Malala calls on world leaders to save Rohingya Muslims

Stressing on rights for Rohingya, Malala said, “They deserve equal rights and opportunities.”

On Monday 8^th June, Nobel laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai spoke up for the rights of Rohingya Muslims, urging influential world leaders to take action against the persecution of the minority group, according to a statement released by the Malala Fund, Malala’s charity organization.

“I stand with the Rohingyas, and I encourage people everywhere to do so,” Malala said, “I call on the leaders of Myanmar and the world to take immediate action to halt the inhuman persecution of Burma’s Muslim minority Rohingya people,” she said.

Stressing the rights of Rohingyas to citizenship in their country of birth, she said, “The Rohingyas deserve citizenship in the country where they were born and have lived for generations. They deserve equal rights and opportunities.”

The 17-year-old said Rohingya Muslims “deserve to be treated like we all deserve to be treated – with dignity and respect. Today and every day.”

Recently, the issue of Rohingya Muslims, which has been going on for a while, has caught media attention. In the past few years, the violence against Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Myanmar has forced them to migrate, inciting the region’s largest migration of boat-people since the Vietnam War.

According to UN, more than 25,000 people, consisting of Rohingya as well economic migrants from Bangladesh, have made the dangerous sea journey south from the Bay of Bengal between January and March this year.

An estimated 1.3 million Rohingya struggle for survival in Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest states — tens of thousands are trapped in displacement camps, with conditions outside often worse.