Rohingya Muslims remaining in Myanmar still face a serious risk of genocide

News24xx.com -  Rohingya Muslims remaining in Myanmar still face a “serious risk of genocide”, UN investigators said yesterday, warning the repatriation of a million already driven from the country by the army remains “impossible”.

The fact-finding mission to Myanmar, set up by the Human Rights Council, last year branded the army operations in 2017 as “genocide” and called for the prosecution of top generals, including army chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Some 740,000 Rohingya fled burning villages, bringing accounts of murder, rape and torture over the border to sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh, where survivors of previous waves of persecution already languished.

But in a damning report, the United Nations team said the 600,000 Rohingya still inside Myanmar’s Rakhine state remain in deteriorating and “deplorable” conditions.

“Myanmar continues to harbour genocidal intent and the Rohingya remain under serious risk of genocide,” the investigators said in their final report on Myanmar, due to be presented today in Geneva.

The country is “denying wrongdoing, destroying evidence, refusing to conduct effective investigations and clearing, razing, confiscating and building on land from which it displaced Rohingya”, it said.

Rohingya were living in “inhumane” conditions, the report continued, adding more than 40,000 structures had been destroyed in the 2017 crackdown.

Meanwhile, UN human rights experts yesterday urged the Bangladesh government to carry out an “independent, impartial and effective investigation” into all the deaths that have occurred in Rohingya camps, reported UNB.

“The search for justice for the young Bangladeshi man killed on August 22 is of the utmost importance, but it’s equally necessary to ensure that the presumption of innocence is upheld and that reactionary, summary and ad hoc justice is not doled out solely to placate the legitimate concerns of the host community,” said a joint media release issued by the experts from Geneva.

 

 

 

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