The United Nations general assembly has approved a resolution condemning human rights abuses against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and other minorities, including arbitrary arrests, torture, rape and deaths in detention.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in the country for generations.
Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless, and they are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.
The long-simmering Rohingya crisis exploded in August 2017 when Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group.
The campaign led to the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.😢🖤
The resolution expressed alarm at the continuing influx of Rohingya Muslims to neighbouring Bangladesh over the past four decades – now numbering 1.1 million, including 744,000 who arrived since August 2017 – “
in the aftermath of atrocities committed by the security and armed forces of Myanmar”.
The assembly also expressed alarm at an independent international fact-finding mission’s findings “of gross human rights violations and abuses suffered by
Rohingya Muslims and other minorities” by the security forces, which the mission said “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law”.
The resolution also urged the government “to expedite efforts to eliminate statelessness and the systematic and institutionalised discrimination” against the Rohingya and other minorities, to dismantle camps for
Rohingyas and others displaced in Rakhine, and “to create the conditions necessary for the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return of all refugees, including Rohingya Muslim refugees”.
