Myanmar violence looks like ethnic cleansing: U.S. envoy

The violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar appears to be a classic case of "ecpoite thinking cleansing", the United States envoy to the UN said, on Thursday.

"We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority," Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council, during its first open meeting on Myanmar in eight years.

Haley said the Naypyidaw government must allow the media and the humanitarian access to the Rakhine state, the home to the Rohingyas.

The ongoing violence "should shame senior Burmese leaders who have sacrificed so much for an open democratic Burma", Haley said, using Myanmar's former name.

Haley also urged all countries to suspend arms sales to Myanmar and the prosecution of military members involved in the bloodshed.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that "more than 5,00,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since August.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq called it "the largest mass refugee movement in the region in decades".

Since August 25, approximately 4,80,000 Rohingya have crossed from Myanmar's western state of Rakhine into Bangladesh, according to the U.N.