The UN has voiced its doubts about the Rohingyas' return to Myanmar over the continued systematic violence targeting the Muslim minority.
The Myanmar government has not made any progress towards dismantling the system of discrimination in the country’s laws, policies and practices to make northern Rakhine safe and stable, said UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar Yanghee Lee on Sunday.
“Come together and establish an accountability mechanism…It is time now to work instead of only talking,” she said during a press conference in Dhaka following a 10-day visit to the southern Bangladeshi port city of Cox’s Bazar.
She added that the Rohingya currently require opportunities for education, explore livelihood options and freedom of movement for acquiring their basic needs, which includes medical treatment.
On Friday, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) confirmed reports of horrific atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslim refugees, who fled a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign at home in Myanmar.
Rohingya survivors, who live in refugee camps Cox’s Bazar, told the doctors what they have been through at the hands of military forces, who torched their villages and forced them out of their home country.
In a report, seen by Reuters, US-based PHR said all the accounts of being shot, hacked and wounded by explosives in Myanmar are supported by evidence.
The Rohingya Muslims based in Myanmar’s Rakhine State have been subjected to a campaign of killings, rape and arson attacks by the military backed by the country’s majority Buddhist extremists in what the UN has described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
The brutal campaign has forced some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee their homeland since August 2017 and seek refuge in Bangladesh.