UN report condemns sexual violence by Myanmar military

Sexual violence carried out by Myanmar's security forces against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority was so widespread and severe that it demonstrates intent to commit genocide as well as warrants prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a UN report charged Thursday.

The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said it found the country's soldiers "routinely and systematically employed rape, gang rape and other violent and forced sexual acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people in blatant violation of international human rights law."
The report, released in New York, charges that the genocidal intent of Myanmar's military toward the Rohingya was demonstrated "by means of killing female members of the Rohingya community, causing Rohingya women and girls serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the Rohingya women and girls conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Rohingya in whole or in part, and imposing measures that prevented births within the group."
The new report condemns Myanmar's failure to hold accountable the perpetrators of the abuses, noting that "such violence was only possible in a climate of long-standing tolerance and impunity, where military personnel had no reasonable fear of punishment or disciplinary action."
The report says its finding of genocidal intent toward the Rohingya was supported by "the widespread and systematic killing of women and girls, the systematic selection of women and girls of reproductive ages for rape, attacks on pregnant women and on babies, the mutilation and other injures to their reproductive organs, the physical branding of their bodies by bite marks on their cheeks, neck, breast and thigh, and so severely injuring victims that they may be unable to have sexual intercourse with their husbands or to conceive and leaving them concerned that they would no longer be able to have children."
A less detailed 2018 report by the fact-finding mission also tied sexual and gender-based violence to genocidal intent, citing the statements of Myanmar officials and what was described as an "organised plan of destruction that included the targeting of women and girls of reproductive age for rape, gang rape and other forms of sexual violence" and the military's "extreme brutality, including attacks on pregnant mothers and on babies."