UN Security Council to discuss Rohingya crisis

The U.N. Security Council will hold an urgent meeting this week on continuing violence in western Myanmar that has forced nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh. The meeting, which has been scheduled for Wednesday, was requested by Britain and Sweden Monday after Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N.’s human rights chief, […]

The U.N. Security Council will hold an urgent meeting this week on continuing violence in western Myanmar that has forced nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh.

The meeting, which has been scheduled for Wednesday, was requested by Britain and Sweden Monday after Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N.’s human rights chief, referred to the treatment of the Rohingyas as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Zeid told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva his office has received numerous reports and satellite imagery of Myanmar security forces and local militias carrying out extrajudicial killings and burning entire Rohingya villages in Rakhine state. Zeid also cited reports of Myanmar troops planting landmines along the shared border.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina demanded Myanmar provide help for the displaced Rohingyas during a visit Tuesday to a border town in Cox’s Bazar district, home to one of many fast-filling refugee camps.