RNA - Speaking to Euronews, EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides said he was “shocked by the magnitude of needs” of the Rohingya he saw on a two-day visit to Bangladesh last week, Al Waght reported.
“We have to persuade the Myanmar government that it’s just human rights, fundamental rights for any person, for any human being. I agree with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that maybe the only description for this situation is ethnic cleansing”, he said.
Since Aug. 25, over 607,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh fleeing, according to the UN.
The refugees are fleeing a military operation in which security forces and Buddhist mobs have killed men, women and children, looted homes and torched Rohingya villages. According to Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali, around 3,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown. Other sources put the casualties figure at over 6,000.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein has described the plight of Rohingya Muslims as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".
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