Warning: This video contains graphic images and detailed accounts of sexual violence that some may find disturbing.
Indiscriminate murder of civilians. Children decapitated and thrown into raging fires. Women gang raped, stabbed, and left for dead. Entire villages razed to the ground.
These are just some of the stories Rohingya refugees are telling journalists and human rights groups investigating the crisis in Myanmar.
“Can anyone rule out that elements of genocide may be present?”, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said this week in reference to the Rohingya crisis. Other UN officials–as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, and other members of the global community–have previously called on Myanmar to put a stop to what they called “ethnic cleansing”.
Though Pope Francis was advised not to use the term “Rohingya” during his visit to Myanmar in late November, he diplomatically raised the issue with the country’s leaders. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, for his part, told the pope that there is “no religious discrimination” and “no discrimination among the ethnics” going on in the country. Aung San Suu Kyi, recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and Myanmar’s de facto leader, has seen her global profile diminish for failing to acknowledge the crisis going on in her country.
BBC News spoke with Rohingya Muslims at a refugee camp in Bangladesh about the Myanmar massacres in the report above, which was first posted in mid-November. In it, victims tell journalist Gabriel Gatehouse harrowing stories of survival, and newly-arrived refugees relay to him that the massacres are ongoing.
More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled since the attacks began in late August, about 60% of whom are children. And per the UN refugee agency on Thursday, more are continuing to flee.
