Burma-Myanmar: Army committed mass killings and gang rapes in Rohingya people cleansing
Witnesses testified to “the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food”, the report said on Friday.
One woman told UN investigators how her eight-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed as she tried to stop them.
“The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said in a statement.
Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s military launched a security operation in response to attacks on police border posts on Oct. 9, the UN report said. The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at 69,000.
“The ‘area clearance operations’ have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths,” some of them through helicopters shooting at villages and dropping grenades on them, the report said.