worried that this is going to get further out of hand. This is perfect breeding ground for violent extremists."

See more at - http://zeenews.india.com/news/world...of-killings-and-rapes-in-myanmar_1959210.html

i learnt Rohingya did mischief to Rakhine people, is that true?

‘There Are No Homes Left’: Rohingya Tell of Rape, Fire and Death in Myanmar

By ELLEN BARRYJAN. 10, 2017

Rohingya from Myanmar at a refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, in December. An estimated 65,000 Rohingya have fled across the border, according to the International Organization for Migration. Credit A.M. Ahad/Associated Press

KUTUPALONG CAMP, Bangladesh — When the Myanmar military closed in on the village of Pwint Phyu Chaung, everyone had a few seconds to make a choice.

Noor Ankis, 25, chose to remain in her house, where she was told to kneel to be beaten, she said, until soldiers led her to the place where women were raped. Rashida Begum, 22, chose to plunge with her three children into a deep, swift-running creek, only to watch as her baby daughter slipped from her grasp.

Sufayat Ullah, 20, also chose the creek. He stayed in the water for two days and finally emerged to find that soldiers had set his family home on fire, leaving his mother, father and two brothers to asphyxiate inside.

These accounts and others, given over the last few days by refugees who fled Myanmar and are now living in Bangladesh, shed light on the violence that has unfolded in Myanmar in recent months as security forces there carry out a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

Their stories, though impossible to confirm independently, generally align with reports by human rights organizations that the military entered villages in northern Rakhine State shooting at random, set houses on fire with rocket launchers, and systematically raped girls and women. At least 1,500 homes were razed, according to an analysis of satellite images by Human Rights Watch.

The campaign, which has moved south in recent weeks, seems likely to continue until Myanmar’s government is satisfied that it has fully disarmed the militancy that has arisen among the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group that has been persecuted for decades in majority-Buddhist Myanmar.

“There is a risk that we haven’t seen the worst of this yet,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights, a nongovernmental organization focusing on human rights in Southeast Asia. “We’re not sure what the state security forces will do next, but we do know attacks on civilians are continuing.”

A commission appointed by Myanmar’s government last week denied allegations that its military was committing genocide in the villages, which have been closed to Western journalists and human rights investigators. Officials have said Rohingya forces are setting fire to their own houses and have denied most charges of human rights abuses, with the exception of a beating that was captured on video. Myanmar’s leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, has been criticized for failing to respond more forcefully to the violence.

The crackdown began after an attack on three border posts in Rakhine State in October, in which nine police officers were killed. The attack is believed to have been carried out by an until-then-unknown armed Rohingya insurgent group.

The military campaign, which the government describes as a “clearing” operation, has largely targeted civilians, human rights groups say. It has sent an estimated 65,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“They started coming in like the tide,” said Dudu Miah, a Rohingya refugee who is chairman of the management committee at the Leda refugee camp, near the border with Myanmar. “They were acting crazy. They were a mess. They were saying, ‘They’ve killed my father, they’ve killed my mother, they’ve beaten me up.’ They were in disarray.”

Soldiers were attacking villages just across the Naf River, which separates Myanmar from Bangladesh, so close that Bangladeshis could see columns of smoke rise from burning villages on the other side, said Nazir Ahmed, the imam of a mosque that caters to Rohingyas.

He said it was true that some Rohingya, enraged by years of mistreatment by Myanmar forces, had organized themselves into a crude militant force, but that Myanmar had dramatically exaggerated its proportions and seriousness.

Rohingyas are “frustrated, and they are picking up sticks and making a call to defend themselves,” he said. “Now, if they find a farmer who has a machete at home, they say, ‘You are engaged in terrorism.’”

An analysis released last month by the International Crisis Group took a serious view of the new militant group, which it says is financed and organized by Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia. Further violence, it warned, could accelerate radicalization among the Rohingya, who could become willing instruments of transnational jihadist groups.

In interviews in and around the Kutupalong and Leda refugee camps here, Rohingya who fled Myanmar in recent weeks said that military personnel initially went house to house seeking adult men, and then proceeded to rape women and burn homes. Many new arrivals are from Kyet Yoepin, a village where 245 buildings were destroyed during a two-day sweep in mid-October, according to Human Rights Watch.

Muhammad Shafiq, who is in his mid-20s, said he was at home with his family when he heard gunfire. Soldiers in camouflage banged on the door, then shot at it, he said. When he let them in, he said, “they took the women away, and lined up the men.”

Mr. Shafiq said that when a soldier grabbed his sister’s hand, he lunged at him, fearful the soldier intended to rape her, and was beaten so severely that the soldiers left him for dead. Later, he bolted with one of his children and was grazed by a soldier’s bullet on his elbow. He crawled for an hour on his hands and knees through a rice field, then watched, from a safe vantage point, as troops set fire to what remained of Kyet Yoepin.

“There are no homes left,” he said. “Everything is burned.”

Jannatul Mawa, 25, who is from the same village, said she crawled toward the next village overnight, passing the shadowy forms of dead and wounded neighbors.

“Some were shot, some were killed with a blade,” she said. “Wherever they could find people, they were killing them.”

Dozens more families are from Pwint Phyu Chaung, which was near the site of a clash between militants and soldiers on Nov. 12.

According to Amnesty International, the militants scattered into neighboring villages. When army troops followed them, several hundred men from Pwint Phyu Chaung resisted, using crude weapons like farm implements and knives, the report said. A Myanmar army lieutenant colonel was shot dead, and the troops called in air support from two attack helicopters.

Mumtaz Begum, 40, said she was awakened at dawn when security forces approached the village from both sides and began searching for adult men in each house.

She said she and her daughter were told to kneel down outside their home with their hands over their heads and were beaten with bamboo clubs.

Mumtaz Begum, 40, told of members of her family who were arrested, beaten, shot in the leg or killed. Her daughter described being grouped with young women to be raped. Credit Ellen Barry/The New York Times

She said her 10-year-old son was shot through the leg, her daughter’s husband was arrested, and her own husband was one of dozens of men and boys in the village who were killed by soldiers armed with guns or machetes that night. Villagers, she said, “laid the bodies down in a line in the mosque and counted them.”

Ms. Begum’s daughter, Noor Ankis, 25, said the next morning soldiers went from house to house looking for young women.

“They grouped the women together and brought them to one place,” she said. “The ones they liked they raped. It was just the girls and the military, no one else was there.”

She said the idea of trying to escape flickered through her head, but she was overcome by fatalism. “I felt there was no point in being alive,” she said.

Ms. Ankis pulled her head scarf low, for a moment, removing a tear. She said she had been thinking about her husband.

“I think about how he took care of me after we got married,” she said. “How will I see him again?”

Sufayat Ullah, 20, a madrasa student, said that he was home with his family on the morning of the attack and that the first thing he registered was the sound of gunfire. He realized quickly, he said, that he could only survive by escaping. “When they found people close by, they attacked them with machetes,” he said. “If they were far away, they shot them.”

Mr. Ullah ran from the house and bolted for the creek at the edge of town, and he dived in, swimming as far as he could. He said he spent much of the next two days underwater, finally scrambling onto the bank near a neighboring village. Only then did he learn that his mother, father and two brothers had burned to death inside the family house.

“I feel no peace,” he said, covering his face with his hands and weeping. “They killed my father and mother. What is left for me in this world?”

See more at - http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/world/asia/rohingya-violence-myanmar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Aung Zaya said:

no need to resolve coz these all are wrong.. army didnt move an inch their camps due to international pressure..

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They have every right to quell an uprising against the State which they are sworn to protect. By any and all means necessary.

Actually, wouldn't it be easier if Bangladesh just allow all the rohingyas into her borders? After all, they are fellow muslims.

China has got good hold on Myanmar, they can pressurize Myanmar...but I doubt Bangladesh or the self-proclaimed 'leader of Muslim Ummah' will say anything in this regard to China.......

how come rohingyah didnt flee to bangladesh ??

Survivors claim Myanmar Army taking away young Rohingya women as sex slaves

Sexual violence has become an effective tool of oppression for the Myanmar security forces who continue to raid villages in the country's Rakhine state in search of insurgents, allege locals and the Rohingyas who have taken refuge in Bangladesh.

This correspondent spoke with several Rohingya women who claimed to have been picked up by the military and taken to camps.

The victims, new arrivals at the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, said the military gang-raped them for days.

“I escaped a military camp where I was detained and repeatedly raped by army men,” said an 18-year-old Rohingya woman now staying at Kutupalong registered camp in Ukhiya upazila.

The victim, from Kularbill village close to Maungdaw town, said she was abducted by the army who killed her parents in front of her.

“They took me to their camp because they found me attractive. In exchange for my life, they gang-raped me every day,” she said.

She tried to escape after three days, but was caught by the camp guards. “Then they tied me up to a fence and raped me again.”

She could not say how long she was held in the camp. “I escaped again and went to the border. A middleman saw my bloodied state and took mercy on me. He brought me here for free.”

She was referring to boatmen who ferry the fleeing Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh on Naf River for money.

Another victim, a 20-year-old from Hatipara village in Maungdaw, tried to explain the sheer horror of being violated in such a brutal way.

“You do not know how humiliating it is to be subjected to such violence,” she said. “Sometimes three or four army men raped us for hours.”
She was in the same camp as the 18-year-old, she told the Dhaka Tribune.

Their stories are similar to the accounts of 23 other Rohingya women this correspondent spoke with at Kutupalong registered camp.

So are the stories coming from other refugee camps – both registered and unregistered – in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas.

“These days, the military is searching houses for young Rohingya women,” claimed Abul Hasan (not his real name), resident of Baluhali village in Maungdaw.

“When they find young Rohingya women in a house, they do not attack the men. They just take the women to their camps,” he said.

He claimed many families were sending their young females away to Bangladesh to save them from the military.

Among the most affected villages in Maungdaw are Wah Paik, Hawarbill, Bur Gow Zi Bill, Surow Gow Zi Bill, Kularbill, Lu Daing, Hatipara, Bura Shiddar para and Nasa Furu.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar government continues to refute these allegations, saying they have not found evidence of such assaults and killings.

Fear of stigma keeping rape victims from seeking help

Many Rohingya rape victims want to hide that they were raped, fearing social stigma. This makes is it difficult to determine how many Rohingya women have been abused by the Myanmar security forces.

Humanitarian organisations such as International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières – Doctors Without Borders) are providing primary treatment to the Rohingya rape victims at the camps.

None of the aid organisations could give an official count of how many victims they have attended to so far.

“We have been receiving victims of sexual violence here, but we cannot confirm how many we have provided treatment to,” said Eric Beausejour, project coordinator of MSF Kutupalong clinic.

“We also cannot disclose the nature of the violence, nor can we confirm who the perpetrators were.”
But several aid workers, seeking anonymity, said the number was quite high as many victims were reluctant to seek treatment.

“Most victims take too long to come to us for help. Sometimes we receive patients who have become pregnant from rape,” said a field worker of an international aid organisation.

“But these women have taken an arduous journey to cross over to Bangladesh after suffering horrific violence. We never force them to come forward; it is their choice whether they want to speak about it and get the help they need.”

Another aid worker at MSF Kutupalong clinic said they had treated 40 rape victims as of December 26.

See more at - http://www.dhakatribune.com/world/s...-taking-away-young-rohingya-women-sex-slaves/

Well, if this the case then I see no difference between them and ISIS like a pretty reflection of the same ideology so where are so-called human loving and peacemaking self claimed super power armies to deal with them or we shall strongly assume that as it is against Muslims so can be continued for a while. Seems like the case here...

Species said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/815558212489359361

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Shame on Myanmar and shame on the world for allowing this to happen.

I shouldn't have watched the video.

Sad, this got stop

Species said:

“They took me to their camp because they found me attractive. In exchange for my life, they gang-raped me every day,” she said.

She tried to escape after three days, but was caught by the camp guards. “Then they tied me up to a fence and raped me again.”

She could not say how long she was held in the camp. “I escaped again and went to the border. A middleman saw my bloodied state and took mercy on me. He brought me here for free.”

She was referring to boatmen who ferry the fleeing Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh on Naf River for money.

Another victim, a 20-year-old from Hatipara village in Maungdaw, tried to explain the sheer horror of being violated in such a brutal way.

“You do not know how humiliating it is to be subjected to such violence,” she said. “Sometimes three or four army men raped us for hours.”
She was in the same camp as the 18-year-old, she told the Dhaka Tribune.

Their stories are similar to the accounts of 23 other Rohingya women this correspondent spoke with at Kutupalong registered camp.

So are the stories coming from other refugee camps – both registered and unregistered – in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas.

“These days, the military is searching houses for young Rohingya women,” claimed Abul Hasan (not his real name), resident of Baluhali village in Maungdaw.

“When they find young Rohingya women in a house, they do not attack the men. They just take the women to their camps,” he said.

He claimed many families were sending their young females away to Bangladesh to save them from the military.

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And the entire world is silent.

So sad, there are more than 50 muslim countries why cant they take thses people and rehahilitate them.