The Borneo Daily newspaper revealed on its website that the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar were prevented from voting in the legislative elections currently held in the country, as part of an arbitrary policy pursued by the authorities to strip Muslims of their legitimate rights.
The elections are held amid expectations that Aung San Suu Kyi’s party will retain power, despite the international criticism it faces due to its management of the Rohingya Muslim crisis.
“All of the 600,000 Rohingya Muslims remaining in the country – half of them are of voting age – have been stripped of their citizenship and rights, including their chance to vote,” the newspaper said in a report it followed.
The newspaper also quoted the human rights organization “British Burma Campaign” as saying that “the elections are apartheid,” adding that the elections were “less free and fair than the previous ones.”
The newspaper pointed out that “the restrictions imposed on many areas of other ethnic minorities – citing security concerns – mean that about two million voters are deprived of the right to vote out of 37 million voters.”
For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he hopes to hold “peaceful, orderly and credible elections” that would enable hundreds of thousands of Rohingya living in camps in neighboring Bangladesh to return “in safety and with dignity.”
