Myanmar junta’s access to arms, cash must be cut off, says UN rights chief

GENEVA: The international community must take “targeted action” to restrict the Myanmar junta’s access to arms, jet fuel and foreign currency to prevent it from committing “atrocities” against its people, the UN human rights chief said on Friday.

“I repeat my call to the international community to refocus its energy on preventing atrocities against all people in the country, including the Rohingya,” Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, referring to the junta.He said countries should “end the military’s access to arms, jet fuel and foreign currency that it needs to sustain its campaign of repression against civilians.”

Myanmar has been plunged in turmoil since the military seized power from an elected government in a 2021 coup.

Muslim Rohingya have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades and nearly a million of them live in crammed camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.