Myanmar has subjected Rohingya Muslims to long-term discrimination and persecution that amounts to “dehumanizing apartheid,” Amnesty International yesterday said in a report that raises questions about what those who have fled a violent military crackdown would face if they returned home.
Since late August, more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State into neighboring Bangladesh, seeking safety from what the Burmese military described as “clearance operations.”
The UN and others have said the military’s actions appeared to be a campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” using acts of violence and intimidation, and burning down homes to force the Rohingya to leave their communities.
Photo: AP
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this month said that the world body considered it “an absolutely essential priority” to stop all violence against the Rohingya and allow them to return to their homes.
They are now living in teeming refugee camps in a Bangladeshi border district, and officials in Dhaka have urged that Myanmar allow them to return with their safety assured.
Amnesty International compiled two years’ worth of interviews and evidence in its report, detailing how Rohingya lived in Myanmar, where they were subjected to a “vicious system of state-sponsored, institutionalized discrimination that amounts to apartheid,” meeting the international legal definition of a crime against humanity.
Rohingya Muslims have faced state-supported discrimination in the predominantly Buddhist country for decades.
Though members of the ethnic minority first arrived generations ago, Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless.
They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education.
Amnesty’s report said the discrimination had worsened considerably over the past five years.
“I wanted to go to Sittwe hospital for medical treatment, but it’s forbidden,” Abul Kadir, 36, was quoted as telling the human rights group. “The hospital staff told me I couldn’t go there for my own safety and said I needed to go to Bangladesh for treatment. It cost a lot of money.”
Rohingya have fled en masse to escape persecution before. Hundreds of thousands left in 1978 and again in the early 1990s, though policies subsequently allowed many to return.
Communal violence in 2012, as Myanmar was transitioning from a half-century of dictatorship to democracy, sent another 100,000 fleeing by boat. About 120,000 remain trapped in camps outside Rakhine’s capital, Sittwe.
Rohingya were thought to number about 1 million people in Myanmar until late last year. That October, a Rohingya militant group killed several Burmese officers in attacks on police posts, and the Burmese military retaliation sent 87,000 Rohingya fleeing.
A larger militant attack on Aug. 25 killed dozens of security forces, and the Burmese military response was swift and comprehensive.
By the tens of thousands, Rohingya began fleeing, their villages set aflame, some of the survivors bearing wounds from gunshots and land mines.
Though the waves of refugees are now thinner, people are still crossing the Burmese border nearly three months later.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion