A 43-page report from the United Nations human rights office released Friday says crimes against humanity were “very likely” committed, and cites accounts from “in-depth interviews” by U.N. staffers of 204 people who had fled to neighboring Bangladesh since October, when Myanmar's military started a crackdown following attacks on border posts. Witnesses had also testified to the 'killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention and the deliberate destruction of food and sources of food', according to the report Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that probably amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly "ethnic cleansing", the UN human rights office said on Friday. Watch What Else is Making News



One woman told UN investigators how her eight-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rohingya Muslims "hated and hounded from Burmese soil"

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said: "The cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable - what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk? "The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths," a report from the UN's human rights office said, referring to a military crackdown launched in the wake of an attack on a military post. The U.N. report was issued in Geneva after the investigators gathered testimony last month from 220 Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the “lockdown area” in Maungdaw in Rakhine for the Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh. “Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported having suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence.”

 

 The report is likely to raise pressure on the governing party of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi amid numerous allegations that soldiers have been killing and raping Rohingya and burning their homes, and targeting people based on their religion and ethnicity. Fleeing over the border

The Rohingya, numbering about 1.1 million, are loathed by many among Myanmar's Buddhist majority and live in apartheid-like conditions in the Muslim-majority Rakhine state in the north. Myanmar, a mostly Buddhist country where Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is de facto leader, has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in northern Rakhine and says a lawful counter-insurgency campaign is under way. He called on Myanmar's government to “immediately halt these grave human rights violations.” The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said reports indicated that the intensity and frequency of security forces' operations had declined this year, but are continuing. “The report concludes that the widespread violations against the Rohingya population indicate the very likely commission of crimes against humanity,” the UN human rights office in Geneva said.
The United Nations Human Rights Council releases a report detailing mass atrocities by the military and police forces against Myanmar's Rohingya minority, including gang-rapes, mass killings, and possible ethnic cleansing, which could amount to crimes against humanity.