Witness to horror
Rohingya women speak out about Myanmar Army rape and other atrocities in Maungdaw
This report – ” Witness to horror” – comprises testimony of twenty-one Rohingya women who have fled to Bangladesh to escape Myanmar Army “clearance operations” in Maungdaw since October 9, 2016.
The women, from nine villages targeted during the operations, share similar experiences of how large numbers of Myanmar troops, with Border Guard Police and local paramilitary forces, surrounded and entered their villages, indiscriminately torturing and killing men, women and children, and burning down houses.
Almost all the women lost their husbands in the crackdown. Most are missing, feared dead. Three of their husbands were killed in massacres of up to forty men; one saw her husband and two young sons shot dead with thirty other men. Another woman saw soldiers shoot her husband dead by firing into his anus. Only one of the husbands had managed to flee to
Bangladesh, but he had been severely tortured, with his testicles burned.
Eleven of the women lost their children during the attacks. One had her one-year-old baby pulled from her arms and thrown into her burning house. Another woman saw her seven year-old son deliberately stamped to death. Another found her baby’s dead body on the ground with his throat cut.
Fifteen women, from eight villages, personally experienced or witnessed sexual violence by Myanmar Army and paramilitary troops during the recent security operations, providing
evidence that at least 70 women and girls have been raped.
Most of the rape incidents took place when women were gathered at gunpoint in large groups outside their villages during security operations in Kyar Goung Taung, Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, and Kyet Yoe Pyin.Groups of soldiers pulled young women away from the others and took them to be raped in nearby houses, fields or forest. Some women were taken to be raped in military camps. One woman witnessed gang-rape of ten girls by about 30 soldiers in an open field near Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son.
