DHAKA: Myanmar is still continuing its "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya Muslims with a "campaign of terror and forced starvation" in Rakhine state of Myanmar, a UN human rights official said on Tuesday (March 6).

More than six months after an army crackdown triggered a security response that has forced nearly 700,000 people into Bangladesh, the UN envoy said.

After a four-day visit to refugee camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district where 700,000 Rohingya refugees have sought shelter since the violence erupted in August of 2017, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour made these remarks.

He said "The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues. I don't think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox's Bazar."  

"The nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied blood-letting and mass rape of last year to a lower intensity campaign of terror and forced starvation," he added.

BDST: 1433 HRS, MAR 6, 2018
AH/SMS