GENEVA, 26 May. - (ANA) - Thousands of innocent lives will be lost if the international community fails to respond to “ominous signs” of another bloodbath of the mostly-Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, an independent UN human rights expert said on Thursday.

 

The UN Human Rights Council-appointed Special Rapporteur monitoring Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said the world “seems to be failing a desperate people in their hour of peril while a hate-driven unnatural disaster unfolds in real time”.

 

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled systematic attacks by Burmese security forces in 2017, crossing the border into Bangladesh in what the then UN human rights chief described as a “text book example of ethnic cleansing”.

 

 

 

 

Mr. Andrews said there were alarming and credible reports of killings, enforced disappearances and widespread arson across northern Rakhine in recent days, warranting an “immediate emergency response” by the international community.

 

With multiple armed groups operating in Rakhine as insurgents battle forces of the military junta for control, he called on all combatants to observe international humanitarian law.

 

“Mechanisms to provide emergency humanitarian aid must be immediately established and all parties must support the robust infusion of aid into Rakhine,” the expert said.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/25 May 2024 - - -