UN: 1000+ Rohingya Killed in Myanmar Crackdown

Local Editor

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims might have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, according to two senior United Nations [UN] officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence, suggesting the death toll is far greater than previously reported.

The officials, dealing with Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar, said on Wednesday that the death toll from the carnage had been far greater than previously reported.

The officials said the world had yet to fully grasp the dimensions of the human tragedy that had been unfolding in Rakhine, a Muslim-dominated state in northwestern Myanmar, which had seen tens of thousands flee to neighboring Bangladesh as a result of the army crackdown.

"The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation, we could be looking at thousands," said one of the officials, citing information his agency had gathered from refugees in Bangladesh camps over the past four months.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the weight of the testimony gathered from the refugees could verify conclusions that the death toll had already exceeded 1,000.

Officials in Myanmar's government insist that fewer than 100 had been killed since the army began an operation against residents of Rakhine in October. The operation was launched after the military claimed that Rohingya militants had attacked police border posts and killed several officers.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR] earlier indicated that mass killings and abuse had happened in Rakhine in recent months, saying that could have amounted to crimes against humanity.

The OHCHR cited evidence from refugees as well as satellite imagery showing destruction of villages.

A second UN official, also operating for an agency in Bangladesh, said on Wednesday that the OHCHR report on the situation, which was based on interviews with 220 people, was only "the tip of the iceberg."

A separate, internal UN analysis, which had reportedly used a larger sample size, had revealed that more than 350 people from a single village had either been killed or remain unaccounted for after the army crackdown.

Myanmar's presidential spokesman, Zaw Htay, said on Wednesday that the death of more than a thousand, as claimed by UN officials, should be checked on the ground.
"Their number is much greater than our figure," said the official, without elaborating.

Myanmar denies citizenship to more than 1.1 million Rohingya living in the country, with Buddhist officials still insisting that members of the community all illegally crossed the border from Bangladesh over the past decades.

Rights groups and governments had repeatedly challenged the claim as historic documents show that Muslims had had historic roots in Myanmar.

The UN said about 69,000 people had escaped from Rakhine into Bangladesh since the violence began last year.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team