MANILA: Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi today delivered a stinging rebuke of the inhumane treatment inflicted on the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
Addressing the second Asean Ministerial Meeting on Radicalisation and Violent Extremism (AMMRVE) at the Conrad Hotel here, Zahid questioned Myanmar's blockade of humanitarian aid by international organisations from being delivered to the Rohingya.
"Myanmar's security forces are killing even women and children without pity.
"These are humans. These people are not animals. We may have our differences, but we have to stand together on humanitarian grounds.
"If you are really a democratic country as you say you are, then you should not stand in the way of humanitarian aid," said Zahid, in the presence of the Myanmar delegation.
Malaysia has adopted a tough stance on the violence inflicted on Myanmar's Rohingya community on the Rakhine State.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had previously spoken out on the need to address the issue effectively. He had also raised the matter with United States President Donald Trump at the White House during the former's recent working visit to the US.
US vice-president Mike Pence had said yesterday that Trump wants the United Nations Security Council to take ‘strong and swift action’ to end violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, declaring the crisis a threat to the world.
Pence had accused the Myanmar military of responding to militant attacks on government outposts “with terrible savagery, burning villages, driving the Rohingya from their homes.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had meanwhile said attacks on Myanmar’s Rohingya minority amounted to “genocide.”
France, said Macron, will work with other members of the UN Security Council for a condemnation of “this genocide which is unfolding, this ethnic cleansing".
More than 420,000 members of the Muslim minority Rohingya have fled Myanmar for the safety of neighbouring Bangladesh. ,