Rohingya Still in Myanmar Face ‘Threat of Genocide’: United Nations

Rohingya Muslims remaining in Myanmar still face a “serious risk of genocide”, UN investigators said on Monday, warning the repatriation of a million already driven from the country by the army remains “impossible”.

Some 600,000 Rohingya are living in “deplorable” conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, subject to restrictions on movement that touch almost every aspect of their lives, the U.N report said.

“These facts underscore the impossibility of return for the nearly one million Rohingya refugees, mostly in Bangladesh,” it added.

The new report accuses the security forces of “torture and ill-treatment” of suspected insurgents in northern Myanmar, and says sexual and gender-based violence by the Myanmar military “remains a prominent feature of conflicts in Shan and Kachin states”.

Myanmar military spokesman Zaw Min Tun rejected the team’s findings, calling them “one-sided”.

Around  740,000 Rohingya fled burning villages, bringing accounts of murder, rape and torture over the border to sprawling refugee camps in Bangladesh, where survivors of previous waves of persecution already languish.