Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, the President of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization in Malaysia (MERHROM), has released a press statement decrying the new government’s failure to cease the mistreatment of Burma’s ethnic Rohingya population. He accused the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party of failing to curb human rights abuses against the Rohingya minority since the party came into power earlier this year.

 

The statement comes just weeks after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, published a critical report on the systemic violation of economic, civil, and human rights of the Rohingya Muslim community in Rakhine State. In the report, he discussed in detail how the limitation on movement and discriminatory “local orders” have stunted any socioeconomic growth for the minority population. Like Ghani, Hussein called upon the new NLD government “to begin a programme of comprehensive legal and policy measures to address the scope and pattern of violations against minorities in Myanmar.”