UN: Myanmar Clearance Operations Aim to Prevent Rohingya’s Return

A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river, on the border with Myanmar, near the town of Cox's Bazar, on September 5, 2017. (AP)
A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river, on the border with Myanmar, near the town of Cox's Bazar, on September 5, 2017. (AP)
TT
20

UN: Myanmar Clearance Operations Aim to Prevent Rohingya’s Return

A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river, on the border with Myanmar, near the town of Cox's Bazar, on September 5, 2017. (AP)
A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river, on the border with Myanmar, near the town of Cox's Bazar, on September 5, 2017. (AP)

The United Nations human rights office accused on Wednesday security forces in Myanmar of not only violently driving away Muslim Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine state, but of also implementing “clearance operations” to prevent their return.

The security forces have torched homes, crops and villages to prevent the Rohingya’s return. More than half a million have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape the brutal “systematic” crackdown, said the UN.

In a report based on 65 interviews with Rohingya, who have arrived in Bangladesh in the past month, the UN said that the clearance operations had begun before insurgent attacks on police posts on August 25 and included killings, torture and rape of children.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein - who has described the government operations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” - said in a statement that the actions appeared to be “a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return”.

“Credible information indicates that the Myanmar security forces purposely destroyed the property of the Rohingyas, scorched their dwellings and entire villages in northern Rakhine State, not only to drive the population out in droves but also to prevent the fleeing Rohingya victims from returning to their homes,” the latest report by his Geneva office said.

The destruction by security forces, often joined by “mobs” of armed Rakhine Buddhists, of houses, fields, food stocks, crops, and livestock make the possibility of Rohingya returning to normal lives in northern Rakhine “almost impossible”.

Myanmar security forces are believed to have planted landmines along the border in an attempt to prevent Rohingya from returning, it said, adding: “There are indications that violence is still ongoing”.

Myanmar on Tuesday launched its first bid to improve relations between Buddhists and Muslims since the eruption of deadly violence inflamed communal tension and triggered an exodus of some 520,000 Muslims to Bangladesh. It held inter-faith prayers at a stadium in Yangon.

A team of UN human rights officials, who went to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, from September 14-24, met victims and eyewitnesses and corroborated their accounts.

They documented Myanmar security forces “firing indiscriminately at Rohingya villagers, injuring and killing other innocent victims, setting houses on fire”, the report said.

“Almost all testimonies indicated that people were shot at close range and in the back while they tried to flee in panic,” it said. “Witness accounts attest to Rohingya victims, including children and elderly people, burned to death inside their houses.”

Several interviewees indicated that a “launcher”, most probably a rocket propelled grenade launcher, was used to set houses on fire, the report added.

Girls just five to seven years old had been raped, often in front of relatives, and sometimes by several men “all dressed in army uniforms”, it said.

The social welfare, relief and resettlement minister has been quoted as saying that “according to the law, burned land becomes government-managed land,” it said, noting the government has previously used this law to prevent the return of displaced.

Rohingya men under 40 were arrested up to a month before August 25 without charge, creating a “climate of intimidation and fear”.

"In some cases, before and during the attacks, megaphones were used to announce: 'You do not belong here – go to Bangladesh. If you do not leave, we will torch your houses and kill you'," the UN said.

Teachers as well as cultural, religious and community leaders have also been targeted in the latest crackdown "in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge", the report said.

"Efforts were taken to effectively erase signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognizable terrain," it added.

During the briefing on the report, a senior UN human rights official called on Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to stop the violence and discrimination against the Rohingya.

“Our ask of Aung San Suu Kyi is certainly to immediately stop the violence,” Jyoti Sanghera, head of the Asia and Pacific region of the UN human rights office.

Sanghera voiced concern that Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh might be “incarcerated or detained” on return to Myanmar, where she said they lacked citizenship and other civil and political rights.



Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
TT
20

Tropical Storm Adds to Philippines’ Weather Toll with 25 Dead and 278,000 Evacuated This Week 

Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)
Emergency responders retrieve the body of a worker a day after a landslide hit a construction site following days of typhoon-driven rains, in Cavite province, south of Manila, Philippines, 25 July 2025. (EPA)

A tropical storm was blowing across the Philippines' mountainous north Friday, worsening more than a week of bad weather that has caused at least 25 deaths and prompted evacuations in villages hit by flooding and landslides.

The storm was Typhoon Co-may when it blew Thursday night into the town of Agno in Pangasinan province with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers (74 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 165 kph (102 mph). It was weakening as it advanced northeastward and had sustained winds of 85 kph (53 mph) Friday afternoon.

Co-may was intensifying seasonal monsoon rains that had swamped a large swath of the country for more than a week.

Disaster-response officials have received reports of at least 25 deaths since last weekend, mostly due to flash floods, toppled trees, landslides and electrocution. Eight other people were reported missing, they said.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries directly caused by Co-may, locally called Emong, the fifth weather disturbance to hit the Philippines since the rainy season started in last month. More than a dozen more tropical storms were expected to batter the Southeast Asian country the rest of the year, forecasters said.

The government shut down schools in metropolitan Manila for the third day Friday and suspended classes in 35 provinces in the main northern region of Luzon. More than 80 towns and cities, mostly in Luzon, have declared a state of calamity, a designation that speeds emergency funds and freezes the prices of commodities, including rice.

The days of stormy weather have forced 278,000 people to leave their homes for safety in emergency shelters or relatives’ homes. Nearly 3,000 houses have been damaged, the government’s disaster response agency said.

Travel by sea and air has been restricted in northern provinces being pounded or in the typhoon’s path.

Thousands of army forces, police, coast guard personnel. firefighters and civilian volunteers have been deployed to help rescue people in villages swamped in floodwaters or isolated due to roads blocked by landslides, fallen trees and boulders.

The United States said it will provide $250,000 in funding to the UN World Food Program to help the Philippine government's response. “We are tracking the devastation caused by the storms and floods and are deeply concerned for all those affected,” US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson said.

After returning from his White House meeting with US President Donald Trump, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. visited emergency shelters Thursday in Rizal province to help distribute food packs to displaced residents.

He later convened an emergency meeting with disaster-response officials, where he underscored the need for the government and the people to adapt to and brace for climate change and the larger number of and more unpredictable natural calamities it’s setting off.

“Everything has changed,” Marcos said. “Let’s not say, ‘The storm may come, what will happen?’ because the storm will really come.”

The United States, Manila’s longtime treaty ally, has pledged to provide military aircraft to airlift food and other aid to remote island provinces and the countryside if the calamity worsens, the Philippines military said.

The Philippines, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Seas, is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year. It’s often hit by earthquakes and has about two dozen active volcanoes, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.