The brutal gang rape that Habiba and her sister endured is a story that is becoming depressingly familiar among the thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh to escape the violence of Myanmar’s soldiers, reports AFP from Teknaf. “They tied both of us to the bed and raped us one by one,” said 20-year-old Habiba, who has now found shelter with a Rohingya refugee family a few kilometres (miles) from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. “We’re almost starving here. But at least no one is coming here to kill or torture,” said Hashim Ullah, Habiba’s older brother who escaped with his sisters.
Habiba and her sister Samira, 18, say they were raped in their home in Udang village by troops who then burnt down their house. “They torched most of the houses, killed numerous people including our father and raped many young girls,” said Habiba, who agreed to be identified in this story.
“One of the soldiers told us before leaving that they will kill us if they see us around the next time they come here. Then they torched our house.”
Widespread allegations of rape have raised fears that Myanmar’s security forces are systematically using sexual violence against the stateless Rohingya.  
The violence has forced thousands to flee, prompting a UN official to accuse Myanmar of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of the Muslim minority. Ullah and his siblings escaped after taking the family’s $400 savings and walking to the Naf River that separates southern Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
The trio spent four days hiding in the hills with hundreds of other Rohingya families, before they found a boat owner willing to take them to Bangladesh.
The boat owner left them on a small island near the border. The siblings walked across the scrubland until they found a Rohingya family who offered them shelter. Similar stories of violence and dispossession fill the rows of plastic-roofed shacks that have become the only refuge for thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Rakhine state. The escapees have told of gang rapes, torture and murder being carried out by Myanmar troops in the small strip of land that has been under military control after deadly raids on police border posts last month.