➔ Rape as Weapon, Women as Targets ‘Several Rohingya women have spoken out about gang-rape at the hands of AA soldiers in Maungdaw township’ as also partly reported by the BROUK in its January report. By targeting the helpless women of the community with sexual violence, the ethnic armed group sends a clear message. After reading the testimonies, it becomes pretty clear that such acts communicate domination and fear. The women have been threatened at gunpoint, forced into submission, and then brutally raped. These attacks also reflect another important dimension that the perpetrators are conscious of - the fact that the community lacks rights. As a result of this, the perpetrators know there is no legal accountability for their acts and would easily go away without facing any punishment. The intersection of religious and gender identity with the lack of legal punishment for the perpetrators makes Rohingya women uniquely vulnerable. Sexual violence also becomes as a means of punishment for the victims for simply being Rohingya women. They are particularly vulnerable to attack because they do not share the same identity as their perpetrators. In such a context, the religious and ethnic identity of the victims comes to play during their sexual assaults. Perpetrators are driven by both prejudices and the amount of hate they carry for the identity of the victims. This becomes very relevant in the context of the report as the testimonies revealed that the perpetrators used derogatory terms such as ‘Kolar’ and ‘Bengali’ for their victims. In the hills of Buthidaung Township, where Rohingya homes stood for generations, 28-year-old Nur Kaida Bibi’s life was violently impacted by the AA. A mother and wife from Min Gyi Si village, she now lives in the Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Nur Kaida is convinced that her identity as a Rohingya Muslim woman made her a target. “They called us ‘Kolar’ and said we didn’t belong in Myanmar,” she said. The AA’s actions were not random, but part of a broader campaign of ethnic and religious hatred. By weaponizing rape, they aimed to punish women of their Rohingya identity. “They didn’t just want to hurt me,” she explained. “They wanted us to know that we had no power, no rights, and no safety not in our homes, not in our villages.” Nur’s testimony echoes the pattern of ethnic hatred that underlies sexual violence against Rohingya women. This hatred, deeply rooted in racial and religious discrimination, fuels a system where violence is not merely collateral, but a tool for ethnic punishment. They didn’t just rape; her rather they destroyed her 59