A Rohingya refugee who fled ethnic violence in Myanmar along with 750,000 others in 2017, spending seven years in Bangladesh, described Tuesday (Sep 30) the endless cycle of violence and exile facing the mostly Muslim minority.
Addressing a special UN conference on the Rohingya, Maung Sawyeddollah held up a photograph of dead women and children in civilian attire and said they had been killed by an armed group fighting against Myanmar’s army.
“These people were killed in a drone attack by the Arakan Army on Aug 5, 2024,” said Sawyeddollah, part of the Rohingya Students Network.
“These are not isolated cases, they are a part of a systematic campaign …Where is justice for Rohingya?”
The mostly Muslim Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar for decades, with many escaping the 2017 military clampdown that is the subject of a UN genocide court case and now finding themselves unable to return as fighting rages in Rakhine state.
The state, their homeland in western Myanmar, has been the site of some of the most intense fighting between the army and Arakan Army since the 2021 military coup that overthrew the democratic government.
“The Junta blocks aid, recruits Rohingyas as human shields and continues systematic oppression,” said Wai Wai Nu, founder of the Women’s Peace Network, who spent several years imprisoned in Myanmar.
The Rohingyas are now targeted by the Arakan Army, a predominantly Buddhist ethnic armed group that fights the junta and whose tactics “mirror” the junta’s “massacre, force recruitment, arson, torture … sexual violence”, she stated.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/rohingya-tell-un-myanmar-bloodshed-suffering-5378391
