A UK-based rights group has called for global action over what it called an “intensified genocide” against Myanmar’s mainly Muslim Rohingya minority, as fighting between the Southeast Asian country’s military and a powerful armed ethnic group intensified in western Rakhine State.
The warning from the Burmese Rohingya Organization of the United Kingdom (BROUK) on Tuesday came as the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) condemned the looting and burning of its warehouses and food stores in Maungdaw, a coastal town on Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh which is mainly home to the Rohingya and is the focus of current hostilities between the military and the Arakan Army (AA).
The AA represents Rakhine’s Buddhist majority and fights for the region’s autonomy.
It issued evacuation orders for Maungdaw late on June 17, ahead of a planned offensive, leaving tens of thousands of the city’s Rohingya residents “with nowhere to flee,” according to the UN human rights chief.
The Rohingya, considered outsiders by the military as well as many of Rakhine’s Buddhist residents, have long suffered persecution in Myanmar, including a brutal military offensive that drove some 750,000 members of the community into Bangladesh in 2017.
The repression is now the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
BROUK, in its new report, said the 600,000 Rohingya who remain in Rakhine are facing increasing persecution following the resumption of fighting between the military and the AA last October. The military, which seized power in a coup d’état in February 2021, is subjecting the Rohingya in the areas under its control to a “slow death”, depriving them of resources essential to survival – including food, water, shelter, sanitation and medical care – and also forcing them to recruit community members, including children, and send them to the front lines to fight AA, he said.
Both the military and the AA committed war crimes against the Rohingya, BROUK said, including “murder, torture, cruel treatment, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, rape, hostage taking, recruitment and use of children, looting and deliberate targeting of civilians ”.
“The Rohingya who remain in Rakhine State face either a quick death, being killed by the Myanmar military or the Arakan Army, or a slow death as a result of being systematically deprived of the basic necessities of life,” said Tun Khin, president of BROUK. “We are witnessing another significant increase in violence against the Rohingya and, once again, the UN Security Council watches and does nothing.”
The international community’s failure to protect the Rohingya has resulted in “hundreds, if not several thousand” deaths in the last six months alone, BROUK said.
Global inaction
Additionally, around 200,000 internally displaced Rohingya are in urgent need of humanitarian aid to prevent further loss of life, the rights group said, while another 11,000 members of the community – around half of them children – are trapped near the capital. from Rakhine. Sittwe, surrounded by landmines and unable to flee as fighting approaches the city.
BROUK warned that the international community cannot afford to fail the Rohingya again, saying authorities in Myanmar have not acted in accordance with the ICJ order in 2020 to prevent acts against the minority population that could constitute genocide.
The group called for an open meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss “repeated violations” of ICJ orders by the military, as well as actions to end what it called a “cycle of impunity” in the country, including through of a referral to the International Criminal Court or the creation of an ad hoc international tribunal.
“Over the past 12 years, by repeatedly failing to take action to prevent violations of international law against the Rohingya, the UN Security Council has sent a message to authoritarian regimes around the world that they can get away with trying to exterminate minorities that they don’t know. I don’t like it,” said Tun Khin.
“The genocide of the Rohingya was not inevitable, it was allowed to happen and is still allowed to happen,” he added.
Renewed fighting between the military and the AA has forced about 45,000 Rohingya in Maungdaw and the neighboring municipality of Buthidaung to flee to the border with Bangladesh, the UN human rights office said in May. The deployment came amid reports of widespread arson in Rohingya villages in Buthidaung, with survivors accusing the AA of carrying out the attacks in retaliation for alleged Rohingya support for the military.
The UN rights office said it has also documented at least four cases of beheadings committed by the AA.
The WFP said on Tuesday that fighting has blocked access to its warehouse in Maungdaw since late May.
And on Saturday, food supplies were looted and the building was set on fire, he said.
The warehouse contained 1,175 tons of food and supplies – enough emergency food to sustain 64,000 people for a month.
The UN food agency did not identify the perpetrators, but said it was continuing to gather details about the circumstances surrounding the incident.
It added: “WFP calls on all parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that humanitarian facilities and assets are respected and protected, and that safe and secure access is provided for the provision of assistance vital to people in urgent situations. to need.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
