Myanmar is engulfed in a full-blown humanitarian crisis following the arbitrary response of its military to attacks by Rohingya militants on 25 August.

Hundreds have been killed in a brutal campaign of violence and village burnings by soldiers and vigilantes alike, with the sole aim of driving the Rohingya people - a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in a majority Buddhist nation – out of their homes in Rakhine State.

Reports say more than 370,000 Rohingyas have crossed the border into neighbouring Bangladesh since the violence began last month. The situation is so dire that the UN’s human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein was moved to describe it as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

But the Myanmar military and government are not for turning. Contrary to their claims that they were fighting Muslim militants, it is innocent people who are suffering, as confirmed by Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina on a recent visit to a Rohingya refugee camp.

What makes it even worse is that these crimes are happening under the watchful eye of a Nobel peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. She vehemently refused to visit Rakhine State when Vijay Nambiar, the UN Special Representative to Myanmar, urged her to do so last December. 

The international community was mostly silent then, but voices are getting louder, and the tale they tell is a terrible one: she has sold out a minority in her country for the sake of her own political position. The blood of the Rohingya people is on her hands.