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Malala tells Aung San Suu Kyi ‘world is waiting’ for her to act on Rohingya violence

Source: Twitter/@Malala

The youngest ever Nobel peace prize winner urged her fellow laureate to stop ‘shameful’ treatment of the Muslim minority in Myanmar

Malala Yousafzai has joined other human rights activists and officials in publicly criticizing Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de-facto leader, for the violence meted on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

More than 90,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh from Myanmar in the latest wave of violence by the Myanmar military, spurred by an attack from a group of Rohingya militants on a military post on August 25.

The 20 year-old Pakistani education advocate in a statement posted to Twitter on Sunday, said the “world is waiting” for Aang Suu Kyi to “condemn the tragic and shameful treatment” of Rohingya Muslims.

Malala called for a stop to the violence, advocated citizenship for the Rohingya people — who are effectively stateless, despite having lived in Myanmar for generations — and for her native Pakistan to offer shelter, food and education to Rohingya refugees.

The brutal treatment of Myanmar’s Rohingya is longstanding — they’ve been categorized as the most persecuted minority on the planet.

Calling for an end to the violence, Yousafzai said she had been left heartbroken by reports of young children being killed by the Myamar Army and urged the Burmese government to grant the group citizenship.

In December, Yousafzai signed a letter along with several other Nobel laureates calling for the “international community as a whole to speak out much more strongly” as “a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar.”

Myanmar’s military says at least 400 people have been killed in the recent fighting. Human rights groups say Myanmar’s military has used systematic rape as a weapon of war, as also reported by various journalists. Human Rights Watch says satellite images show an entire Rohingya village being burned recently, one of the 17 “locations where burnings have taken place”.

Myanmar doesn’t acknowledge the Rohingya as citizens, saying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

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