GENEVA, Aug 12: A UN-backed investigator has found evidence of “systemic torture” in Myanmar’s detention centres over the last year, including electric shocks, strangulations, gang rape, and burning of sexual body parts.
The team, led by Nicholas Koumjian, has made progress in identifying security personnel involved in operations at the detention facilities and “perpetrators who have summarily executed captured combatants or civilians accused of being informers.”
The report details the documented torture in Myanmar’s detention facilities, including beatings, electric shocks, strangulations, gang rape, burning of sexual body parts, and other forms of sexual violence.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar has opened new investigations into atrocities committed against communities in Rakhine state as the military and the Arakan Army battle for control of the territory.
More than 700,000 Rohingya people fled to neighboring Bangladesh in 2017 to escape persecution in Myanmar, and about 70,000 others crossed the border last year when the Arakan Army effectively took over Rakhine.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar has been working since 2018 under a mandate from the UN-backed Human Rights Council to help document rights abuses and violations in the country. (AP)
