The former UN chief, Kofi Annan, has called on the Security Council (UNSC) to press Myanmar to facilitate the return of over 500,000 Rohingya Muslims, who were forced out of their homeland into Bangladesh amid a government-backed military crackdown.
The former UN chief, Kofi Annan, has called on the Security Council (UNSC) to press Myanmar to facilitate the return of over 500,000 Rohingya Muslims, who were forced out of their homeland into Bangladesh amid a government-backed military crackdown.
Annan, who leads a fact-finding commission on Myanmar, told an informal UNSC meeting on Friday that Myanmar’s government must “create conditions that allow the refugees to return with dignity.”
The Annan-led commission presented in late August a report on the situation in Myanmar’s Rohingya-majority Rakhine State. It called for granting citizenship and other rights to the Rohingya Muslims, who are stateless and have long faced discrimination in the Buddhist-majority state.
Annan further said the refugees taking shelter in Bangladeshi border camps needed help to “get their homes back.”
He urged the UNSC to agree with Myanmar’s government on a refugee return “roadmap,” cautioning that if no action is taken, “we are going to have a long-term festering problem” in the region that “can be very serious, down the line.”
In the past seven weeks, an estimated 536,000 people have fled their homes in violence-hit Rakhine State and crossed into Bangladesh, amid shocking reports of Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs murdering and raping civilians and torching their villages.
