Myanmar army chief rejects rape allegations as UN visits
May 1, 2018
Myanmar's army chief has denied that his forces committed abuses against Rohingya Muslims. The UN is wrapping up a four-day visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh to investigate the reports.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/V. Savitsky
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As UN Security Council envoys continued their mission in Myanmar on Tuesday, the chief of the army rejected accusations that forces under his command had sexually assaulted Rohingya Muslim women and children, .
The UN and human rights organizations have accused General Min Aung Hlaing's forces of murder, rape and pillaging as part of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Rakhine state.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their homes in Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh since a military campaign was launched in August 2017. Government officials say the campaign is meant to put down an insurgency.
After months of delays, UN Security Council ambassadors finally arrived in Myanmar on Monday after visiting Rohingya refugee border camps in Bangladesh, where the displaced recounted the horrors of killing and rape.
In Myanmar, the UN envoys met with Myanmar government leader Aung San Suu Kyi and military Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing.
"The Tatmadaw [army] acts and do their tasks under the international laws, rules and regulations. And, action is exactly taken against discipline breakers under the law. These situations happened in northern Rakhine State due to terror acts of extremist Bengali terrorists," Min Aung Hlaing said on his official Facebook page, using a derogatory term for Rohingya.
The military has control of all security matters in the country without oversight from Suu Kyi and her civilian government.
The military chief called the allegations of sexual violence "abominable on the ground of culture and religion of Myanmar."
"The Tatmadaw severely punishes those offenders in these cases. No sexual violence happened in the history of Myanmar Tatmadaw," he said.
He also said that Myanmar would take back the refugees who could be verified as citizens of Myanmar as part of a months-old deal with Bangladesh that has seen only a handful of the displaced return.
The plight of the Rohingya Muslims forced to flee the atrocities committed by militants and the army in Myanmar is hard to stomach. The most vulnerable are children, as John Owens' photo series shows.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Shot and stabbed
Since August, more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh. "The day the military came, they burnt down the village and shot my mother as she was trying to escape. My father couldn’t walk, so they stabbed him. I saw this with my own eyes," says 10-year-old Mohammed Belal who managed to run away from his village.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Haunted by the trauma
Mohammed’s sister Nur also watched the slaughter. She and her brother now live in a shelter for unaccompanied children in Bangladesh. She can play there and gets regular meals, a stark contrast to her journey from Myanmar where she and her brother nearly starved. But she is still haunted by the trauma of the recent weeks. "I miss my parents, my home, my country," she says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Deep-rooted conflict
The conflict, which has been going on for 70 years and is rooted in the post-World War II social organization of the country, has claimed more than 2,000 victims since 2016, including the mother of 12-year-old Rahman, above. "They set fire to my home, and my mother was ill, so she could not leave," he says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Save the children
Dilu-Aara, 5, came to the camp with her sister Rojina after she witnessed her parents being murdered by the military. "I was crying all the time and the bullets were flying over our heads. I escaped somehow." The international aid agency Save the Children is helping minors who come to Kutupalong without parents. Children make up to 60 percent of all Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Hunted like animals
Jaded Alam is among the hundreds of kids who came to Kutupalong without parents. Fortunately, his aunt cares for him — and very well, he admits. Jaded grew up in a village called Mandi Para where he used to love playing football, but everything changed when the military attacked. "They told us to leave our home. When I was running with my parents, they shot them. They died on the spot," he says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Child abductions
Not all families have been separated during their plight, however. Rahman Ali has been scouring the refugee camp for weeks now after his 10-year-old son Zifad disappeared. Rumors of child abductions have swirled around the camp for years, and Rahman fears his son has fallen prey to human traffickers. "I can't eat, I can’t sleep. I’m so upset! It’s like I’ve gone mad."
Image: DW/J. Owens
"My mind is not normal"
When the shooting started, Sokina Khatun did all she could to protect her children — but she couldn't save Yasmine,15, and Jamalita, 20, who were in a neighboring village at the time. "Their throats were cut in front of their grandparents," she says. "I was numb, I couldn’t feel the pain. Right now my mind is not normal," she says. She managed to rescue nine of her offspring.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Attacked, raped and robbed
Yasmine thinks she might be 15 but looks considerably younger. In her village, she used to play with marbles and run in the nearby fields, but different memories haunt her now: The attack by Myanmar forces, the beating and murder of her beloved father and brothers, and the rape by a group of Burmese soldiers who also robbed her. "I felt lots of pain in my body," she says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
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Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not consider most Rohingya as citizens, referring to them instead as illegal "Bengalis" from Bangladesh. They have few rights or access to services.
Earlier on Monday, the UN envoys met with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who said Myanmar must take back "their citizens."
After the UN envoy meeting with Suu Kyi, her office said that cooperation was needed from Bangladesh to repatriate refugees. Speaking on condition of anonymity, diplomats said the Nobel Peace Prize winner told them that Myanmar was still struggling to establish rule of law after decades of military dictatorship.
Tuesday is the last of the four-day UN envoy trip to the region, which includes a visit to Rakhine state.
