Filmmaker Angelina Jolie announced plans to visit Rohingya victims of sexual violence in Bangladesh during the UN Peacekeeping Defense Ministerial Conference in Vancouver, Canada, on Nov. 15, where she gave the keynote speech.
Jolie, who serves as a special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), repeatedly mentioned Myanmar among a list of countries where sexual violence has been used as a tactic of war against civilians.
“According to the UN, almost every female Rohingya refugee in the camps in Bangladesh is either a survivor of sexual violence or a witness to multiple instances of sexual assault rape or gang rape. MSF said that half – half – of the patients it has treated for rape are under 18 years old, and one was just nine years old,” Jolie said during the speech.
“This is rape and assault designed to torture to terrorize and to force people to flee. It has nothing to do with sex. It has everything to do with abuse of power. It is criminal behavior.”
She informed the Bangladeshi delegation at the conference that she plans to visit the victims of sexual violence in refugee camps near the border with Myanmar. The foreign ministry of Bangladesh acknowledged the proposal but has not released any additional details about the trip.
Attention to sexual violence against Rohingya civilians reached a crescendo last week after Human Rights Watch released a report documenting systemic gang rape by Myanmar troops against Rohingya women and girls based on the testimonies of 52 victims and witnesses.
“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, echoed that accusation by saying sexual violence was “being commanded, orchestrated and perpetrated by the armed forces of Myanmar.”
The Myanmar military denied all accusations of wrongdoing in its Rakhine State operations, writing in a Nov. 13 report: “Security forces did not commit shooting at innocent villagers and sexual violence and rape cases against women.”
Rights groups have called the report an attempt at “whitewashing” the military’s crimes and have called for an arms embargo on Myanmar, sanctions against military leaders, a referral to the International Criminal Court, and an independent investigation of the military’s actions by a UN-appointed fact-finding mission.
