The situation in Myanmar is a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, the United Nations rights chief said on Monday, as the number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing the country for Bangladesh topped 3,00,000.
The Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority, have faced decades of persecution in Myanmar where they are regarded as illegal immigrants.
But since the latest upsurge in violence on August 25, hundreds of thousands have flooded across the border into Bangladesh bringing stories of entire villages burned to the ground by Buddhist mobs and Myanmar troops.
On Monday the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein accused Myanmar of waging a “systematic attack” on the Rohingya and warned that “ethnic cleansing” seemed to be under way.
“Because Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators the current situation cannot yet be fully assessed, but the situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” he told the UN Human Rights Council.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, has come in for strong international criticism over the military crackdown on the Rohingya, which began when militants ambushed security forces on August 25.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar has said the latest violence may have left more than 1,000 dead, most of them Rohingya.
A further 27,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists as well as Hindus have also fled violence that has gripped northern Rakhine, where international aid programmes have been severely curtailed.
Most have walked for days and the United Nations says many are sick, exhausted and in desperate need of shelter, food and water.
Safura Khatun, 60, was among the hundreds who crossed into Bangladesh on Monday.
She said it had taken her 15 days to reach Bangladesh from her village south of Maungdaw, where her husband and three sons had been killed. “I had only water for the last five days,” she said, rocking on the spot in a yellow headscarf.
Dhaka, which initially tried to block the Rohingya from entering, on Monday said it would start registering all new arrivals. The Bangladesh government plans to build a huge new camp that will house a quarter of a million refugees.
