Myanmar Army Kills 5 Rohingya Muslims, including a child

At least five ethnic Rohingya Muslims, including a child, have been killed in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, as a result of excessive violence by the Myanmar army, which has been carrying out what the United Nations has billed as ethnic cleansing against the minority group.

A regional lawmaker and residents said on Sunday that the five members of the persecuted Muslim minority were killed in Mrauk U town a day earlier. A 12-year-old boy was among them.

Media reports citing an unnamed Rohingya villager said that the deceased bodies had bullet wounds, Presstv reported.

The regional MP, Tun Thar Sein, said that Saturday’s fighting broke out after Arakan Army — a predominantly Buddhist ethnic group — attacked a military convoy passing the area. Troops responded with gunfire and shelling two villages of the troubled region, the lawmaker added.

Myanmar military claimed that the forces from the ethnic militant group that recruits mostly from Rakhine’s Buddhist majority were responsible for the death.

Saturday’s attack was one of several to kill Rohingya this year. In early January, four Rohingya children died in a blast the military and rebels blamed on each other.

On January 25, Myanmar troops shelled a Rohingya village, killing two women, one pregnant, and injuring seven people.

The region came to global attention in 2017 when more than 750,000 Rohingya, mostly women and children, fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a military crackdown that UN investigators have said was carried out with “genocidal intent.” Bangladesh was already hosting some 200,000 Rohingya when the exodus began.

The Rohingya have inhabited Rakhine State for centuries, but the state denies them citizenship. Bangladesh refuses to grant them citizenship too, Iuvmpress told.

Many of the several hundred thousand Rohingya still in Rakhine are confined to apartheid-like conditions, unable to travel freely or access healthcare and education as Reuters reported.

In a statement, four United Nations human rights experts also said “credible reports” showed that more than 1,000 people had been displaced in the 10 days up to February 18.

Journalists are blocked from traveling to most of central and northern Rakhine, now in the eighth month of a mobile internet shutdown the government justifies on grounds of security.

According to Aljazeera, activists and journalists say decision to limit internet access in some parts of Rakhine is a violation of basic rights.

The Hague-based International Court of Justice earlier this year ordered Myanmar to protect Rohingya Muslims against further atrocities and preserve evidence of alleged crimes.