Pak, Iran army chiefs seek Muslim world action

TEHRAN: Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri have expressed concern over the ongoing Rohingya Muslim crisis in Myanmar, calling for the Muslim world action to help end the plight of the Muslim minority. 

In a telephone conversation on Sunday, the two top generals discussed ways to enhance cooperation between the two countries’ armed forces to help the Rohingya Muslims. They also called on the Muslim world to do more and help stop the “unfavorable” and “inhumane” situation of Rohingya community in the Southeast Asian country. 

According to Tasneem News Agency, Baqeri and Bajwa further said that military and non-military organisations of Muslim countries could mobilise their forces and facilities to speed up the dispatch of humanitarian relief to the persecuted Muslims in Myanmar. 

The Rohingya Muslims have long faced severe discrimination and were the targets of violence in 2012 that killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people from their homes to camps for the internally displaced. On September 12, the UN refugee agency said the number of Rohingya Muslim refugees that had fled recent violence in Myanmar has spiked to about 370,000. 

Earlier, the UN top human rights official accused Myanmar of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against Rohingya Muslims.  Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the military’s brutal security campaign was in clear violation of international law, and cited what he called refugees’ consistent accounts of widespread extrajudicial killings, rape and other atrocities.