YANGON: Pressure grew on Myanmar on Monday as a rights group urged world leaders to impose sanctions on its military, which is accused of driving out more than 410,000 Rohingya Muslims in an orchestrated “ethnic cleansing” campaign.

The call from Human Rights Watch came as the UN General Assembly prepared to convene in New York, with the crisis in Myan­mar high on the agenda. It also came on the eve of a highly-anticipated national address Tuesday by Myan­mar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her first on the crisis in Rakhine state.

The exodus of Rohingya refugees from mainly Buddhist Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh has sparked a humanitarian emergency. Aid groups are struggling to provide relief to a daily stream of new arrivals, more than half of whom are children. The number also includes 70,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women, according to Bangladesh’s information minister Hasanul Haq.

Any clear moves to block the refugees’ return will likely anger Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina. She will use the General Assembly to press Myanmar to take back all the Rohingya massing in shanty towns and camps in Bangladesh near the border.

Human Rights Watch also called for the “safe and voluntary return” of the displaced as it urged governments around the globe to punish Myanmar’s army with sanctions for the “ongoing atrocities” against the Rohingya.

“The United Nations Secu­rity Council and concerned countries should impose targeted sanctions and an arms embargo on the Burmese military to end its ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims,” the group said in a statement.

“Burma’s senior military commanders are more likely to heed the calls of the international community if they are suffering real economic consequences,” said John Sifton, HRW’s Asia advocacy director.

Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi has shocked the international community with her near-silence on the plight of the Rohingya and her failure to condemn the actions of the army, with whom she has a delicate power-sharing arrangement.

Speaking to the BBC over the weekend, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Suu Kyi had a “last chance” to stop the humanitarian calamity.

But analysts say it will be difficult for her to appease both global outrage and combustible religious tensions at home, where there is broad support among the mainly Buddhist population for the army’s crackdown.

“I’m worried that there is almost no possibility given the political climate in Myanmar for balancing the expectations of most of the country and the expectations of the international community,” said Richard Horsey, an independent analyst based in Myanmar.

The sharp divide was on display Monday as protests broke out in Dhaka — where 20,000 Islamist hardliners marched in solidarity with the Rohingya — and in Yangon, where a group of 300 gathered to blast global interference in the conflict.

While the world has watched with horror, there is little sympathy for the Rohingya inside Myanmar.

Some 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus have also been displaced by unrest in northern Rakhine, where foreign aid has been severely curtailed.

On Monday, Doctors Without Borders repeated calls for “unfettered access” to the conflict zone, saying hundreds of thousands of people are thought to be languishing “without any meaningful form of humanitarian assistance”.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2017