Myanmar army killed, raped in Rohingya ethnic cleansing: UN

KILLINGS, GANGRAPES, ARSON UNCOVERED IN REPORT

MYANMAR’S SECURITY forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that probably amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly “ethniccleansing”,theunhuman rights office said Friday.

Witnesses testified to “the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food”, the report said.

One woman told UN investigators how her 8-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her 5-year-old daughter killed as she tried to stop them.

“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said in a statement.

Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s military launched a security operation in response to attacks on police border posts on Oct. 9, the UN report said. The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at 69,000.

“The ‘area clearance operations’ have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths,” some of them through helicopters shooting at villages and dropping grenades on them, the report said.

Four UN investigators gathered testimony last month from 220 Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the “lockdown area” in Maungdaw in Rakhine.

Nearly half reported a family member had been killed or disappeared while 101 women reported having been raped or subjected to sexual violence, it said. Testimonies pointed to “a persecution on ethnic grounds which is similar to what has been described as ‘ethnic cleansing’,” UN said. REUTERS

Reuters Crew load aid supplies for Rohingya in Malaysia.