Myanmar’s army chief defended a military crackdown in Rakhine State on Monday after the UN pledged to probe claims security forces carried out a campaign of killing and torture against Rohingya Muslims there. Almost 75,000 people from the persecuted minority have escaped to Bangladesh after the military launched operations in the north of the restive … Read more
The UN rights council agreed Friday to “urgently” launch an investigation into violations against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, including torture, murder and rapes allegedly committed by troops. The Geneva-based body decided to “dispatch urgently an independent international fact-finding mission” to Myanmar, particularly focused in northern Rahkine state, in a resolution adopted by consensus. The mission must … Read more
China and Russia blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement on Friday that would have expressed concern over the tense situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, diplomats said. Myanmar’s military carried out a four-month offensive against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine that UN human rights investigators have said likely resulted in atrocities and crimes against humanity. … Read more
Myanmar should close bleak camps where tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya Muslims have been trapped for nearly five years, a commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan said Thursday. More than 120,000 Rohingya have languished in camps since they were driven from their homes by sectarian unrest between Buddhists and Muslims that engulfed … Read more
Raging battles on Myanmar’s border with China have claimed dozens more lives, military and official sources said Wednesday, as the mounting death toll landed a fresh blow to the government’s faltering peace process. Fighting broke out between troops and ethnic minority rebels in the Chinese-speaking Kokang border region in northeastern Shan State this month when … Read more
Myanmar may be seeking to “expel” all ethnic Rohingya from its territory, a UN rights expert said Monday, pushing for a high-level inquiry into abuses against the Muslim minority community. The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said a full purge could be the ultimate goal of the institutional persecution … Read more
A Myanmar monk infamous for his bilious anti-Muslim tirades has been banned from giving sermons for a year by the country’s top Buddhist body, an unprecedented slapdown to a man whose hate speech has galvanized religious tensions. Wirathu, a monk once dubbed the “face of Buddhist terror”, has led calls for restrictions on Myanmar’s Muslim … Read more
Thousands of Rohingya who took refuge in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar have returned home because of a Bangladeshi plan to house them on an uninhabited flood-prone island, community leaders said Wednesday. Nearly 73,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since last October, when government forces in Myanmar unleashed a bloody crackdown on the Muslim … Read more
Civilians abandoned a battle-scared town along Myanmar’s border with China on Wednesday, saying they feared an imminent army crackdown in retaliation for a deadly raid by ethnic rebels. At least 36 people were killed after Monday’s audacious pre-dawn raid by ethnic Kokang rebels on police and military posts at Laukkai in the northeastern state of … Read more
Thousands were fleeing a Myanmar town bordering China on Tuesday after at least 30 people were killed in fighting between the army and ethnic rebels as Beijing called for an immediate ceasefire between the two sides. The violence is some of the most intense to rattle the Chinese-speaking Kokang region since clashes in 2015 left … Read more
At least six police officers were killed Monday in a surprise pre-dawn raid by ethnic minority rebels on a town in a restive region of Myanmar bordering China, an army source said. Artillery and small arms fire continued throughout Monday in Laukkai, a main town in the Kokang region of the northeastern state of Shan. … Read more
A close aide to Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday dismissed mounting international pressure over alleged abuses of Rohingya Muslims as “biased and unfair”, despite UN evidence of murder, rape and torture by security forces. The United Nations has said Myanmar troops and police may have committed crimes against humanity during a four-month crackdown … Read more
Bangladesh authorities have began a census of Rohingya refugees living in the country’s southeast as part of a controversial move to relocate them to an uninhabited island, officials said Tuesday. The government statistics officers fanned out in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar district to count the number of refugees who have fled persecution in Rakhine … Read more
At least 160 people have died in around three months of clashes between the military and ethnic armed groups in Myanmar’s northern state of Shan, a senior army official said Tuesday, threatening peace talks set for next month. More than 20,000 people have been displaced since fighting between the army and several armed ethnic groups … Read more
Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar have told how government forces gang-raped women, slit people’s throats and threw children into burning houses, a UN envoy has said after a mission to neighbouring Bangladesh. Yanghee Lee said the accounts given by Rohingya who had crossed into Bangladesh since a crackdown across the border in October … Read more
Three senior Myanmar police officers have been jailed for failing to block deadly raids on border posts in October that threw northern Rakhine state into crisis, a police spokesman said Saturday. The attacks left nine officers dead and unleashed a four-month military crackdown as soldiers swooped in to help police hunt for Rohingya militants blamed … Read more
Myanmar’s security forces are investigating the deaths of eight Rohingya in custody who were among hundreds arrested during a military crackdown in the north of Rakhine state, the government said Wednesday. Hundreds of Rohingya are thought to have been killed during the army campaign launched four months ago after militants carried out deadly raids on … Read more
Myanmar police are investigating the murder of four people in northern Rakhine state, the government said Tuesday, days after ending a military campaign in the area the UN has compared to ethnic cleansing. The corpses of three women and a man were found buried in a field near Luuphanpyin village in Maungdaw township last Thursday, … Read more
Hundreds of Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar have returned home, community leaders said Sunday, adding that most had gone back temporarily to fetch relatives. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled across the border from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine since October to escape a bloody crackdown by troops and … Read more
Myanmar’s army has halted “clearance operations” in northern Rakhine, a senior official said Wednesday, ending a four-month crackdown by security forces the UN has warned may amount to crimes against humanity. Hundreds from the Muslim minority are thought to have died and almost 70,000 have fled to Bangladesh since the military launched a campaign to … Read more