Rohingya Muslims held in open-air detention camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine State since 2012 have been subjected to “institutional oppressions” and “grave rights violations,” according to a new report by an international rights group.
About 130,000 Rohingya Muslims have been confined to the camps since being displaced in a 2012 campaign of ethnic cleansing by Myanmar’s military, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Saturday.
It said the Myanmar government has created “squalid and oppressive conditions” for the Rohingya refugees that “amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid, persecution, and severe deprivation of liberty.”
The report, titled ‘An Open Prison without End: Myanmar’s Mass Detention of Rohingya in Rakhine State’, is based on over 60 interviews with Rohingya, Kaman Muslims, and humanitarian workers, and will be released next week, according to the statement.
HRW urged the Myanmar government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, “to lift all arbitrary movement restrictions for Rohingya, Kaman, and other minorities, and end the apartheid regime against Rohingya in Rakhine State.”
Referring to recent measures by Myanmar authorities, it said the move “to ‘close’ the camps appear designed to make permanent the Rohingya’s segregation and confinement.”
The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
