Rohingya ‘genocide intensifying’ as war rages in Myanmar’s Rakhine: BROUK

Al Jazeera
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 26 Jun 2024

Warning from rights group comes as fighting between Myanmar’s military and Arakan Army traps Rohingya in the western state.

People can be seen on the Myanmar side of the border, during the continuing conflict in Rakhine State, in the Teknaf area of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on June 24, 2024 [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/ Reuters]

 

 A United Kingdom-based rights group has called for global action over what it called an “intensifying genocide” against Myanmar’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority as fighting between the Southeast Asian country’s military and a powerful ethnic armed group escalated in the western Rakhine State.

The warning from the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) on Tuesday came as the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) condemned the looting and burning of its food stores and warehouse in Maungdaw, a coastal town on Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh that is mainly home to the Rohingya and is the focus of the current hostilities between the military and the Arakan Army (AA).

Keep reading

• Young men trapped between war and conscription in Myanmar’s Rakhine
• The ‘impossible’ life of Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees
• Some 45,000 Rohingya flee amid allegations of beheading, burning in Myanmar
• ‘Nowhere to go’: Rohingya face arson attacks in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

The AA represents Rakhine’s Buddhist majority and is fighting for autonomy for the region.

It issued evacuation orders for Maungdaw late on June 17 ahead of a planned offensive, leaving tens of thousands of Rohingya residents of the town with “nowhere to flee”, according to the UN’s 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 crackdown 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 increased persecution after fighting between the military and the AA resumed last October. The military, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, is subjecting Rohingya in areas under their control to a “slow death” by depriving them of resources indispensable for survival – including food, water, shelter, sanitation and medical care – and also forcibly recruiting members of the community, including children, and sending them to the front lines to fight against the AA, it said.

Link : Here