UN REPORT : '' MYANMAR'S GENOCIDAL INTENT ''

UNITED NATIONS : Myanmar's sexual violence against Rohingya shows ''genocidal intent'' : UN report.

Sexual violence committed by Myanmar troops against Rohingya women and girls in 2017, was an indication of the military's genocidal intent to destroy the mainly Muslim, ethnic minority, United Nations investigation concluded in a report released last Tuesday.

''The panel of independent investigators, set up by the UN Human Rights Coucil in 2017, accused   Myanmar's government of failing to hold anyone accountable and said it was responsible ''under the Genocide Convention for its failure to investigate and punish acts of genocide.''

A military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state that began in August 2017, drove more  than  730,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

Myanmar denies widespread wrongdoing and says the military campaign across hundreds of villages in northern Rakhine was in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

''HUNDREDS of Rohingya women and girls were raped, with 80 percent of the rapes corroborated by the Mission being gang rapes. The Tatmadaw [Myanmar's Military] was responsible for 82 percent of these gang rapes,'' the report said.

The Myanmar government has refused entry to the UN investigators. The investigators traveled to refugee camps in Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia, and met with aid groups, think-tanks, academics and intergovernmental organizations.

In an August 2018 report the investigators laid out five indicators of genocidal intent by the Myanmar Military:

.-  The use if derogatory language.
.-   Specific comments by government officials.
.-   Politicians, religious authorities and military commanders, prior during and after the violence.
.-   The existence of discriminatory plans and policies.
.-   Evidence of an organized plan of destruction.
.-   And the extreme brutality of the campaign.

''The  mission now concludes on reasonable grounds that the sexual violence perpetrated against the women and girls, that began on 25th August 2017 was a sixth factor that indicated Tatmadaw's  genocidal intent to destroy the Rohingya people,'' the new and latest report said.

The conclusion was based on ''the widespread and systematic killing of women and girls of reproductive ages for rape, attacks on pregnant women and on babies, the mutilation and other injuries to their reproductive organs, the physical branding of their bodies by the marks on their cheeks, necks breast and thigh.''

It said that  two years later no military commanders had been held accountable, for these and other crimes while international law and that the government ''notoriously denies responsibility.'' [Agencies]