A mosque is seen in a Muslim community within a market area of Maungdaw town located in Myanmar's strife-torn Rakhine State near the Bangladesh border on December 2, 2016. / ?AFP.
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia today called on Myanmar to immediately stop the persecution of the minority Rohingya community in northern Rakhine, saying it was seen as affecting the safety, security and standing of Malaysia as Myanmar's Asean neighbour.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the humanitarian crisis was no longer an internal matter but an international one, and it must be resolved to restore stability and security in the Southeast Asian region.
In a statement released here, the ministry said Malaysia regarded the persecution as "an immediate humanitarian concern" and not a religious issue.
"The fact that only one particular ethnicity is being driven out is by definition ethnic-cleansing," it said.
The ministry said the huge number of Rohingyas in Malaysia, estimated at 56,000, under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees banner, coupled with the hundreds of thousands in other neighbouring countries, made the Rohingya problem no longer an internal matter but an international one.
