Crisis for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar worsens
Myanmar's military has been accused of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
(The Christian Science Monitor) In just a few weeks, clashes between insurgents and Myanmar’s military drove almost 400,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees into neighboring Bangladesh—as many refugees as crossed the Mediterranean in 2016.
The government says it is waging a campaign against terrorists. The Rohingya say they are being forcibly expelled—a view the United Nations’ human rights chief endorsed in mid-September, saying the situation “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” The Rohingya, a Muslim minority of about 1 million, have lived in the northern state of Rakhine for generations, yet are largely deprived of citizenship, making them the world’s largest stateless population.
The escalation of the long-simmering crisis has brought international pressure upon Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to condemn military excesses.
