Rohingya action

It is vital that the UK Government takes action on those responsible for the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

The Rohingya, a mostly stateless Muslim minority from Rakhine state in western Myanmar, have been persecuted by the government in Myanmar for most of the last year. More than 700,000 have since fled across the border into Bangladesh since August 2017, and it has been estimated that more than 7,000 have been killed in the months following the outbreak of violence.

The UK Government must seek to pursue every avenue in an effort to hold those responsible to account, and demonstrate that these crimes, wherever they are committed, will never be normalised or tolerated.

Earlier this year Amnesty International identified 13 officials who have played a direct role in what the UN has described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” The report, titled We Will Destroy Everything, catalogued evidence implicating Myanmar’s military Commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and other key members of the regime in crimes against humanity.

There is a mountain of evidence that this was part of a highly-orchestrated, systematic attack on the Rohingya population.

While the UK Government has been rightly critical of the

persecution of the Rohingya it must, considering this evidence, put its money where its mouth is and impose sanctions on those individuals concerned and also push for this at the UN Security Council and at an EU level.

ALEX ORR Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh