Rape is being used as a weapon of war in the Rohingya crisis, with no woman safe from the risk of sexual attack as Myanmar’s Muslim minority is driven out of its homeland, according to experts in the field and those caught up in the crisis.

Doctors treating some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in recent weeks have seen dozens of women with injuries consistent with violent sexual attacks, according to UN clinicians.

And women interviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation tell of violent rape by Myanmar security forces as they flee their homes, part of a mass Rohingya exodus.

“The Burmese (Myanmar) military has clearly used rape as one of a range of horrific methods of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, a sexual violence expert with Human Rights Watch who has assessed the fast-filling camps.

“Rape and other forms of sexual violence has been widespread and systematic as well as brutal, humiliating and traumatic,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Myanmar dismisses all such accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying it has to tackle insurgents, whom it accuses of starting fires and attacking civilians, as well as the security forces.

Yet villagers fleeing the violence say rape is a routine weapon in the military’s armory, with the United Nations now deliberating whether the violence amounts to genocide.
 

GANG RAPE

Whatever the legal definition, 18-year-old Nurshida knows only too well what happened to her.

Speaking to Thomson Reuters Foundation from the relative safety of her camp, Nurshida recalled how her class of 30 was marched in silence to their school last month, held at gunpoint by uniformed soldiers, then manhandled into the main auditorium.

The schoolgirls, she said, cowered as one in a corner; the men – breathing heavily and dripping sweat – occupied another.

The gang rape began immediately.

Fair-skinned Nurshida, with bangles looping her wrist and a loose scarf shrouding her hair, said she was chosen first by the group, six clean-shaven soldiers carrying guns and machetes.

“One of the men held me tightly on the floor. I started screaming, but a second soldier hit me in the face with his hand and undressed me fully. I was silent when they raped me, there was nothing I could do,” Nurshida said.

Her two friends were thrown to the floor next. As they were raped, smoke was rising in the distance – her native Naisapru village was on fire, one of many set alight in the exodus.

“All of the schoolgirls were raped and there were loud screams everywhere,” said Nurshida, sitting in a mud hut in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong camp where she is waiting to register as a refugee.

Authorities say her story fits a horribly familiar pattern.

“The stories we hear point to rape being used strategically as a weapon of war,” aid Rashed Hasan, a lieutenant colonel in the Bangladesh army.

Women of all ages and backgrounds have reported similarly brutal sexual assaults – as well as witnessing family killings, losing children and being forced from their homes.

“Rape is an act of power. It knows no discrimination in terms of age, sex or ethnicity,” Saba Zariv of the United Nations Population Fund told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
 

PREGNANT, RAPED, ABANDONED

At nine months pregnant, Jannet says she was brutally tortured and raped at her home in Myanmar.

“My husband was killed five days before soldiers attacked our village. Our three children have never been seen again since,” she said, cradling five-day-old Fatima in the flimsy makeshift tent she now calls home.

Fatima, who was delivered in a rice field, is her only remaining family member.

Late into her pregnancy, Jannet said she was alone when the army marched into Fakira Bazaar village. While everyone scattered into the jungle, the 22-year-old chose to hide.

“Several soldiers broke the door. They saw that I was pregnant, but they all raped me.” At the end of the day she was left naked, beaten, her children gone.

“I cried and screamed for them, but I still don’t know where they are,” she said. “I never want to go back to Myanmar … I have lost everything.”

Yet safety is not guaranteed in the chaotic Rohingya refugee camps that are quickly becoming the world’s largest.

Parvin, 20, said she has been rejected by her in-laws after soldiers beheaded her husband and raped her while she was five months pregnant.

“They beat me unconscious,” she said. “I woke up to an empty village and my in-laws searching for me. I was lying naked on the floor of their house.”

The last thing Parvin’s mother-in-law did for her was help her wash after the rape. “They told me they didn’t want to take responsibility for me and rejected me.”

Now she lives alone in a bamboo house, terrified of men.

“I can never get married again now that I was raped. I have no choice but to raise my baby alone,” she said. “That’s all that drives me now. I have lost all else.”

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune
 

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In the Rohingya camps of Bangladesh, there are very few teenage girls. Over 429,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since a military crackdown began there in August. Unicef says 60% of the recent influx is aged below 18.

However, as this correspondent noticed, older teenage girls were very few. Most girls who had made it here were younger, under 10 or 12, or older women with children.

The testimony of some survivors may provide some clue as to what may have happened to the girls.

“They killed my son, cut him into pieces in front me and gang-raped my younger daughter. Then they threw me out of my house and burnt her alive,” said Rahima Begum, a refugee sheltered in Nayapara, south of Cox’s Bazar.

She spoke with a stony countenance. Hers was a large family, and nine members had managed to flee from their home in Hajipara in the Maungdaw district of Rakhine.

“They entered my house where I was talking to my daughter Sabekunnahar and my son Rahmatullah, my two youngest children,” Rahima said, describing the attack on their home by Myanmar soldiers and Rakhine men 20 days ago.

The soldiers and the Rakhine men started setting fire to the other houses around the yard.

“They kicked my son Rahmatullah out of the house. One of my sons managed to flee with my sick husband, elder son managed to flee with his wife, son and one of his twin daughters, but the other twin was burnt alive. They shot dead my other son Hamid,” said Rahima.

“I begged to them to spare my 18-year-old daughter. Two of them held my daughter, others beat me. I was crying in pain and watching my daughter get gang-raped,” Rahima said.

“They stripped her naked, beat her and raped her. There were six of them and when one of them would rape my daughter, the others would cheer him on.”

Rahima’s voice became strained, but it seemed that her tears had run out.

Taking a deep breath, she said: “They threw me out of my house and burnt my daughter alive in front of me.

“My daughter was so beautiful. I could not save her from them, they burned her in flames. I did not hear her screaming, maybe she had accepted that she was going to die,” said Rahima.

United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten said this week she was “gravely concerned” about security operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Survivors have described sexual violence being used as a “calculated tool of terror to force targeted populations to flee”, she said.

The Tulatoli village, immediately east of Bangladesh’s border, was one of the worst victims of large-scale massacres in the military operation against Rohingya villages.

Nurul Hakim was among about 20 or so fortunate enough to have survived the massacre. He told this correspondent that the soldiers had picked out all the beautiful teenagers and killed them.

“They picked up beautiful girls from our village between 12 and 20 years old, then they were tortured and raped by the Army and the Rakhine,” he said.

“Those girls were killed and then they locked them in a house and set fire to it,” he said.

This correspondent met a 16-year-old girl in a health camp for refugees in Kutupalong. She said she was from Buthidung. Asked if she was raped, the girl at first denied vehemently. Then she began to cry.

“I have been told that if anyone knows that I was gang-raped, no one will marry me and my life will be destroyed. What should I do? This is not my fault and I have not done anything wrong,” she said between gasps.

Soldiers picked her out, along with other girls and they were forced to strip at gunpoint.

The victim told the Dhaka Tribune: “When I was trying to flee with other women of my village, they found us and picked out around 20 girls. They told us to get naked in front of everyone at gunpoint and we did.

“Then they told us to bend down and they raped one after another. They raped us in front of all the villagers. Then they started shooting. I managed to flee and ran to save my life,” she said.

At least two to three people raped each of the girls in the line, she said.

She walked for 12 days to reach Bangladesh without any food.

Nur Ayesha, who is six months pregnant, witnessed her elder sister getting raped and killed. She is from Maungdaw.

“A group of Rakhine men came to our house in the afternoon. We were sitting together. They asked for water. When my sister got up to bring water they took her one-year-old son and threw him into the pond,” she said.

“Then they told her to get naked in front of everyone and to go inside the house. Seven of them went inside the house and raped her brutally. But they did not kill her as it was getting dark, so she survived.”

Nur Ayesha’s cousin, who is 12 years old, was also gang-raped and is under treatment in Kutupalong.

Mobile medical teams from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have so far treated 23 rape victims, according to Arunn Jegan, the project coordinator for MSF emergency response.

The low number of victims taking treatment may not be any indication of how many were actually raped.  Officials from a clinic run by the UNHCR at the Leda refugee camp, told the AFP that there were rape victims among the refugees who came in October last year who would come forward months later.

Many women have yet to admit to being raped, they believe.

A 12-year-old girl was found waiting in line at a meal kitchen for the refugees in Kutupalong. The girl had a raw wound around her neck.

She said she was caught by Rakhine men in Pansi, Buthidaung.

It seemed that the child does not understand what rape is. She said they hurt her.

“They caught me while fleeing. Their camp was just next door from our village. They hurt me and tied a rope around my neck. They held one end of the rope and spun me around just like a fan. After that I cannot remember anything.”

The girl had thought she died. When she opened her eyes she started running towards Bangladesh. After eight days of running, all alone and hungry, she swam across the Naf River to get to Bangladesh.

This article was first published in Dhaka Tribune

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On Thursday September 7, I decided to go into Myanmar following the same routes the Rohingya were taking to escape to Bangladesh.

My journey started from Lomba Beel, a remote village in Howaikong union in Teknaf. From here, it takes an hour to walk to the Naf, where the three hour-long boat journey begins, ending with another hour spent trudging through the boggy coast of Myanmar.

Thousands of Rohingya swarmed the roads, desperate to find shelter. They had haunted expressions and downcast, fearful eyes, aching to tell their stories of being chased away from their lands. Everyone had a story to tell, to anyone who would listen.

The march from the Naf to Lomba Beel is a stern testimony to the horrors that have driven over 270,000 people over two weeks.

Nothing like a humanitarian crisis to get rich quick

On the banks of the Naf, the fleeing Rohingya arrived in groups of ten to twelve on small fishing boats. The boats shook tumultuously, even ten people too much for them.

But there were too many boats with well over a dozen passengers each. It comes as no surprise that there are so many Rohingya reported dead during the crossing.

They are operated by Bangladeshi boatmen who have found a lucrative niche in this corner of the world.

The boatmen charge Tk10,000 ($122) per head to ferry each Rohingya from Rakhine to Teknaf.

When asked about the exorbitant rates, a boatman glumly replied: “Our humanity compels us to help our fellow human beings. If we did not provide a route to escape, they would never be able to escape to Bangladesh.”

The humanity is there, but it does not come cheap. The sympathy of the boatmen doesn’t extend to offering the fleeing Rohingya a way across the river for free.

After a boat arrived with a dozen Rohingya, including a month-old baby, all from Buthidaung, I asked the boatman to take me to Myanmar. At first he refused, but the incentive of cash encouraged him to oblige my request.

The Rohingya refugee have but one aim in mind, to survive the onslaught they have left behind | Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka Tribune

The boatman pushed away from the coast with all his might leveraged with the oar. He quickly rowed to get to the other side. I asked him what his hurry was. He replied it was to get into the Myanmar waters and away from Border Guard Bangladesh patrols.

As we cruised into international waters, a flotilla of boats, perhaps over a hundred boats – of the same size as the one I was on – filled the horizon. Thousands of Rohingya were huddled on these boats in their desperate attempt to escape the violence in Rakhine.

On my right, a BGB trooper stood like a sentinel atop an outpost, looking out over the flotilla.

After over 40 minutes of sailing, the boat slowly drifted into a canal flanked by border fences in Myanmar. The heart of the canal was crowded with empty boats, ready to ferry the Rohingya to Bangladesh, for a hefty price.
 

“You do not need to be worry about their Border Guard Police or the Tatmadaw here. This area is under the control of Harakat al-Yaqeen (the former name of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army),” my boatman tells me.

He points towards an outpost and tells me it used to belong to the Myanmar BGP until August 25. ARSA had captured it and driven the BGP away. I gazed at the concrete structure in awe. This is what sparked the wildfire that was consuming the lives of hundreds of thousands.
 

The much vaunted Myanmar border outpost now overlooks Rohingya fleeing the country | Adil Sakhawat/Dhaka Tribune
 

It was hard to tear my gaze away from the outpost. But as I did, I saw hundreds of people scrambling for the boats. In the light of the setting sun, the lines of hardship on their faces seemed to be getting more and more distinct.

A small bridge arched over the canal connects the two village tracts of Shilkhali and Kurkhali. Two men carrying staves stood guard over the bridge. The boatmen pointed towards them and whispered: “They are ARSA.”

The area is less of an insurgency camp and more of a getaway hub for fleeing refugees | Adil Sakhawat/Dhaka Tribune
 

These two haggard-looking men in shirts and lungi looked more like farmers or fishermen than armed insurgents. But the wooden sticks they carried would at least help them shepherd the Rohingya away from the violence, if not combat the armed forces outright.

It was an endless stream of people. Desperate people. Frightened people. A people without a land. For all their bonds to their homes in Rakhine, they were now forced to flee to Bangladesh.

My boatman introduced me to one Rashid Ahmed, an ARSA member, and took off, pleading his urgency to ferry another boatload of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh.
 

Where the army fears to tread

Rohingya refugees trudge across the mudplains to get to the shores of the Naf to embark on boats to take them to Bangladesh | Adil Sakhawat/Dhaka Tribune
 

Rashid told me that the bridge is a crucial point for ARSA and the Rohingya alike. The two villages it connected were controlled by ARSA. The canal was one of the major, if not the only, point of contact for the boatmen and the refugees.

I asked him how he felt about the conflict. He responded that the Rohingya had been oppressed by the Myanmar government for decades and the armed struggle was the only way they could resist. He hinted about another possible ARSA attack soon, but refused to reply to any further queries along these lines once he realised his slip.

I inquired about how far the Myanmar forces are. He confidently replied they were three kilometres away.

I walked two kilometres upriver along the border fence, and found no end to the stream of Rohingya refugees. It was exhausting, to even see so many people arrive at the shores ragged and weary.

After all the perils they had braved, too many people remained stranded because they could not afford the Tk10,000 to make the crossing. But at least they were safer here, in ARSA territory, than their villages which burned on the horizon.

My excursion to Myanmar was over. I sought a boat to take me back to Bangladesh.

As the sun began to set behind me, I could not help but wonder how many of the fleeing Rohingya will ever see another sunset in Rakhine. 

Republished with permission from Dhaka Tribune.
 

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The complaint states that it has come to the rights groups knowledge that ‘a large number of Rohingya people, reached India to save their lives from persecution by the Myanmar government.’

The complaint cites the following documents:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21355&LangID=E  
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55595#.WT7QuJKGMdU
http://www.mcrg.ac.in/WC_2015/Reading/D_Refugee_Protection.pdf

Further, the complaint points out that the Rohingya people, arrested by police of West Bengal, India; are at present under detention at Malda District Correctional Home, West Bengal.  
The particulars of those persons as recorded in the record of the correctional home are as follows:-
 

 
 
Making a strong plea for the Rohingyas from Myanmar, the complaints said that they have fled their country in fear ‘ and have come to India to save their lives and making a living. They are stateless as Myanmar disowning them, they were dying and homeless. ‘

The complaint further says,

‘State prosecution against them is merely on the grounds that they have entered into India without any valid document but the law enforcement agency bound by the law did not consider that the fact that those aforesaid persons belong to Rohingya Muslim Community which is an oppressed ethnic minority community in Myanmar.

‘In Myanmar, Rohingyas are not considered full citizens and are systematically and officially robbed of their basic civil, political, social and cultural rights. They are routinely subjected to killings, arbitrary arrest, torture and forced labour. In view of the prevailing circumstances in Myanmar, the Rohingya people had no alternative except to flee Myanmar to save their lives.

‘They have the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution and such right flows from Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and thus denying them of such right is an absolute violation of the principles enshrined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 which the Government of India is bound to respect and follow having ratified the same. As per Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10th December, 1984 to which India is a signatory, the law enforcing agency is obligated not to forcibly repatriate them to Myanmar; as Indian state signed the UN resolution, though not ratified yet.

Finally, the complaint by Masum hopes that the the victims in this case will be equally treated and be provided with equal opportunity to seek refugee status from UNHCR-India instead of rotting behind bars.
Concretely the NHRC has been urged to ensure that
 
·        The concerned authorities must be directed to make a through enquiry on the situation of the victims and they should be given proper opportunity to seek refugee status from UNHCR-India.
·        The prosecution registered against the victims should be withdrawn immediately considering the facts and circumstances of the victims.
·        The victim women should be kept in a shelter home instead of the correctional home.
·        Any other action as the Commission may deem fit and proper.
 
 

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