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Pope Francis Arrives in Myanmar Amid Rohingya Crisis

U.S. and others have accused the country of ethnic cleansing of Muslim minority.

Pope Francis has arrived in Myanmar, where the military government is facing allegations of murder, rape, torture, and forcible displacement against Muslim Rohingya citizens. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church will also visit Bangladesh, where at least 620,000 Rohingya have taken refuge from what has been called “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing.” The U.N. Human Rights Council is expected to hold a special session on the allegations next month, Reuters reports. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has already described the situation as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, despite repeated denials from Myanmar’s military. Meanwhile, reporters working in the authoritarian country’s Rakhine state have gone missing, and others have claimed they may have been deliberately targeted by the military. Human-rights groups say the military has killed and abducted the reporters in order to “sabotage” the news networks from communicating information from the closely controlled state, The Guardian reports.