UNICEF urges Myanmar to release detained Rohingya children

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called for the release of the Rohingya children detained by Myanmar’s government as part of a heavy-handed crackdown on the Muslim minority group in Rakhine State.

According to Press TV, the international body made the plea to Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Saturday after detailing the plight of around a dozen minors being held in the Buthidaung prison in the restive Rakhine.

“There are some children that are detained in prison, so those are the cases that we’re raising,” Justin Forsyth, the agency’s deputy executive director, said at the end of a brief trip to the Southeast Asian country. “Any child that’s detained is an issue for us.”

“The reality is if you don’t address these issues, particularly for these communities, then it will come back to haunt them, which is partly what has happened,” Forsyth said.

Nearly 75,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown there in October 2016, according to the UN report.

In a televised interview with British media last week, Suu Kyi expressed opposition to labeling the ongoing crackdown against the country’s Muslim minority group as ethnic cleansing despite widespread reports of abuses against them.

SS