Several human rights groups, including Fortify Rights and Yale's International Human Rights Law Clinic, have called the attention of the United Nations to come up with an independent body that would investigate the persecution of the members of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar that could be equivalent to a 'genocide'.
Director of Fortify Rights, Matthew Smith, said, 'We're calling for the establishment of an investigatory body to be set up under the United Nations to look into these findings'.
Furthermore, one of the members of the Yale's group, Katherine Munyan, said that '[t]he treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state fits the definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention of 1948', which defines genocide as the destruction 'in whole or in part' of an ethnic group.
Moreover, according to Sky News, a report by Yale University shows strong evidence of deliberate persecution and killing of the Rohingya minority by Myanmar's government. Such a report is based on a three-year long investigation spearheaded by human rights group Fortify Rights.
Several actions that could be labelled as genocidal include the refusal of child-bearing rights, forced evictions, and restriction of movement.
The Rohingya are a minority Muslim group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. They are also considered to be one of the world's most vulnerable minorities. The central government of Myanmar has stripped them off of their citizenship and property and has labelled them as illegal Bengali immigrants instead of considering them as a native ethnic group.
It can also be recalled the thousands of Rohingya migrants were stranded on boats earlier this year in the hope that they could escape to Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia. Such a move by the ethnic group followed after race riots in 2012 claimed to be orchestrated by the military ended up with more than 140,000 Rohingyas being relocated to ghetto-like camps.
Myanmar is also commonly known throughout the globe as Burma.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
