27th March 2019
BY LAIGNEE BARRON
Razia Sultana, a Rohingya lawyer and advocate, speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, Canada on Sept. 20, 2018. Sean Kilpatrick—AP
When Rohingya refugees began fleeing into Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017, lawyer and activist Razia Sultana found herself on the frontline of a sexual violence epidemic.
The Myanmar military, in its scorched-earth campaign against the Muslim minority, laid waste to entire villages, carried out massacres and lined up women to be raped, according to U.N. investigators, who have called for the alleged crimes to be prosecuted as genocide. As the exodus swelled to more than 770,000, Razia Sultana got to work documenting the violence.