Amnesty says Myanmar promoting 'apartheid' of Rohingyas

A study prepared by the New York-based Amnesty International has charged the Government of Myanmar with promoting and practicing a form of "apartheid" against the Rohingya population in that country's northern Rakhine state.

In its study, Amnesty said that this suffocating control of the Rohingya population amounts to "apartheid", even as it continues with its probe into the root causes of a crisis that has sent 620,000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh and other countries in the South Asian region.

There is global outrage over the distressing plight of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps currently. A majority of them left the Rakhine state at the end of August this year, recounting incidents of murder, rape and arson at the hands of the Myanmar Army.

Till now, Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed in principle to repatriate some Rohingyas, but are in disagreement over the details.

Myanmar Army Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has said that it is impossible" to accept back the large number of refugees proposed by Dhaka, and declared that the latter are not native to Myanmar and that their forefathers were brought into the country by British colonialists.

Amnesty said that a "state-sponsored" campaign is currently on that restricts Rohingyas from living normal lives in the Buddhist-majority nation.

The 100-page report, based on two years of research, says the web of controls meet the legal standard of the "crime against humanity of apartheid".

"Rakhine State is a crime scene. This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months," said Anna Neistat, Amnesty's Senior Director for Research.