Myanmar continues to harbour genocidal intent and the Rohingya remain under serious risk of genocide. The fact-finding mission to Myanmar set up by the Human Rights Council last year branded army operations in 2017 as genocide and called for the prosecution of top generals. Around 740,000 Rohingya fled burning villages, bringing accounts of murder, rape and torture over the border to sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh.Unfortunately, the Rohingya Muslims are still facing a “serious risk of genocide”.
As the UN team said, the 600,000 Rohingya still inside Myanmar’s Rakhine state remain in deteriorating and “deplorable” conditions. Actually, the country is denying wrongdoing, destroying evidence, refusing to conduct effective investigations and clearing, razing, confiscating and building on land from which if displaced Rohingya. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the Rohingya Muslims have no right to speak of and to call Rohingya home where they always feel insecure. In a world of shame and silence, and in the absence of a nationwide human right programs, few nations had declared the violence as a human rights violation. Otherwise, many of the international community had refused to accept that. All of the nations must accept it as a human rights violation and should not be too late to accept that.
Bilal Shabbir
Islamabad
