BANGKOK: Myanmar army’s sex abuses severe – UN

In this file photo dated Thursday, Aug.22, 2019, a general view of Nayapara Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Sexual violence carried out by Myanmar’s security forces against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority was so widespread and severe that it demonstrates intent to commit genocide as well as warrants prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to a U.N. report released Thursday Aug. 22, 2019. AP FILE PHOTO

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BANGKOK: Sexual violence carried out by Myanmar’s security forces against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority was so widespread and severe that it demonstrates intent to commit genocide, as well as warrants prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a United Nations (UN) report said.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said it found the country’s soldiers “routinely and systematically employed rape, gang rape and other violent and forced sexual acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people in blatant violation of international human rights law.”

Its report on sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar, covers the Kachin and Shan ethnic minorities in northern Myanmar as well as the Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine.

The report, released in New York, charges that the genocidal intent of Myanmar’s military toward the Rohingya was demonstrated “by means of killing female members of the Rohingya community, causing Rohingya women and girls serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the Rohingya women and girls conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Rohingya in whole or in part, and imposing measures that prevented births within the group.”

Myanmar’s government and military have consistently denied carrying out human rights violations, and said its military operations in Rakhine were justified in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

Many human rights groups have accused Myanmar of carrying out genocide or ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

In an earlier report, the UN mission documented other major abuses in Rakhine since 2016, including widespread killings and torching of villages, and found that similar abuses were carried out in Kachin and Shan states.

While describing sexual violence as a “hallmark” of the military’s operations, the new report notes that it is also perpetrated by armed guerrilla groups of the ethnic minorities in northern Myanmar, “although to a significantly lesser extent.”

“Sexual violence is an outcome of a larger problem of gender inequality and the lack of rule of law,” the report asserts, noting that the UN’s ranking of Myanmar’s gender inequality at 148 of 189 countries indicates it is especially prone to sexual and gender-based violence.

Looking at the root causes of the problem in Myanmar society, the fact-finding mission concluded that “the discriminatory framework of laws and practices even in peacetime contribute and aggravate violence against women in wartime,” said Radhika

Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer who is one of the mission’s three international experts, speaking at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. Coomaraswamy said researchers had found a link between militarization across Myanmar in every facet of life and higher levels of sexual violence.

She told reporters that the mission’s overarching recommendation was the need for security sector reform under civilian oversight of the military.

AP

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