AW Reporter:
The UNICEF, a UN children’s agency has called on Myanmar’s government to release all the detained Rohingya children who were arrested as part of a sweeping military campaign in Rakhine state after the 9th October incidence.
As far as more than 600 people were arrested in an army crackdown on Rohingya Muslimsin the name of ‘clearance operation’ in the north of the restive state. The operation was launched after deadly attacks by militants on police posts in October last year.
The Rohingya escapees into neighbouring Bangladesh, where about 90,000 have fled, gave UN investigators accounts of beatings, torture and food deprivation inside the jails. A significant number of minors were among those who were detained in jail during the post attack operation.
UNICEF’s deputy executive director Justin Forsyth said he had given the country’s de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi details of around a dozen youngsters being held in Buthidaung prison.
“Any child that’s detained is an issue for us ” he added.
He further said that “Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s army chief both recognised that there’s an issue here but made no firm committment for their release “.
Government spokesman Zaw Htay declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Sunday.
UN rights envoy for Myanmar Yanghee Lee said some 450 people were being held in Buthidaung prison when she visited in January, most without access to lawyers or their families.
Earlier, the UN Human Rights Council has agreed to send a ‘fact-finding mission’ to Myanmar to probe allegations that troops and police raped, killed and tortured Rohingya in their months-long campaign. Myanmar has rejected the accounts collected by UN investigators in the Bangladesh refugee camps, who said the crimes could amount to ethnic cleansing.
