'many of Rohingyas' killed in Myanmar crackdown

Army has carried out mass killings of Muslim minority, UN rights office says, in possible ethnic cleansing.


Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings 
and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned down villages since October in a campaign that likely amounts
 to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing, according to the United Nations.

"The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in
hundreds of deaths," a report from the UN's human 
rights office said, referring to a military crackdown launched 
in the wake of an attack on a military post.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for 
human rights, said that Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu 
Kyi promised on Friday to investigate the allegations.

"She informed me that an investigation will be launched. 
She said that they would require further information," he said.

The report, which was based on interviews with 204 
Rohingya refugees who fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, recounted gruesome violations allegedly carried out by members of Myanmar's security services or civilian 
fighters working alongside the army and the police.

Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half said they had
been raped or sexually assaulted.

Several women told UN investigators how their young children, including a newborn, were trampled or cut to 
death.

Security forces were also accused of opening fire at 
people fleeing and burning entire villages, as well as 
of "massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food".

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist, told media that the international community now needed to change what
 he called a "soft approach" towards Myanmar's 
government.

"Every day Rohingya are facing abuses and extrajudicial
killings are going on," Khin, who heads the UK-based Burmese
Rohingya Organisation, said.

"The [UN Security Council] has to come up with a strong
binding resolution to take action against the Myanmar
government," he said, adding that he was pushing hard
 for the issue to be tabled there.

The UN said it had reports of three children aged six or
younger being "slaughtered with knives".

"An eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while 
his mother was gang-raped by five security officers," the
 rights office also said, citing witness accounts.

"What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying
out for his mother's milk," UN rights chief Zeid Raad al-
Hussein said in the statement. "What kind of 'clearance
operation' is this? What national security goals could
 possibly be served by this?"


Fleeing over the border

The Rohingya, numbering about 1.1 million, are loathed 
by many among Myanmar's Buddhist majority and live in
apartheid-like conditions in the Muslim-majority Rakhine 
state in the north.

Yangon refuses to recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic
minority, instead describing them as illegal immigrants
 from neighbouring Bangladesh, even though many have 
lived in Myanmar for generations.

The government's own investigation into the violence 
found that the security forces had not carried out a genocidal
campaign against the Rohingya.


About 66,000 people have fled from Rakhine to 
Bangladesh since the army launched a security operation 
in response to attacks on police border posts on October 
9, the report said.

The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at
69,000.

The UN report was issued in Geneva after the investigators
gathered testimony last month from Rohingya victims and
witnesses who fled the "lockdown area" in Maungdaw in
Rakhine for Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.