More Rohingya Muslims Flee To Bangladesh In Escape Of Ethnic Cleansing

The military admits it is conducting security operations in Rakhine but the government denies it is razing homes.

“Unless urgent action is taken more Rohingya people will be dying from starvation than from bullets and bombs fired by the Burmese [Myanmar] Army”.

Mr Robertson continued: “It’s time for the Myanmar government to urgently allow access for a new, United Nations assisted investigation to take place into the torching of villages and serious rights abuses now occurring in parts of Maungdaw township – and be prepared to hold the perpetrators accountable”.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry had issued a statement denouncing the atrocities and will summon the Myanmar ambassador to Malaysia over the crisis.

Amir Hamzah, 60, who heads the Malaysian Muslims Coalition, an NGO, said “the people of Malaysia strongly condemn” Myanmar’s actions. Myanmar’s military started a systematic persecution of the Rohingyas in the 1970s when thousands were deported to Bangladesh.

The New York-based rights group made the plea after Bangladesh threatened to send the Rohingya refugees who have arrived in its territory back to Myanmar, where the Myanmarese government and extremist Buddhists have been harassing them.

“Under customary worldwide law, Bangladesh may not summarily reject at the border asylum seekers fleeing widespread human rights abuses or generalised violence”.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state have flooded across the border into Bangladesh.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told a press conference that the December 4 gathering would later determine Malaysia’s diplomatic ties with Myanmar’s government if it decides to continue military operations in troubled Rakhine State – home to around 1.2 million Rohingya.

Myanmar’s security forces are mounting indiscriminate reprisal attacks against Rohingya in response to an October 9 assault on three border posts that killed nine border officers, the rights group said in a statement on Thursday.

Over the past six weeks, rights groups have expressed growing concern about the escalation of the military campaign, which began after a series of attacks on police stations on Oct 9 killed nine people.

Cradling his two-year-old son, he said military men killed at least 300 men in the village market and gang-raped dozens of women before setting fire to around 300 houses, Muslim-owned shops and the mosque where he served as imam.

Unlike their governments, media in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries are strongly condemning the genocide in Myanmar and are pressuring Suu Kyi to do something about it.

Scores of Rohingyas Muslims have fled Myanmar over the past few years alleging atrocities by the Myanmarese army. He explains they were recognized as a Burmese ethinic group but denied Burmese citizenship so they are effectively a stateless people.

The bloodshed is the most deadly since hundreds were killed in communal clashes in 2012.

They face widespread discrimination and mistreatment.

“In our villages where we use to live, there are no Rohingya Muslims left”.

Is the government to blame? Ms. Suu Kyi bears responsibility for what is happening in Rakhine now because her party rules, not the junta.

But her government, led as it is by a former human rights icon, has faced worldwide criticism over the dire situation in Rakhine state. The act of forcibly returning people to a place or country where they would be at real risk of grave human rights violations is absolutely prohibited under worldwide law.

Presidential spokesman Zaw Htay says the worldwide media is misreporting what is going on.