UN Will Raise Issue of Sexual Violence Against Rohingya With ICC

A senior United Nations official said on Sunday she would raise the issue of persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, especially sexual violence and torture, with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Pramila Patten, special representative of the secretary general on ‘Sexual Violence in Conflict’said around $10 million (7.58 million pounds) is needed immediately to deliver specialist services for survivors of gender-based violence, Reuters reported.

Patten was speaking in the Bangladeshi capital after a three-day visit to the Cox Bazar region, near the border with Myanmar. There she met women and girls who are among hundreds of thousands of Rohingya that have sought refuge in Bangladesh following a crackdown by Myanmar’s military on the predominantly Muslim minority.

“When I return to New York I will brief and raise the issue with the prosecutor and president of the ICC whether they (Myanmar’s military) can be held responsible for these atrocities,” Patten said after visiting several camps.

“Sexual violence is being commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the armed forces of Myanmar, otherwise known as the Tatmadaw.”

“Rape is an act and a weapon of genocide.”

She said she would brief the UN secretary-general on the situation in Cox’s Bazar and that her office’s annual report, to be presented to the Security Council in March, would include a section dedicated to Myanmar. Patten said brutal acts of sexual violence had occurred in the context of collective persecution that included the killing of adults and children, torture, mutilation and the burning and looting of villages.

“The widespread threat and use of sexual violence was a driver and ‘push factor’ for forced displacement on a massive scale, and a calculated tool of terror aimed at the extermination and removal of the Rohingya as a group,” she said.