The UK has warned Myanmar that the Rohingya crisis is an “unacceptable tragedy” and Aung San Suu Kyi’s government must end the violence and lift a blockade on humanitarian aid.

“What we have seen in Rakhine in the past few weeks is an absolute and unacceptable tragedy,” Mark Field, Britain’s minister for Asia, said on Thursday after a visit to the country, where he met with Aung San Suu Kyi and visited western Rakhine state, the centre of the bloodshed.

“We need the violence to stop and all those who have fled to be able to return to their homes quickly and safely,” he said. “Burma has taken great strides forward in recent years. But the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis in Rakhine risks derailing that progress,” he added of the ex-British colony.

Close to half a million Rohingya, a Muslim minority in majority-Buddhist Myanmar, have fled the army into Bangladesh. While the government says it is fighting an emergent “terrorist” group, the UN rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has described it as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing.

Q&A Who are the Rohingya and what happened to them in Myanmar? Show Described as the world’s most persecuted people, 1.1 million Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Buddhists for decades. Rohingya people say they are descendants of Muslims, perhaps Persian and Arab traders, who came to Myanmar generations ago. Unlike the Buddhist community, they speak a language similar to the Bengali dialect of Chittagong in Bangladesh. The Rohingya are reviled by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants and suffer from systematic discrimination. The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, denying them citizenship. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access to medical assistance, education and other basic services. Violence broke out in northern Rakhine state in August 2017, when militants attacked government forces. In response, security forces supported by Buddhist militia launched a “clearance operation” that ultimately killed at least 1,000 people and forced more than 600,000 to flee their homes. The UN’s top human rights official said the military’s response was "clearly disproportionate” to insurgent attacks and warned that Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya minority appears to be a "textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. When Aung San Suu Kyi rose to power there were high hopes that the Nobel peace prize winner would help heal Myanmar's entrenched ethnic divides. But she has been accused of standing by while violence is committed against the Rohingya. In 2019, judges at the international criminal court authorised a full-scale investigation into the allegations of mass persecution and crimes against humanity. On 10 December 2019, the international court of justice in The Hague opened a case alleging genocide brought by the Gambia. Rebecca Ratcliffe Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Field said Aung San Suu Kyi had given him assurances those who had fled their homes would be able to return across the border. “The proof will be in the pudding, and whether she will allow those who wish to return to do so,” he later told the BBC. “There are now hundreds of thousands of Rohingya on the Bangladeshi side of the border and there is a big question mark just how many will feel confident enough with the security implications on what is happening in the country to return.”

He said Aung San Suu Kyi did not share the views of some ministers who have claimed burned land becomes government land and remained the best hope for “ongoing democracy” in the country, despite failing to stop the violence against the Rohingya minority.

“She finds herself treading fine line between the international criticism that we have seen in the past six weeks, but also public opinion in Burma that remains very strongly anti-Rohingya,” he said. “What would be calamitous essentially is for it to fall back into a military dictatorship. She is a 71 year old lady. She is perhaps not entirely comfortable emoting. She is not someone prone to the political and public relations that we are all used to ... but she is increasingly aware that much needs to be done.”

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres will brief the UN security council on the crisis later on Thursday in New York. Guterres has sent a letter to the council to express concern about the “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding in Myanmar.





The latest campaign, the deadliest so far, ramped up after the army launched a huge counter-offensive in retribution for guerrilla-style ambushes on 25 August by a Rohingya militant group. Satellite imagery shows more than 200 Rohingya villages have since been burned.



As Myanmar does not allow unfettered access to the conflict zone, it is impossible to corroborate how many people have died. The army has rebuffed accusations of war crimes and points to attacks by “extremist terrorists” against Buddhists and Hindus.

On Wednesday, the government brought some reporters to an area in northern Rakhine where a mass graves of Hindus, including many women and children, were exhumed this week. Villagers said black-clad attackers had killed more than 100 people. Requests for access to hundreds of Muslim villages have mostly been denied.

The roughly 1.1 million Rohingya have suffered decades of discrimination in Myanmar, where they not granted citizenship.

Desperate Rohingya have for years paid people smugglers to get them out of the country, often resulting in deaths at sea or exploitation when they are locked up for ransom by the criminals they trusted to deliver them to Thailand and Malaysia.

Thailand is facing mounting calls to stop its policy to push the migrant boats back out to sea. A 2015 Thai crackdown led to ships full of people being stranded at sea, and there are concerns that the recent crisis will lead to a resurgence.

“Thailand urgently needs to set a regional example by adopting humane refugee policies,” said Audrey Gaughran from Amnesty International. “Instead of callously repelling people fleeing unimaginable horrors, the Thai government should ensure safe passage for those seeking international protection in Thailand.”

Aung San Suu Kyi has disappointed human rights groups who looked to her as an icon in the fight against oppressive rule. The Nobel peace prize winner spent 15 years under house arrest and won a landslide election in 2015, seen as a huge victory for democratic reform in the country.

The recent violence has shocked governments that ardently supported her, including the UK, and there are concerns for the civilians who have arrived – many with bullet wounds – in Bangladesh.

Oxfam has warned that close to 70% of the nearly 480,000 Rohingya refugees are without adequate shelter and half have no safe drinking water. The international agency launched an urgent appeal for more than £5m after heavy rains and floods in camps have left people facing extreme hardship.

“Oxfam is witnessing an unprecedented number of refugees arriving into Bangladesh in a very short period of time,” it said. “Tens of thousands don’t have food or clean water. If they are very lucky they have some plastic sheeting to take shelter under – but most of the time families are huddled under sarongs.”

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.