UNITED NATIONS: A UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday that Myanmar is continuing its “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims while claiming it is ready to receive them back from Bangladesh.

Andrew Gilmour, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, made the remarks in a statement after speaking to newly arrived Rohingya in Bangladesh’s refugee camps on his four-day visit to Cox’s Bazar district.

“The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues. I don’t think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox’s Bazar,” he maintained in the statement.

“It appears that widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya persists.”

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2018