Counterinsurgency Operations: Root Causes and Perpetrating Rape

counterinsurgency operations: Soldiers and police launched aggressive counterinsurgency operations in Rakhine in October after shadowy insurgents killed nine border guards, according to Brandon Sun. Government forces were accused of perpetrating rape, torture and other abuses against residents of the Muslim Rohingya minority during their sweeps. National Security Adviser Thaung Tun said in a briefing to foreign diplomats and representatives of U.N. agencies that the U.N. Human Rights Council's recent decision failed to recognize Myanmar's efforts to deal with the situation and address its root causes. The Rohingya have faced widespread discrimination in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, which led to deadly intercommunal violence in 2012 that forced more than 100,000 Rohingya from their homes into squalid displacement camps, where many still remain. More than 70,000 Rohingya villagers fled across the border to Bangladesh and another 20,000 were internally displaced. Rights group said the recent army crackdown included the burning down of more than 1,000 homes, according to high-resolution satellite images, and the killing of an unknown number of civilians, perhaps in the hundreds. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.