Myanmar accused of apartheid on Rohingya SUU KYI HOPES TO SEAL DEAL WITH B’DESH ON ROHINGYA

Amnesty probe slams Myanmar over Rohingya crisis

Yangon, Nov. 21: Myanmar’s suffocating control of its Rohingya population amounts to “apartheid”, Amnesty International said on Tuesday in a probe into the root causes of a crisis that has sent 620,000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

Distressing scenes of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps have provoked outrage around the world, as people who have escaped Rakhine state since August recount tales of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar troops.

Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed in principle to repatriate some Rohingya but disagree over the details, with Myanmar’s army chief saying last week that it was “not possible” to accept the number of refugees proposed by Dhaka.

The Amnesty report, published Tuesday, details how years of persecution have curated the current crisis.

A “state- sponsored” campaign has restricted virtually all aspects of Rohingyas’ lives, the Amnesty study says, confining them to what amounts to a “ghetto- like” existence in the mainly Buddhist country.

The 100- page report, based on two years of research, says the web of controls meet the legal standard of the “crime against humanity of apartheid”. Naypyitaw: Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday she hopes talks with Bangladesh this week will result in a memorandum of understanding on the “safe and voluntary return” of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh in the past three months.

A counter- insurgency operation launched in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya out of the Buddhist- majority country since late August.

Rights groups have accused Myanmar’s military of atrocities, including mass rape, against Rohingya during the clearance operation.

“We can’t say whether it has happened or not. As a responsibility of the government, we have to make sure that it won’t happen,” Suu Kyi told reporters in response to a question about human rights violations at the end of a meeting of senior officials at an AsiaEurope Meeting, or

“Rakhine State is a crime scene. This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty’s Senior Director for Research.

Myanmar’s authorities ASEM, in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw.

Her less than two- year old civilian government has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals.

We can’t say whether it ( atrocities on Rohingya) has happened or not. As a responsibility of the government, we have to make sure that it won’t happen — Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader

“are keeping Rohingya women, men and children segregated and cowed in a dehumanising system of apartheid,” she added.

The bedrock for the hatred towards Rohingya comes from a 1982 Citizenship law.