About 400 Now Dead During Muslim Crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine State

By Sam Howard

Displaced Rohingya people arrive at a monastery in Rakhine state on Aug. 31. The Myanmar military has said about 400 people have died during a military crackdown in the state over the last week. Photo EPA-EFE/Nyunt Win

UPI -- The death toll of a violent security operation in Myanmar's Rakhine state continues to rise.

Voice of America reported that the Myanmar military says about 400 people have now died within the last week, amid a security crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority population, who have long been denied citizenship in the largely Buddhist nation.

The military's actions have drawn the ire of the United Nations and international advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Of the 399 deaths over the last week, the Myanmar military said 370 were terrorists. The government has said those terrorists instigated the recent violence, specifically torching nearly 2,500 homes, but refugees claim Myanmar's military started the attack and burned down the homes, CNN reported.

Despite a government attempt to tighten the Myanmar border, the U.N. estimated 50,000 Rohingya people have fled the violence -- most of them into neighboring Bangladesh or a boundary area between the two countries.

Twenty bodies of Rohingya Muslims, including 12 children, were recovered from a river along the border on Thursday, CNN reported.

Wikipedia:

The Rohingya people are a stateless Indo-Aryan people from Rakhine State, Myanmar, which they claim to be their homeland for generations. There are an estimated 1 million Rohingyas living in Myanmar. The majority of them are Muslim and a minority are Hindu. 

Described as "one of the most persecuted minorities in the world", most of the Rohingya population are denied citizenship under the 1982 Burmese citizenship law, which restricts full citizenship to British Indian migrants who settled after 1823. The Rohingyas are also restricted from freedom of movement, state education and civil service jobs in Myanmar. 

Despite promises of equality by Myanmar's independence leader Aung San, the Rohingyas have faced military crackdowns in 1978, 1991–1992, 2012, 2015 and 2016–2017. 

UN officials have described Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, while there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide. Yanghee Lee, the UN special investigator on Myanmar, believes the country wants to expel its entire Rohingya population.

Rakhine State, Myanmar