Velayati:

Crimes against Rohingya, organized Israeli plot

Rassa - A senior Iranian official has slammed the ongoing brutal crackdown on the Rohingya in Myanmar, saying the Muslim community is suffering from organized crime at the hands of the Israeli regime.

News ID: 432298

Date: 09 September 2017 - 23:46

RNA - “The Zionist regime’s plot to cleanse its cruel and child-killing image and promote the culture of cruelty and oppression against children, the elderly and innocent people in coordination with the government of Myanmar shows a horrible and organized crime against the deprived Rohingya Muslims,” Ali Akbar Velayati, the secretary general of the World Assembly of Islamic Awakening, said in a statement on Saturday.

He warned that such an “ominous and organized plot by international Zionism” would result in genocide against the Muslims, oppression and forced displacement, ethnic and racial cleansing, massacre and regional instability.

He said all international bodies, including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as well as world countries shoulder a heavy responsibility to have a correct understanding of such a calculated plot.

Velayati, who is the senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on international affairs, urged “swift and effective” measures to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies and bring the perpetrators to justice.

He called on all dignitaries, groups, parties, movements, Muslim world countries, the OIC and the Human Rights Watch as well as the UN Secretary General António Guterres to utilize all their capabilities and diplomatic means to exert more pressure on the government of Myanmar in order to prevent further crimes against the Rohingya Muslims.

They must ease the pain of the oppressed people in this region by dispatching fact-finding teams to immediately investigate the situation, sending humanitarian assistance and properly organizing the refugees, the senior Iranian official said.

Velayati further emphasized that if the government of Myanmar refuses to cooperate, its crimes must be addressed at the UN Security Council.

In such a scenario, he also called on the OIC to hold an emergency session and Muslim countries to cut their diplomatic and trade ties with Myanmar to express their firm support for the oppressed and defenseless Rohingya Muslims.

A new wave of violence broke out on August 25 after dozens of police and border outposts in the state of Rakhine came under attack purportedly by a group claiming to be the defenders of the Rohingya. The alleged assaults were launched in response to a government clampdown in the area, where over a million Rohingya are based.

Since then, counteroffensives by Myanmar’s army have killed at least 400 people, burned thousands of houses, razed a large number of villages and depopulated vast swathes of land in Rakhine. However, Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi has dismissed the Rohingya crisis as a misinformation campaign, rejecting the occurrence of any clampdown on the minority.

According to a recent report, Israel continues to sell weapons to Myanmar’s military junta despite the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Human Rights Watch has warned that violence by Myanmar's army against the Rohingya had all the hallmarks of a campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” calling on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the issue.

The volatile Rakhine, located northwest of Myanmar, has been the scene of communal violence since 2012. Many of the Muslims have lost their lives while tens of thousands have been displaced as a result of attacks by Buddhists. The refugees largely live in camps in dire conditions.

Rakhine has also been under a military siege since October 2016, when the government used a purported deadly militant attack on border guards back then as a pretext to enforce the siege. There have been numerous eyewitness accounts of summary executions, rapes, and arson attacks by security forces against the Muslims since the crackdown began.

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