Over 4,000 people have signed a petition to suspend the Myanmar ambassador to the UK following a crackdown on Rohinghya Muslims in the country.
The petition says there is clear evidence that the 1948 U.N. convention on genocide has been violated.
These include:
- Killing members of The Rohingya group who have a distinctive language, culture, history and traditions, and have been killed by security forces or by the local Rakhine population as security forces stood by without intervening.
- Serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group – they are subjected to rape, torture, arbitrary detention and other crimes.
- Preventing births within the group through marriage and birth restrictions.
Scores of Rohingya Muslims are currently fleeing to Bangladesh because of a military crackdown in western Myanmar, according to residents and Bangladeshi army officials.
Some of the Rohingya were shot as they tried to cross the Naaf River that separates Myanmar and Bangladesh, while others arriving by boat were pushed away by Bangladeshi border guards, residents quoted by Reuters news agency said on Wednesday.
A total of 130 people have been killed in the latest surge of violence in the country, according to the Myanmar army.
The bloodshed is the most serious since hundreds were killed in communal clashes in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine in 2012.
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It has exposed a lack of oversight of the military by the seven-month-old administration of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
The United Nations has labelled the Rohingya as one of the world’s most persecuted people.
They are branded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh by Myanmar’s majority Buddhist population despite their long roots in the country, where they face apartheid-like restrictions on movement and are denied citizenship.
But the Bangladeshi government also refuses to register the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees living on its side of the border.
