Seven soldiers jailed for killing 10 Rohingya men and boys in 2017 have been released by the Myanmar government, under pressure from the military. The soldiers spent less time in prison then the two Reuters journalists that exposed the massacre in the first place.
Since 2017 more than 730,000 Rohingya, Muslims living in the border area of Rakhine, have been driven from Myanmar and into Bangladesh. The UN said that the expulsions were done with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings, widespread arson of Rohingya villages and property as well as the frequent use of rape. Amnesty International now reports that Rohingya Muslims and other minorities are still being attacked and persecuted by the Myanmar military.
The new operations have targeted the whole population of Rakhine and those accused of being part of the Rakhine-nationalist Arakan Army. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, more than half of them children, still live in increasingly bad conditions in Bangladesh, over the border from Rakhine State.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar “State Counsellor” and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is currently visiting Europe. She met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and signalled common ground with him over Muslim immigration. She continues to refuse to guarantee the safety of Rohingya refugees if they return to Myanmar. Orbán’s government has been accused by the Council of Europe of using rhetoric to promote “xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred”.
