‘Mounting evidence’ of Myanmar genocide: Watchdogs

WASHINGTON: Myanmar security forces slit the throats of Muslim Rohingya, burned victims alive, and gang-raped women and girls, according to two separate reports detailing mounting evidence of genocide against the minority group.

Human Rights Watch focused on the use of sexual violence in its report on the military’s campaign against the Rohingya, and concluded that the depredations amounted to crimes against humanity.

“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

“The Burmese military’s barbaric acts of violence have left countless women and girls brutally harmed and traumatised.”

A separate report by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Southeast Asiabased Fortify Rights documents “widespread and systematic attacks” on Rohingya civilians between Oct 9 and December of last year, and from Aug 25 this year.

The 30-page report, entitled “They tried to kill us all”, is based on more than 200 interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as international aid workers.

Evidence gathered by Fortify Rights and the Holocaust Museum demonstrates that “Myanmar state security forces and civilian perpetrators committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” during two waves of attacks, the report says.

“There is mounting evidence to suggest these acts represent a genocide of the Rohingya population,” the report says.

Almost 700,000 Rohingya, more than half of the population in northern Rakhine state, have been forcibly displaced since October last year when Myanmar’s army began “clearance operations” after a previously unknown group attacked and killed security officers.

Those operations were, in practice, “a mechanism to commit mass atrocities”, the report said.

“State security forces opened fire on Rohingya civilians from the land and sky. Soldiers and knife-wielding civilians hacked to death and slit the throats of Rohingya men, women, and children,” it said.

“Rohingya civilians were burned alive. Soldiers raped and gang-raped Rohingya women and girls and arbitrarily arrested men and boys en masse.” – AFP