Pope Francis plunges into a diplomatic minefield next week with visits to under-fire Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh amid mounting outrage over the plight of persecuted Rohingya Muslims.Some 620,000 Rohingya, more than half their total number, have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August as a result of violence that the UN and the United States have described as ethnic cleansing.Most of the refugees, a third of them children, have ended up in squalid refugee camp

Myanmar has agreed to take back hundreds and thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees who’ve been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka said in a statement.Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the bilateral agreement in Myanmar on Thursday, just a day after U.S.

Father William's 16-strong flock on Myanmar's eastern border is one of the Catholic Church's tiniest outposts, but next week they will join a tide of 200,000 faithful in Yangon for a historic mass led by Pope Francis.The Pope, renowned for powerful entreaties for peace no matter how highly-charged the issue, arrives on Monday in a country on the defensive over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.Some 620,000 Rohingya have been driven from western Rakhine state to Bang

Myanmar's suffocating control of its Rohingya population amounts to "apartheid", Amnesty International said Tuesday in a probe into the root causes of a crisis that has sent 620,000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.Distressing scenes of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps have provoked outrage around the world, as people who have escaped Rakhine state since August recount tales of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar troops.Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed in p

Widowed and alone 21-year-old Umme Kulthum had hoped for a fresh start in Bangladesh, but was forced into prostitution instead, falling victim to what aid groups and officials say is a growing trafficking scourge targeting refugees.Women and children make up the majority of the more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh, many escaping with only the clothes on their back and desperate to survive any way they can.Confined to congested tent c

Myanmar troops gang-raped countless Rohingya women and girls during a military campaign that sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.The US-based rights group said in a report that the sexual violence, along with other atrocities committed by Myanmar security forces, amount to crimes against humanity.Based on interviews with rape survivors, aid organisations and Bangladeshi health officials, the report details cases of what it calle

The 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Meetings were held in Manila from November 10-14.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi faced rising global pressure Tuesday to solve the crisis for her nation's displaced Rohingya Muslim minority, meeting the UN chief and America's top diplomat in the Philippines.UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Nobel laureate that hundreds of thousands of displaced Muslims who had fled to Bangladesh should be allowed to return to their homes in Myanmar."The Secretary-General highlighted that strengthened efforts to ensure humanitaria

In the face of widespread "atrocities" against ethnic Rohingya people in Myanmar, the United States has been cautiously stepping up pressure on that country's army, while taking care to avoid endangering the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The last time Aung San Suu Kyi visited Rakhine State in northern Myanmar was in 2015 during the country’s landmark general elections. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide victory – ending military rule of the country and ushering in a new civilian government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was heralded as the leader who would turn around the struggling democracy.Her next visit was in early November this year.