The European Parliament on Thursday urged Myanmar authorities to halt hostilities against Rohingya Muslims and called on the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to condemn the violence.

The European Parliament called upon the ‘military and security forces in Myanmar to immediately cease the killings, harassment and rape of the Rohingya people, and the burning of their homes’. The ‘Myanmar authorities have a duty to protect, without discrimination, all civilians from abuse’ and to grant immediate access to humanitarian aid organisations to all conflict areas and displaced people’, it adds.

The Myanmar government ‘and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, should condemn unequivocally all incitement to racial or religious hatred and combat social discrimination and hostilities against the Rohingya minority’, urge MEPs. They remind the 1990 Sakharov Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi that this prize is awarded to those who defend human rights, safeguard the rights of minorities and respect international law. MEPs also wonder whether the Sakharov Prize could be revoked in cases where laureates violate those criteria after the prize has been awarded.