United Nations human rights official Andrew Gilmour said on March 7 that it was impossible to safely send Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh back to their homes in Myanmar, Morning Star Online said that day. Gilmour cited ongoing widespread and systematic violence against them, amounting to 鈥渆thnic cleansing鈥.
The UN assistant secretary-general said that during a four-day visit to Bangladesh, refugees told him 鈥渃redible accounts of continued killings, rape, torture and abductions as well as forced starvation鈥 in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine.
Morning Star Online said: 鈥淎bout 700,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to Bangladesh since late August, when Myanmar security forces began sweeps through Rakhine after attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group.
鈥淭here are credible accounts of widespread rights abuses, including rape, the torching of homes and killings, carried out against the Rohingya, leading to accusations that Myanmar is guilty of 鈥榚thnic cleansing鈥 or even genocide.鈥
Gilmour said: 鈥淭he nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied bloodletting and mass rape of last year to a lower-intensity campaign of terror and forced starvation that seems to be designed to drive the remaining Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh.鈥
Ahead of Gilmour鈥檚 trip, Myanmar鈥檚 army deployed additional troops to the border with Bangladesh with the apparent aim of driving about 6000 Rohingya refugees staying in no-man鈥檚 land into Bangladeshi territory.
Myanmar denies the Rohingya citizenship and falsely claims that they are all immigrants from Bangladesh.
Despite these credible accounts of human rights abuses, documents released under freedom of information laws show that the Australian defence department plans to spend almost $400,000 on training members of the聽Myanma military in 2017-18.
The Guardian said on March 6: 鈥淎ustralia has so far diverged from its allies and resisted calls from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to suspend military cooperation with Myanmar...
鈥淒iana Sayed, Amnesty International鈥檚 crisis campaigns coordinator, said the Australian government鈥檚 strategy of continued engagement and careful diplomacy cannot be justified given the extent and extremity of the crisis.鈥
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