UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Human Rights chief said on Tuesday Myanmar security forces may have been guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, noting that more were fleeing despite an agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh to send them home.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that none of the 626,000 Rohingya who have fled violence since August should be repatriated to Myanmar unless there was robust monitoring on the ground.

Myanmar’s ambassador Htin Lynn said that his government was working with Bangladesh to ensure return of the displaced in about two months and “there will be no camps”.

Zeid, who has described the campaign in the past as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing”, was addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council called by Bangladesh.

He described “concordant reports of acts of appalling barbarity committed against the Rohingya, including deliberately burning people to death inside their homes, murders of children and adults; indiscriminate shooting of fleeing civilians; widespread rapes of women and girls, and the burning and destruction of houses, schools, markets and mos­ques.”

Mainly Buddhist Myan­mar denies the Rohingya Muslims are its citizens and considers them foreigners.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2017