Rohingya barred from polls

Fighting back: Abdul Rasheed in his Yangon office. He is planning to appeal the decision of the district election commission. — AFP

A Rohingya Muslim has been barred from standing in Myanmar’s upcoming election, in a decision decried by rights groups as discriminatory and a symptom of the “ongoing genocide” against the persecuted minority.

A 2017 military operation drove 750,000 Rohingya out of the country into sprawling refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, prompting genocide charges at the United Nation’s top court.