The Myanmar army along with local Buddhist communities began a barbarous crackdown on Rohingyas on August 25, 2017, a recent investigation conducted by Bangladesh’s Liberation War Museum has concluded.
The museum’s report, “The Rohingya Genocide: Compilation and Analysis of Survivors’ Testimonies”, found the perpetrators of the Rohingya genocide in Rakhine state of Myanmar used rape and sexual violence as a weapon against the ethnic community in the name of their “clearance operation”.
It said Rohingya women and girls were molested by the attackers in their own residences or neighbourhoods.
More than 700,000 Rohingyas, mostly children and women, have crossed into Bangladesh in fear of their lives in the past 14 months.
They have joined more than 400,000 others who were already mostly living in squalid and cramped camps inside Cox’s Bazar.
A team of researchers from the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Justice (CSGJ) of Bangladesh Liberation War Museum, after a series of visits to eight makeshift camp-sites, have documented 161 testimonies of discriminations and atrocities from the Rohingya survivors, eyewitnesses and victims who fled the violence.
The editor of the 94-page paper, Mofidul Hoque, said the research would assist any future ICC trial process to ensure international justice for the Rohingya victims of genocide.
“The findings are evident in stating that a widespread and systematic attack through means of rape and acts of sexual violence against the civilian population has indeed been committed by the Myanmar Military forces aided by the locals,” he said.
“Among the victims were Rohingya women who suffered violations of rape, gang rape, mutilation, assault, and torture, and who also witnessed the death of their family members.
“The largely Muslim minority have been systematically stripped of their legal rights, leaving them stateless and especially vulnerable to human rights abuses having no legal government protection.”
Rape as a weapon
Gita Sahgal, the former head of Amnesty International’s gender unit, said rape and sexual violence were used as a common military strategy in conflict-torn places such as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan.
“Rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries,” she said.
“It instills fear by exercising vicious and calculated exercise of power on a helpless and destabilized community which is already suffering from conflict situation.”
In the case of Myanmar, hundreds of women have entered Bangladesh in ripped clothes, traumatized from being either a victim or a witness to the heinous crimes.
From the testimonies collected, the legal framework and the cases cited, it is apparent that rape and sexual violence has been used as an instrument by Tatmadew, Myanmar’s autonomous military.
The research also finds that that Myanmar’s military force, in collaboration with local ultra-nationalists and extremists, has been committing genocide and other crimes against humanity by targeting the Rohingya women with an intent to destroy and eliminate the ethnic community as a whole.
Liberation War Museum Trustee and CSGJ Director Mofidul Hoque told the Dhaka Tribune: “The study report could be considered as a reliable piece of research work which documents the crime of genocide against the Rohingya ethnicity.
“Many international organizations have already conducted similar research but Bangladesh has surveyed for the first time and said that the attack on Rohingyas can be termed as genocide.”
The research said the discrimination and widespread atrocities against the Rohingya minority of Myanmar is a historic occurrence.
It said: “The atrocities that took place before and continued till August 25, 2017, were conducted as attacks on the Rohingya ethnic population, not only targeting the mass individuals, but as members of a specific ethno-religious group.
“The group identity is dual here: namely ethnic identity as Rohingya and religious identity as Muslim. It is sufficient to establish that the Rohingyas were targeted and persecuted because of their group identity.
“Furthermore, the intent of the perpetrators was to wholly and permanently erase the name ‘Rohingya’ from the social, cultural and political landscape of Myanmar’s history.
“The findings prove that the atrocities in Rakhine were as brutal as a clear case of genocide under the legal framework of International Criminal Law.”
‘Shame for humanity’
Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee President Shahriar Kabir told the Dhaka Tribune that the atrocities committed against the Rohingyas can be termed as genocide as the nature of the attacks on the ethnic community matches with almost all definitions of genocide.
“It’s a shame for humanity,” he said. “Many ethnic groups and races have been lost from the world due to such kinds of inhuman acts.”
Terming the Rohingya prosecution as “slow poison” - according to the opinions of international experts – Shahriar, who is a member of a 35-member Citizens’ Commission for Investigating Genocide and Terrorism in Burma, said: “The Rohingyas will be lost forever from Earth if such acts of genocide continues.”
The research praised the humanitarian response of the Bangladeshi people to the refugee influx.
It said: “Bangladesh, being a neighbouring country, has opened its borders to the persecuted Rohingyas and provided them primarily with facilities such as shelter in makeshift camps, food, clothing, and medical services and relentlessly working to provide other facilities concerning education and registration.
“A victim nation of 1971’s genocide is now standing by the victims of 2017’s genocide – Bangladesh presents an exceptional example of humanitarianism.”
