UN human rights
envoy Yanghee Lee was Tuesday visiting Rohingya refugee camps in southeastern
Bangladesh, where thousands have taken shelter after fleeing a military
crackdown in Myanmar.
Almost 73,000
Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since the military unleashed a four-month
campaign of violence against the stateless Muslim minority that the United
Nations says may amount to crimes against humanity.
The refugees, most
of whom are now living in squalid camps in the Cox’s Bazar district which
borders Myanmar’s Arakan state, have brought harrowing accounts of systematic
rape, killings and torture at the hands of the military.
Lee, the UN’s
Special Rapporteur on the issue, was in the coastal district on Tuesday after
holding talks with government ministers in Dhaka about the crisis.
There was no
immediate comment from the UN, but the Bangladesh foreign ministry said Dhaka
had expressed concern over the presence of the Rohingya in the country.
“She (Lee) is now
visiting the camps to talk to the refugees,” Bangladesh foreign ministry spokeswoman
Khaleda Begum told AFP.
Myanmar says its
army has now halted its operations in Arakan, which were aimed at finding
militants who attacked police border posts.