A UN official said that the threat of a genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar still exists, and has not changed for nearly five years.

Yesterday, Thursday, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wyrimu Nderetu, concluded a visit to Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled killing in their country have been living since 2017.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said - in a press conference - that the UN adviser concluded that "the risk of committing terrible crimes, in particular genocide, continues to confront these populations in their homeland, and has not changed."

He continued, quoting the same official, "This danger has been going on for nearly 5 years, specifically since the violence that took place in 2017, against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, which resulted in the flight of more than 700,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh."

Since August 25, 2017, the Myanmar armed forces and Buddhist militias have launched a military campaign against the Rohingya in the Rakhine region (west), which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of them, according to identical local and international sources, as well as the asylum of nearly one million people in Bangladesh, according to the United Nations.

And the US administration announced last March that it had officially concluded that the violence committed by the Myanmar army - between October 2016 and August 2017 - against the Muslim Rohingya, amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.

This US decision is a legal step forward from what was described in a report issued by the State Department in September 2018, which indicated that the violence against the Rohingya was widespread and aimed to intimidate them and push them to leave their areas.