Rohingya Muslims seek spot on Arab League summit agenda

A Rohingya delegation are in Tunis in hope that their cause will be discussed at the upcoming Arab League summit in Tunis on March 31.

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab

12 February, 2019

Delegation of Rohingya organisations visited the Tunisian parliament [TNA]

A delegation of activists from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar visited Tunisian parliament on Tuesday, seeking support for their cause at the upcoming Arab League summit.

Activists called on the Tunisian government to help increase international awareness of the crimes committed against the Rohingya, and want to see their plight discssed at the summit to be held in Tunis at the end of March.

The Muslim minority group have suffered massacres and forced displacement at the hands of Myanmar’s military junta in a conflict that has seen 390 villages destroyed and 10,000 people killed. A UN report published last year called for a genocide tribunal to judge the generals responsible for the massacres.

Abdelfattah Mourou, vice president of the Tunisian assembly strongly condemned the human rights violations committed against the Rohingya and called for international action.

Imran al-Arkani, the director of the Arakan Humanitarian Association, told The New Arab that he had great hope in Tunisia, which he described as a country of revolution and religious freedom. In the first visit of this kind, he called on Tunisia to support the Rohingya cause and include it as a topic of discussion at the upcoming Arab League summit.

The Red Cross stated in November that it remains unsafe for Rohingya refugees to return to their homes in Myanmar. Around 700,000 Rohingya sought refuge in Bangladesh after the Myanmar's military unleashed further violence in Rakhine state in August 2017.

Robert Mardini, a UN observer, has said that "so many villages" have been raised in Rakhine state that there are few or no homes for the refugees to return to.