Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 13-09-2017

A national radio broadcast and Twitter storm has highlighted the Rohingya crisis urging South Africans to be vocal about the atrocities being inflicted upon Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar.

Hosted by Voice of the Cape yesterday, a number of radio stations including Radio Islam, Salaamedia, Channel Islam International and Al-Ansaar joined the call for urgent action to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

UN human rights officials have urged Myanmar to end the “brutal security operations” against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, calling it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Co-Founder of Protect the Rohingya Campaign Shabnum Mayet says the Rohingya are peaceful people which makes them an easy target.

“There’ve been airstrikes, burning of more than forty villages, there’ve been beheading of children and rape. There’s more than 300,000 Rohingya which have no fled across the border into Bangladesh and quite a few sitting in the ‘no man’s land between Burma and Bangladesh.”

Mayet says it’s not the Rohingya that are burning down the villages but rather Buddhists with the help from police.

“The Myanmar government should not pretend that the Rohingya are setting fire to their own homes. They’ve been saying the Rohingya are setting their own homes alight and then they’re fleeing. The reality is one of the BBC journalists along with other journalists actually found it was Rakhine youth who were burning down Rohingya villages.”

She says when it comes to fighting for justice, no act is too small and people should continue to be tenacious in creating awareness about human rights abuses.

Meanwhile protest marches have been organised in Cape Town and Pretoria.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) will be marching to parliament today while protest action has also been planned for Friday in Pretoria against the atrocities being inflicted upon Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar.

Watch  BBC caught #Rakhine Buddhists burning #Rohingya homes, who admitted they’ve done this with the help of the police.