By Donna Airoldi |
BANGKOK
The head of the U.N.
refugee agency urged Myanmar on Friday to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, a
stateless Muslim minority in the Asian country where sectarian violence has
displaced tens of thousands since 2012.
On his first
official visit to Southeast Asia, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo
Grandi this week met communities in the towns of Sittwe and Maungdaw in
Myanmar's Rakhine state, home to a large population of Rohingya Muslims.
He also met Aung San
Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader.
Rakhine State in
west Myanmar has seen the most serious religious violence in predominantly
Buddhist Myanmar since the military began to end its decades of strict rule,
with hundreds of Rohingya Muslims killed and more than 140,000 people displaced
there in communal unrest in 2012.
Tensions have risen
again in recent days after village administrators were murdered and troops
killed three people while clearing a Rohingya militant camp.
"It's important
to work on granting citizenship to the Muslim community, that has been deprived
of citizenship for many years," Grandi told reporters in Bangkok.
Myanmar's government
regards the approximately one million Rohingya as illegal migrants from
neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though Rohingya
families have lived there for generations.
Grandi also said
that more investment was needed in the region.
"It is one of
the poorest states in the Union of Myanmar and there's an urgent need for
development investments that must be inclusive of the two communities," he
said.
Last October,
Rohingya insurgents launched deadly attacked on Myanmar guard posts near the
Bangladesh border, provoking a military crackdown in which the United Nations
says hundreds were killed, more than 1,000 homes burned and some 75,000
Rohingya fled to Bangladesh.
The United Nations
has established a fact-finding mission to investigate crimes against humanity
allegedly committed by Myanmar's military during the counter-offensive.
Suu Kyi's
administration has rejected the allegations and opposes the mission.
In the latest unrest
in the region, a Rohingya Muslim man was killed and six wounded when they were
attacked by a mob of Rakhine Buddhists this week.
In Thailand, more
than 102,000 refugees from Myanmar live in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar
border.
Most are members of
the Karen ethnic minority who fled conflict in Myanmar over the past 30 years.
The Thai government
was preparing to help about 200 camp residents to return to Myanmar in the near
future, Grandi said, following the voluntary repatriation of 71 Myanmar
refugees in October.
Grandi will fly to
Bangladesh on Saturday.
(Reporting by Donna
Airoldi; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Robert Birsel)