ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Myanmar of “genocide” against the Rohingya Muslim minority, who have fled in the tens of thousands across the border into Bangladesh to escape ethnic violence.
“There is a genocide there,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul during the Islamic Eid Al-Adha feast, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son.
“Those who close their eyes to this genocide perpetuated under the cover of democracy are its collaborators.”
Around 400 people — most of them Rohingya Muslims — have died in violence searing through Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state, the army chief’s office said Friday.
Reports of massacres and the systematic torching of villages by security forces — as well as by militants — have further amplified tensions, raising fears that communal violence in Rakhine is spinning out of control.
To escape the violence, about 20,000 Rohingya have massed along the Bangladeshi frontier, barred from entering the South Asian country, while scores of desperate people have drowned attempting to cross the Naf, a border river, in makeshift boats.
Erdogan said he would bring up the issue at the next UN General Assembly in New York later this month, adding that he had already talked to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other Muslim leaders.
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Bangladeshi authorities to “open your doors,” adding that the country would cover the costs associated with letting in more Rohingya.
Bangladesh already hosts 400,000 Rohingya and does not want more.
“We have called upon the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,” Cavusoglu said. “We will organize a summit this year” on the issue. “We have to find a definitive solution to this problem.”
The UN Security Council met behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss the violence, but there was no formal statement on the crisis.
On Friday, Guterres said he was “deeply concerned” by the situation in Myanmar and called for “restraint and calm to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.”
The Rohingya are reviled in Myanmar, where the roughly one million-strong community are accused of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Erdogan accuses Myanmar of ‘genocide’ against Rohingya
Erdogan accuses Myanmar of ‘genocide’ against Rohingya
UN rights chief shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
