Rohingya Muslims pleaded with the international community at the first United Nations high-level meeting on the plight of the ethnic minority to prevent the mass killings taking place in Myanmar and to help those in the persecuted group lead normal lives.
The Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar have suffered decades of displacement, oppression, and violence, while seeing no action in response to determinations that they are victims of genocide, Wai Wai Nu, the Rohingya founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network-Myanmar, told ministers and ambassadors from many of the UN’s 193-member nations in the General Assembly Hall.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.
In August 2017, attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on Myanmar security personnel triggered a brutal campaign by the military that drove at least 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. The military is accused of mass rape, killings, and burning villages, and the scale of its operation led to accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide from the international community, including the UN.
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