Rohingya crisis: Burmese soldiers are raping and murdering Muslims today, warns UN
Doctors say they have seen dozens of women with injuries consistent with sexual violence
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Your support makes all the difference.Burmese soldiers are continuing to rape and murder Rohingya Muslims in the country’s Rakhine state, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights.
Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein told the US National Public Radio that his team on the ground was “receiving accounts of indiscriminate shootings, summary executions, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearances, rape and other forms of sexual violence and torture.”
He added: “This seems to be continuing as we speak today.”
He also repeated his previous assertion that the situation in Burma “remains a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
UN doctors have warned of seeing dozens of women with injuries consistent with sexual violence in recent weeks.
One said she had seen incidents of vaginal tearing, bite marks and signs that seemed to show a firearm was used to penetrate women.
More than 350 people had been referred for “life-saving care” relating to gender-based violence - a broad term that includes rape, attempted rape and molestation- since the start of the crisis.
Refugees are continuing to flee to Bangladesh which has seen an influx of more than 580,000 refugees since 25 August, when Burma security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages.
The Burmese government claims its military was acting in retaliation to attacks by Muslim insurgents.
But the response has been almost universally condemned by the international community.
Amnesty International said it believes hundreds of people were killed by security forces who surrounded villages during the military offensive
The United Nations is considering whether the mass killings of Muslims in the country could amount to genocide, the organisation’s Asia Pacific Human Rights chief said this week.
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