Dozens of Rohingya Muslim women have reportedly been aggressively sexually attacked by Burmese security officials, based on UN medic’s reports. A total of eight medical professionals working in Bangladesh reported treating 25 girls between them because late August who had bodily injuries which were consistent with brutal strikes.
UN physicians also treated hundreds of women with these accidents last October and November, after the first wave of battle between Burmese officials and Rohingya Muslims.
Niranta Kumar, the wellness coordinator for a practice run by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said there appeared to have been fewer rapes in August but the accidents showed the attacks were “more aggressive” against women, such as signs of beatings, forced penetration and lacerations to the anus.
IOM medical officer Tasnuba Nourin said about one 20-year-old girl who had been raped: “We found skin marks, it showed a very strong attack, an alcoholic assault.”
It is uncommon for UN physicians and help agencies to accuse a nation’s armed forces of alleged rape, given the significance of the matter.
The Burmese government, was accused of ethnic cleansing by the United Nations, has denied some claims of aggression and said it has been targeting terrorists.
“Those rape victim girls should come to us,” he said. “We will provide full safety to them. We’ll explore and we’ll do it.”
The reported rapes in the refugee camps are just going to be “a fraction of the cases” south of the border, said Kate White, an emergency medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
A situation report by aid agencies discovered that more than 350 people were referred for “life-saving care” about gender-based violence, which includes rape, attempted rape and molestation, in addition to psychological abuse and refusal of sources based on sex, since 25 August. It didn’t refer to the perpetrators.
Approximately 429,000 Rohingya have fled Burma, where a lot of their families lived for generations. Most refugees are living in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, residing little help packages from sympathetic locals and help agencies.
The persecution of the Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority of about one million people that largely lived in the Rakhine state in western Burma, comes following Rohingya militants attacked government forces last October and in August this year, sparking a solid crackdown.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who has not commented on the violence against girls, talked of rape being used as a weapon amid ethnic conflicts before she came into power this past year.
In 2011, she told a conference on sexual abuse in battle: “It’s employed as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to split our nation, this is the way I see it.”
Considering that the latest escalation, over 1,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
As tens of thousands of people arrive Every Day from Burma to the Refugee camps, Unicef estimates that 50,000 of the new arrivals are pregnant ladies.
