Many Rohingya women entering Bangladesh to flee violence in Rakhine state are still haunted by horrors of sexual violence against them committed allegedly by Myanmar military.
Many of the victims turned white in horrors as they recounted how soldiers broke into their home in Rakhine and gang-raped them, in many cases in front of their children or relatives –– a story heard over and over in Rohingya camps and makeshift shelters in Cox’s Bazar.They alleged that Myanmar troops along with some local Buddhists began to rape them with the eruption of the ongoing violence, what the United Nations termed a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, on August 25.
Two UN agencies expressed concern that gender-based violence, including rape and sexual assault, was a key concern that emerged from the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
UN migration agency International Organisation for Migration said that its doctors had treated dozens of women, who experienced violent sexual assault.
UN population fund UNFPA said that hundreds of Rohingya women and girls had received services for prevention and management of gender-based violence and more than half of the incidents of such violence reported so far in Bangladesh were sexual assault, an exceptionally high proportion.
‘This speaks to a very worrying trend,’ said a statement of the UN agency issued on Thursday.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres while addressing the UN Security Council on Thursday, early Friday Bangladesh time, said, ‘We have received bone-chilling accounts from those who fled –– mainly women, children and the elderly.’
He said, ‘These testimonials point to excessive violence and serious violations of human rights, including indiscriminate firing of weapons, the use of landmines against civilians and sexual violence.’
Cox’s Bazar civil surgeon Abdus Salam said that medical facilities, especially those run by international aid agencies in the Rohingya camps, received a good number of patients experiencing gender-based violence. ‘We got some serious rape patients,’ he added.
New Age correspondent in Cox’s Bazar reported that five more bodies of Rohingyas were recovered in Inani beach area under Ukhia upazila early Friday, said Ukhia police station offier-in-charge (investigation) Mohammad Kai Kislu.
With the recovery, the death toll from the boat capsize took place on Thursday rose to 20 –– 14 children and six women.
The police officer said that several others were still missing as Rohingyas said that the boat was carrying about 100 fleeing Rohingyas and 27 of them were rescued alive.
International Organisation for Migration in a statement on Friday, however, said that their local field team, having checked with police and a grocery shopkeeper close to where the incident occurred, reported the total confirmed death toll was 23.
Six bodies were recovered where the boat capsized and two bodies washed up in front of the Sea Pearl Hotel a small distance down the shore.
The incident took to 133 the number of Rohingyas, mostly women and children, drowned in the bay and the River Naf since August 25.
Local people said that Rohingyas continued entering Bangladesh through different points, including Shah Parir Dwip, on Friday.
UN agencies on Thursday estimated that 5,01,800 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and elderly people, had so far fled to Bangladesh to save life since August 25.
A 17-year-old Rohingya woman found at Tumbro Konapara area said that she could not sleep at night due to nightmare.
While she was fleeing from Bali Bazar area of Maungdow in Rakhine state, she said, ‘Some military men picked me up, they violated me and left in a nearby jungle assuming that I was dead.’ She said that she crossed into Bangladesh with the help of others and still did not know anything about her family.
Another 20-year-old woman of the same area of Myanmar found at Tubmro said that at least three people raped her on August 25. She became conscious and when she recovered, she saw some fellow Rohingya men beside her.
UNFPA in a statement on Thursday said that when a 36-year-old Rohingya at its Women Friendly Space in Cox’s Bazar, she was exhausted and traumatised. She needed urgent medical services for the sexual violence she had suffered. Emotional scars from seeing her husband and baby girl killed in front of her would be tougher to heal.
The UN agency also said that when a 30-year-old woman came to its Women Friendly Space, she initially refused to speak, but after several visits she shared her story with the case workers she had come to trust. ‘My sister was killed after gang-rape in front of me, and they threw hot water on my body. I cannot sleep, my life is a nightmare,’ she said.
UNFPA said that gender-based violence, including rape, was a key concern that emerged from the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
It has already provided a range of services to more than 7,000 women in five Women Friendly Spaces, community watch groups and medical camps, where health personnel offered medical assistance and psychosocial counselling assistance amid incredibly challenging circumstances.
Myanmar security forces are committing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya population in Rakhine state, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. ‘The military has committed forced deportation, murder, rape, and persecution against Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State, resulting in countless deaths and mass displacement,’ it said.
The rights group cited an example that one woman told HRW that she and four other women were taken to a hut, slashed with knives, and sexually assaulted. The soldiers then set the hut on fire. She was the only one to escape alive. Another woman who was raped still had injuries from the machete attack and beatings that accompanied the rape, and said she also barely managed to escape from a burning house.
One man told HRW that he witnessed an army soldier to rape three women at Maung Nu village. Two other woman from the same village told the rights group that soldiers stripped them and several other women, who were hiding from the military, naked and that they were ‘touched everywhere.’
A physician treating rape patients at a hospital in a Rohingya camp run by UN migration agency said that Rohingya women had ‘genital cut injuries, a laceration injury and bite mark.’
Acting UNFPA executive director Natalia Kanem said that health and safety of women and girls must be protected and they must be protected from all forms of violence, including sexual assault.
IOM director general William Lacy Swing in a statement on Thursday said that sexual and gender-based violence was a severe, life-threatening public health and human rights abuse and he was ‘deeply shocked and concerned’ by reports of such events.
United Nations high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi at a press conference in Geneva on Wednesday after visiting Bangladesh said, ‘I have spoken to several women who have been raped, or have been wounded because of their resistance to rape. I spoke to many children, shockingly absent of emotion, because they were so traumatised. They told me how they had seen their parents or relatives or friends killed in front of their eyes.’
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and IOM in separate statements called for increase in safe water, sanitation, hygiene and medical assistance to prevent any outbreak of diseases.
‘We are on the cusp of a serious health outbreak,’ Bangladesh Red Crescent Society secretary-general Mozharul Huq said.
IOM said aid agencies were struggling to provide clean water and sanitation for an estimated half a million Rohingya people.
UNICEF at a statement on Thursday said that it announced that it was planning to establish more than 1,300 new learning centres for Rohingya children who fled to Bangladesh.
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