Sexual violence against Rohingya worries U.N.
GENEVA — The head of the U.N.’s migration agency warned Wednesday about increasing reports of sexual violence directed at Rohingya Muslims, who have been fleeing violence in Myanmar in recent weeks.
Director-General William Lacy Swing of the International Organization for Migration said he was “shocked and concerned” about the reports of sexual and gender-based violence among Rohingya newly arrived in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
The agency said rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence have been identified. It did not specify who was responsible for the violence.
The agency is coordinating the humanitarian response among U.N. agencies and aid providers amid the exodus of an estimated 480,000 people who have reached Cox’s Bazar since Aug. 25, when attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group against police posts in Myanmar led to massive retaliation by the country’s army.
Meanwhile, Myanmar government officials said at least 163 people have been killed and 91 others have gone missing over the past year in attacks carried out by Rohingya militants in restive Rakhine state.
The comments Tuesday came after the bodies of at least 45 Hindus were discovered in three mass graves earlier in the week. The government in Yangon blames Muslim insurgents for the killings, although they denied responsibility in a statement Wednesday.
The government’s Information Committee released a statement on its Facebook page saying that from October 2016 to August 2017, at least 79 people were killed in the attacks and 37 have gone missing, including local officials, public servants and security forces. Another 84 were killed and 54 have gone missing since Aug. 25, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, opened attacks on at least 30 police outposts.
The government had previously said that nearly 400 alleged insurgents had been killed since Aug. 25.
On Monday, Myanmar officials said they had discovered at least 45 slain Hindus in three mass graves in conflicttorn northern Rakhine state. Twenty-eight were uncovered from two mass graves on Sunday and 17 were discovered in a different mass grave in the same area on Monday.
Local authorities said the 45 bodies were among about 100 Hindus missing since ARSA carried out the simultaneous attacks on the police outposts.
“We are still searching for more mass graves in that same area,” said Maj. Zayar Nyein of Border Guard Police Headquarters in Maungdaw. “I don’t know exactly why these terrorists killed that many people. The Hindu village was very much up north and communication was not that good, and that’s why security forces were not able to reach out to the area sooner.”
ARSA issued a statement Wednesday on Twitter denying it had abused civilians in the villages where the bodies were found. It said it has sympathy for the victims of war crimes and other atrocities committed in the fighting, and would investigate any such crimes committed by Myanmar authorities.
There was no way to immediately verify either the government or ARSA accounts.
A government crackdown that followed the attacks left more than 200 Rohingya Muslim villages burned and sent at least 480,000 Rohingya fleeing into Bangladesh.