Abstract
Myanmar’s discriminatory policies against the Rohingya have been extensively addressed by academics. However, wartime sexual violence and its impact on Rohingya women have been overlooked, therefore requiring more detailed research. Attention must be dedicated to how mass rapes are being conducted against women, causing severe physical and psychological harm.
This article states that genocidal rape is being committied against the Rohingya. To support such a statement, interviews of NGOs and UN officials with both survivors and perpetrators are used as evidence. Such documents confirm the notion that the Myanmar army uses mass rapes, ordered by high-ranking officials, to inflict the maximum bodily and mental harm on Rohingya women.
By Nicolò Miotto
One of the most discriminated communities
The term Rohingya identifies the Muslim people living in the Rakhine State in Myanmar. [1] Both local authorities and the national government have denied the Rohingya’s fundamental rights and have conducted a series of military campaigns against them.
The most notable humanitarian conflicts occurred in 1977 and 1992, which resulted in the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. [2] Subsequent high-level violence characterised the following major crises in 2012, 2015, and 2017. In a tweet, the UN Secretary General António Guterres called the Rohingya ‘one of the most discriminated against and vulnerable communities on Earth.’ [3]
Genocide and Genocidal Rape
According to independent studies and UN official documents, [4] [5] the Rohingya people are being persecuted with genocidal intent by the Myanmar government. Article II of the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) defines genocide as:
‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’ [6]
Although some scholars state that mass rape should be explicitly inscribed in Article II, [7] extensive wartime sexual violence already falls within the category of genocide. As mass rape characterised the genocidal campaigns during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995) and the Rwandan Genocide (1994), the concept of genocidal rape has been coined and defined as a ‘policy of rape for the purpose of genocide’. [8] Moreover, wartime sexual violence has been prosecuted as a war crime and crime against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. [9]
Genocidal rape has three specific features. Firstly, it is a policy. This means that a group - of politicians, soldiers or rebels - deliberately plans to use mass rape to commit a genocide. Secondly, it causes physical damage, ranging from inflicting wounds to killing an individual. Accounts of the atrocities committed during the Yugoslavian Wars show how mass rape preceded mass killings of women. [10] Thirdly, it brings about severe mental harm. A main characteristic is the double-faced trauma described by Vetlesen in his analysis of the psychological consequences of mass rape:
First, there is the trauma of having been raped; second, on top of that, there is the trauma of being forced to help reproduce, and so in an elementary sense to strengthen, to prolong into the future, the identity characteristic of one’s tormentor by way of giving birth to his child. [11]
Such features characterise the Rohingya crisis. Indeed, as demonstrated by the interviews of both survivors and perpetrators, Myanmar authorities intend to commit genocide and are using mass rape as a policy to commit this atrocity.
Interviews with survivors
As Rohingya people fled from Rakhine to Bangladesh, massive refugee camps were built to shelter families and individuals. UN officials, NGO workers, and journalists have interviewed the survivors in the camps, producing several reports on the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya in Rakhine.
The interviews demonstrate that genocidal rape is being carried out against the Rohingya. Indeed, female survivors have suffered serious physical and psychological pain. For instance, the New York Times interviewed Noor, an 18-year old Rohingya who was gang-raped by soldiers and had a baby born of wartime sexual violence. [12] Noor reported many of the psychological symptoms of double-faced trauma. In 2017 Human Rights Watch interviewed 29 survivors of wartime sexual violence. Their stories highlight a precise policy of annihilation, carried out by groups of soldiers who use high-level violence to perpetrate mass rape. For instance, Fatama Begum, 33, described her experience as follows:
I was held down by six men and raped by five of them. First, they [shot and] killed my brother… then they threw me to the side and one man tore my lungi [sarong], grabbed me by the mouth and held me still. He stuck a knife into my side and kept it there while the men were raping me, that was how they kept me in place. I was trying to move and it was bleeding more. They were threatening to shoot me. [13]
Furthermore, in 2019 the independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM) produced a report based on interviews with survivors. A 25-years old woman who was gang-raped described how soldiers meticulously plan mass rape:
When the military entered the village all the men ran towards the jungle and the women stayed in groups. Women from 10-20 houses gathered in one house. In every village women made groups like that to stay together. The military initially pretended they needed potatoes. I thought I could rest and hide, but then they rushed into the house. 4 to 5 military were guarding the house when one of them raped me. One after the other, they took turns in raping me. I begged for my life. After the second rape, I fainted. I do not know how many men raped me. [14]
Not only do all the survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, but they also experience social stigma. This has a major impact on Rohingya women given their cultural and religious backgrounds. Indeed, as Dajouida Siaci suggests ‘social stigma associated with rape is so potent in the Muslim culture and tradition, that these victim-survivors are ostracized’. [15]
Interviews with perpetrators
Although high-profile politicians, such as the current State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, deny the accusations of genocide, there may soon be clear and definitive evidence. In September 2020 two deserters of the Myanmar army admitted the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya. Private Myo Win Tun of Myanmar Army Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 565 and Private Zaw Naing Tun of LIB 353 confessed to conducting mass rape as ordered by Colonel Than Hitke of the Northern Command. [16]
According to the organization Fortify Rights, the soldiers were already in the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in September 2020. [17] Although the ICC did not confirm such sensitive information, it is highly probable that the two deserters are in a witness protection program. [18] If verified, their testimonies could constitute major and definitive evidence of the perpetration of genocidal rape against the Rohingya community.
Conclusions
This article aims to demonstrate that Rohingya people, specifically women, are a main target of wartime sexual violence and that genocidal rape is being carreid out against this minority. Indeed, the main features of genocidal rape characterise the atrocities suffered by the Rohingya and legal evidence has been found. Not only were survivors interviewed by UN officials and NGOs volunteers, but perpetrators may also be heard by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Further research is needed as legal developments at the ICC could constitute a major step in tackling the genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar. Indeed, the court may state legal backgrounds for the prosecution of perpetrators of genocidal rape in Myanmar, bringing about fundamental actions by the international community.
Sources
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[18] Al Jazeera English (2020). ‘Myanmar defecting soldiers may have proof of atrocities: NGO’, available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABAzNO51iw8, accessed on 26th December 2020.