Rohingya violence is ‘ethnic cleansing’: UN

Geneva/Shamlapur, Sept 12
The UN human rights chief today slammed Myanmar for conducting a “cruel military operation” against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, branding it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein’s comments to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva came as the official tally of Rohingya who have fled Myanmar and crossed into southern Bangladesh in just over two weeks soared through 300,000.
The surge of refugees —many sick or wounded — has strained the resources of aid agencies already helping hundreds of thousands from previous spasms of bloodletting in Myanmar. “We have received multiple reports and satellite imagery of security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages, and consistent accounts of extrajudicial killings, including shooting fleeing civilians,” Zeid said.
“I call on the government to end its current cruel military operation, with accountability for all violations that have occurred, and to reverse the pattern of severe and widespread discrimination against the Rohingya population,” he added. “Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators, the current situation cannot yet be fully assessed, but the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” he said.
“Myanmar should stop pretending that the Rohingya are setting fire to their homes and laying waste to their own villages,” he said. He called it a “complete denial of reality” that hurts the standing of Myanmar.