YANGON: Human Rights Watch on Monday called for Myanmar to punish army and police commanders if they allowed troops to rape and sexually assault women and girls of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
The New York-based campaign group said it had documented rape, gang rape and other sexual violence against girls as young as 13 in interviews with some of the 69,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar security forces responded to attacks on border posts four months ago.
“The sexual violence did not appear to be random or opportunistic, but part of a coordinated and systematic attack against Rohingya, in part because of their ethnicity and religion,” a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news release said.
Reuters was unable to contact a Myanmar government spokesman to respond to the allegations.
An estimated 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western state of Rakhine, but have their movements and access to services restricted. Rohingyas are barred from citizenship in Myanmar, where many call them “Bengalis” to suggest they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Independent journalists and observers have been barred from visiting the army’s operation zone in northern Rakhine since the Oct. 9 attacks that killed nine border police.
The government has so far dismissed most claims that soldiers raped, beat, killed and arbitrarily detained civilians while burning down villages, insisting instead that a lawful operation is underway against a group of armed Rohingya insurgents.
The HRW report comes just days after United Nations investigators said Myanmar’s security forces had “very likely” committed crimes against humanity, posing a dilemma for de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner took charge of most civilian affairs in April after a historic transition from full military rule, but soldiers retain a quarter of seats in parliament and control ministries related to security.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said on Friday that Suu Kyi had promised to investigate the U.N.’s allegations.
HRW said it had gathered evidence on 28 separate sexual assaults, including interviews with nine women who said they were raped or gang raped at gunpoint by security forces during the army’s so-called “clearance operations” in northern Rakhine.
The women and other witnesses said the perpetrators were Myanmar army troops or border police, who they identified by their uniforms, kerchiefs, arm bands and patches, HRW said.
“These horrific attacks on Rohingya women and girls by security forces add a new and brutal chapter to the Burmese military’s long and sickening history of sexual violence against women,” said HRW senior emergencies researcher Priyanka Motaparthy.
“Military and police commanders should be held responsible for these crimes if they did not do everything in their power to stop them or punish those involved.”
Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, reflect on your own complicity in the genocide of my fellow Rohingya people, instead of dismissing well-documented allegations of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide as “exaggerations” and “fabrications”
Myanmar State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, both personally and from her Office, attack the growing allegations of her government’s policies of persecution of Rohingya people.
This is the latest and official attack on the video-clip which has been viewed over 96,000 times on YouTube.
I am a Rohingya activist and professional, fluent in Burmese, Rohingya and English languages, living in exile. I made the 2-minutes video-clip with English language subtitles and posted it on YouTube with the purpose of exposing Aung San Suu Kyi’s culpability and complicity in the crime of genocide against my peoples, including babies, children, women, men and elderly people.
Here is my subtitled video of you LAUGHING OUT LOUD at the genocide allegations.
The clip was a complete Burmese language exchange between a questioner and the State Counsellor from the live webcast of her public meeting with the Burmese in Singapore on 1 Dec 2016.
The literal translation of both the question, submitted in writing, which Aung San Suu Kyi herself read to the audience, and her own Burmese language response, was – and still is -100% impossible. For the whole Q and A exchange was coded.
Therefore, the inferences were made against the backdrop of Myanmar’s overwhelming public and official dismissal as “exaggerations” and “fabrications” the Rohingya identity, existence and genocidal policies – all to the best of my linguistic capabilities and in complete honesty.
This dismissal has dominated the Burmese public discourse, official statements by the governments (both the previous Government of Thein Sein and the current NLD Government or formerly opposition party) and in the social and real time mass media in Burmese language, over the past 4 years since the two bouts of large scale organized violence against Rohingyas broke out in June and October of 2012.
In her press meetings, Aung San Suu Kyi has used consistently the word “exaggerations” in reference to allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Rohingya people in the months leading up the election in November 2015. She has also reportedly used that expression “fabrications”, “biases” and “exaggerations” in her official meetings with foreign diplomats whom she chided them as relying on false or biased media reports.
The subtitles were the result of the deciphering of what those “fabrications” might be, when she laughed them out, apparently finding these “exaggerations” and “fabrications” to be nothing more than a laughing matter.
Even a YouTube which was posted by a Facebook user named “Thura Soe”. in Aung San Suu Kyi’s defence in the comment session in the State Counsellor Office’s Facebook page Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi needs to reflect on her own complicity in the genocide.
In that alternative deciphering or interpretation of the completely coded Q and A ‘fabrications’ were interpreted as “reference to the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party” or USDP.
The fact is USDP is never referred to by either Aung San Suu Kyi or her government’s Information Committee led by former USDP Government spokesperson ex-Major Zaw Htay. Nor USDP, which NLD dealt a crushing electoral defeat, has presented Aung San Suu Kyi any major headache, unlike the growing and worldwide accusations and criticisms of her complicity and silence.
Furthermore, Aung San Suu Kyi herself has openly dismissed any credible allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing as “biased” or “fabrications” or “exaggerations”.
Additionally, the Myanmar Information Committee from her office has directly scathing if baseless accusations against Human Rights Watch, BBC, CNA, CNN, Reuters, etc. rejecting even the satellite images of charred Rohingya villages.
Both these pieces of contextual information and the reports of Ms Suu Kyi’s dismissal of our Rohingya people’s collective plight as ‘exaggerations’ as well as her reported and repeated characterisation of Rohingya – including our identity as a once officially recognised ethnic minority of the Union of Burma – as “non-factual” had compelled me to come up with the only plausible deciphering as reflected in my subtitle.
I had also checked with other native speakers of Burmese who are fluent bi-lingual English-Burmese speakers and scholars. They all agreed with my deciphered subtitles.
Of course, you can also deny because the Burmese speech pattern that you resorted to will allow you “the space of deniability.” Admittedly, I could never presume to know exactly what you had in your anti-Rohingya, anti-Muslim racist mind.
However, I would like to ask Ms Suu Kyi to tell me, the accused, what exactly was coded in that Q and A on 1 Dec.
Finally – and more importantly, as a Rohingya in exile, I would like to urge strongly Ms Suu Kyi to search her soul deep and see why she finds these well-researched findings of ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity “exaggerations”.
How could you, Ms Suu Kyi possibly know, let alone dismiss, these international allegations, since you have never documented any human rights abuses in your entire life, nor ever bothered to travel to the crime scenes of my birthplace – N. Arakan – and set foot on a Rohingya IDP camp or an impoverished and oppressed Rohingya village?
After all, the name of the crime of Rohingya persecution have been accepted as crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide by some of the most world’s credible organizations, university research centres, UN special rapporteurs – including Ms Suu Kyi’s friend and teacher Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen, Desmond Tutu, Jodi Williams and Jose Ramos-Horta, Human Rights Watch, Yale University Human Rights Law Clinic, respected legal scholar and practitioners Sir Geoffrey Nice and Katherine Southwick (of Yugoslavia), renowned scholars of mass atrocities Professors Gregory Stanton and Penny Green, Human Rights Watch, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, just to name a few.
— Eye-opener on genocide against my People:
Amartya Sen, “The Term ‘slow genocide’ is appropriate because you deny [Rohingya] people health care, nutritional opportunities.” –
George Soros, “In Aung Mingalar, I heard the echoes of my childhood. You see, in 1944, as a Jew in Budapest, I too was a Rohingya. Much like the Jewish ghettos set up by Nazis around Eastern Europe during World War II, Aung Mingalar has become the involuntary home to thousands of families who once had access to health care, education and employment. Now, they are forced to remain segregated in a state of abject deprivation. The parallels to the Nazi genocide are alarming.”
Desmond Tutu, “The government of Myanmar has sought to absolve itself of responsibility for the conflict between the Rakhine and the Rohingya, projecting it as sectarian or communal violence. I would be more inclined to heed the warnings of eminent scholars and researchers including Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics, who say this is a deliberately false narrative to camouflage the slow genocide being committed against the Rohingya people.” (source: http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/2015/05/29/desmond-tutu-the-slow-genocide-against-the-rohingya)
Those who are calling on Singapore to apologize to China can probably constitute Singapore’s very own ‘regressive left.’ These are the people who oppose the Govt at all costs and probably just want to watch the world (or at least our Establishment) burn. This is a stance that is absolutely devoid of principle.
I don’t see any reason why Singapore should apologize to China for speaking up in line with values we have always stood by – free trade, globalization and a ruled-based world order. Advocating for national values on an international stage is anything but foreign to China too.
A journalist was fired from The Myanmar Times after she reported on military rape in Rakhine State. More staff might be fired; others have resigned/are considering resignation. See: http://frontiermyanmar.net/…/reporters-sacking-followed-moi…
To publicly indicate their anger and dismay, The Myanmar Times editorial staff took out an ad in their own paper.
When you face censorship, quiet negotiations don’t address the systemic issue. Closed-door dialogue doesn’t challenge power; you’re playing by the rules of the powerful. You might get a story in the paper this time, or prevented a sacking another time, but it doesn’t mean you’ve won freedom. Here’s to journalists who aren’t afraid to take a stand together, and to let the public know about it.
If a report by the Sunday Times (7 June 2015) is any indication, the Singapore Cabinet is set to imbibe more ex-military men into its fold.
The current Lee Hsien Loong Cabinet has 19 ministers.
Out of these, six are former military men, including the Prime Minister and one of the deputy prime ministers, Teo Chee Hean.
They make up almost one-third of the current Cabinet.
This looks to continue, with perhaps even an increase in such credentialed men at the very heart of Government, depending on whether any incumbents step down at the next General Election (GE), which is due by January 2017.
The Sunday Times reported:
“Talk is that those from the top government ranks who may take the plunge include Chief of Defence Force Ng Chee Meng, 47, Chief of Navy Lai Chung Han, 42, Chief Guards Officer Melvyn Ong, 40…”
The three men have spent a large part of their careers in the military.
Undoubtedly, no one should expect that these highflyers in the military would assume a “lesser” political role as mere Members of Parliament (MP), if they should get elected by Singaporeans.
The men, in fact, would form the other half of the so-called “4th Generation leadership” which PM Lee spoke of recently.
He said in a radio programme in May that the first half of the next generation of political leaders were already in place, and that the other half would be installed after the next GE.
If these three military officers join the Cabinet, it would mean Singapore may have close to 40 per cent of Cabinet made up of those from the uniformed services, assuming no further changes to the Cabinet.
This compares with the five SAF men who were in the 2001 Cabinet, out of 17 ministers.
The recruitment of military types or “scholar soldiers” into government started more earnestly in the mid-1980s, when the ruling party started to find it hard to attract candidates from the private sector.
This, however, was not planned, according to former minister George Yeo, said Diane K Mauzy, in her 2002 book, “Singapore Politics Under The People’s Action Party”.
“The transition from purely civilian government to one including Brigadier-Generals and a rear Admiral… was sudden, and it raised some qualms and presented Singapore with at least a minor image problem,” she said.
She further explained:
“To increase the prestige of the SAF, a major SAF scholarship scheme was introduced in 1971, and the ‘best minds’ were channeled that route. Later, when the academic and professional recruits did not work out for the most part, and attracting candidates from the private sector or the Administrative Service proved difficult, the military scholars, especially from the first two scholarship batches (1971 and 1972), increasingly provided the PAP with its new talent. Most of these scholar-soldiers were immediately appointed Ministers of State.”
PM Lee was among those who were awarded the SAF scholarship in 1971 to study mathematics at Cambridge University. (See here.)
Ms Mauzy also noted then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s views on the number of military men in Cabinet.
“Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong is aware that having too many military men in government is bad for Singapore’s image, and he also believes it would not be good to have too many in Cabinet with the same military (engineering and mathematics) mindset.”
Until these men shed their military uniforms and put on the whites of the PAP, all talk is mere speculation.
But if the talk is true, it may yet again point to a problem the PAP has faced for a long time – the inability to recruit from outside the usual hunting grounds of the military and the Civil Service.
Nonetheless, it is worth asking ourselves if having a large number of former military men in the Cabinet is something good for the nation, given the challenges we face, which calls for experience in the private sector, and a non-conformist, out-of-the-box mindset.
The last thing Singapore needs, in going forward, is groupthink at the very heart of government.
But for now, the so-called “4th Generation” leadership under the PAP looks set to be led by military men.
