Actor’s Rohingya plea

OSCAR-WINNING Australian actor Cate Blanchett has told the UN Security Council that nothing prepared her for “the extent and depth of suffering” she saw when she visited camps in Bangladesh for Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled a violent crackdown by Myanmar’s military.

In her very different role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency, Blanchett (pictured) said she heard “gutwrenching accounts” of torture, rape, people seeing loved ones killed before their eyes, and children thrown into fire and burned alive.

“I am a mother, and I saw my children in the eyes of every single refugee child I met,” she said. “I saw myself in every parent. How can any mother endure seeing her child thrown into a fire? Their experiences will never leave me.” Myanmar’s military has been accused of widespread rights violations, including rape, murder and the burning of homes and villages – leading to about 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

Blanchett urged support for the refugees and Bangladeshi host communities, and she implored the Security Council to help the Rohingya return with “a clear pathway to full citizenship.” “We have failed the Rohingya before,” she said. “Please, let us not fail them again.”