» 11/08/2011 11:14 MYANMAR Kachin: women kidnapped and raped by the Burmese army A 28-year old kidnapped and raped by the soldiers for a week. At the end of October in Shan State the military raped and murdered three young girls of Chinese ethnicity. Aung San Suu Kyi: Rape, a weapon of war used by the military against the population. Thai humanitarian association tells the stories of the victims of abuse in a documentary.
Yangon (AsiaNews / Agencies) – Held hostage for days and repeatedly raped in turn by a group of Burmese soldiers. This is the nightmare experienced by 28 year old Ja Sumlot Roi, an ethnic Kachin woman and mother of a girl of only 14 months. The young woman is from the village of Bang Hkai in Bhamo District in northern Myanmar near the border with China. Abducted by soldiers on October 28, Ja Roi was held for over a week in the hands of torturers, locked in the barracks of Mu Bum. According to what her relatives she was only released on November 3 after repeated incidents of gang rape.
Eyewitnesses confirmed seeing the naked body of the girl, on a concrete platform used by soldiers to mount guard. Ja Roi showed signs of violence, caused by repeated gang rapes. The young woman’s husband and father-in-law escaped capture, instead she was abandoned on the line that separates government soldiers from areas controlled by the Kachin Independence Army rebels (KIA).
Human rights activists explain that sexual violence is a being used as a real "weapon of war” by the military against ethnic minorities in the Kachin, Shan and Karen States. On October 27 some soldiers raped and murdered three young girls of Chinese ethnicity in Shan State, originally from the district of Muse.
The international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has intervened in an attempt to halt this vile practise. It has condemned the Burmese government for its continued perpetration of abuses against innocent victims, in spite of proclamations promising greater democracy and reforms. In particular, the series of rapes against Kachin girls and women, the detention of civilians and destruction of houses which have been ongoing since June 9, with the heightening of the conflict between the army and the militia. Even Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Laureate and leader of the opposition, said that "rape in my country is a weapon used against those who want to live in peace, especially in areas where ethnic minorities live."
Roi Ja’s terrible story of is similar to that of many other young women in Kachin and told in a documentary made by the humanitarian association, based in Thailand, the Women's League of Burma (WLB). Entitled "Ensuring justice for women", the documentary offers an overview of 18 cases of shocking sexual violence which have occurred in recent months, plus four cases in the nearby Shan State, with victims ranging in age between 12 and 50 years, including a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy.
Nay Moon Li, spokesman for the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT), told the dissident newspaper The Irrawaddy that "with the general elections of 2010, the situation instead of improving has worsened even more." And the military impunity enshrined in the Constitution, does not help to punish cases of abuses committed by the army against the civilian population, particularly women.
