If the Rohingyas are designated as victims of genocide,
it would increase pressure on the international community to protect them, a
senior authority said.
The United Nations on Wednesday said it has not yet
determined whether the violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar was genocide,
Reuters reported.
In September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein had called the situation “a textbook example of ethnic
cleansing”, but has not described the situation as a genocide. “We are looking
at the legal boundaries of that,” said Jyoti Sanghera, Asia-Pacific chief at
the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “It could meet the
boundaries, but we have not yet made that legal determination at the OHCHR.”
If the Rohingya are designated as victims of genocide
under the 1948 UN convention – passed after the Nazi holocaust – it would
increase pressure on the international community to take action to protect
them. The convention defines genocide as acts committed with the “intent to
destroy, in whole or in part” a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
UN teams, which spoke with some of the 5,82,000 Rohingyas
who fled to Bangladesh in the past two months, said the refugees described
detention and systematic rape by Myanmar’s security forces. “The testimony
gathered by the team referred to unspeakable horrors,” Sanghera told an
audience at Geneva’s Graduate Institute.
The refugees said Myanmar security forces deliberately
destroyed Rohingya villages so people could not return and targeted cultural and
religious leaders to “diminish Rohingya history”, Sanghera said. Imams had
their beards shaved or burnt off, and women and girls were raped inside
mosques.
According to the UN, a few hundred thousand Rohingya
still remain in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state.
Follow my twitter to read breaking news of
Rohingya’s updates: https://twitter.com/mir_sidiquee
Visit here to read breaking news of
persecuted Rohingyas: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MirAhmedABSiddiquee