Iran Military Experts Show Solidarity with Myanmar Muslims
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Experts and technicians in Iran’s defense industries expressed solidarity with the persecuted Muslims of Myanmar, calling for global action to stop the ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslims in the Buddhist-majority country.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Iranian military experts voiced readiness for providing humanitarian aid for the Myanmarese Muslims, hundreds of thousands of whom have crossed into Bangladesh since late August to escape a military crackdown.
Denouncing the massacre of the defenseless Muslim people in Myanmar as a great humanitarian catastrophe, the statement also condemned the muted response of international organizations and self-proclaimed advocates of human rights to the persecution of the Muslim minority.
The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have long faced severe discrimination and were the targets of violence in 2012 that killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people from their homes to camps for the internally displaced.
On September 12, the UN refugee agency said the number of Rohingya Muslim refugees that have fled recent violence in Myanmar has spiked to about 370,000.
Earlier, the UN top human rights official accused Myanmar of carrying out “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against Rohingya Muslims.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the military’s “brutal” security campaign was in clear violation of international law, and cited what he called refugees’ consistent accounts of widespread extrajudicial killings, rape and other atrocities.