Pressure tightened on Myanmar Monday as a rights group urged world leaders to impose sanctions on the country’s military, which is accused of driving out more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims in an orchestrated “ethnic cleansing” campaign. The mass exodus of Rohingya refugees to neighbouring Bangladesh has billowed into an humanitarian emergency as aid groups struggle to provide relief to a daily stream of new arrivals, more than half of whom are children. Human Rights Watch also called for the “safe and voluntary return” of the displaced as it urged governments around the globe to punish Myanmar’s army with sanctions for the “ongoing atrocities” against the Rohingya. While the world has watched the refugee crisis unfold with horror, there is little sympathy for the Rohingya inside mainly Buddhist Myanmar. Many Buddhists revile the group and have long denied the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, insisting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Source: Dhaka Tribune September 18, 2017 06:33 UTC