26/11 Mastermind Hafiz Saeed Seen Urging Rohingya Muslims to Join Jihad in Video

New Delhi: The mastermind of 26/11 attacks and Lashkar-e-Taiba co-founder Hafiz Saeed is seen urging the Rohingya Muslims to join his "jihad" in a video that has surfaced recently.

The video, accessed by CNN-News18, shows Saeed addressing a rally, and exhorting the Rohingya Muslims to wage a "holy war" if they are threatened.

Myanmar's Rohingya community, which is not recognised by the state as its citizens, has been characterised by the United Nations as "the most persecuted minority in the world".

Saeed, in this December 2016 video, says, "My heart cries when I see the mass murder of Muslims in Burma. What is their fault?" Saeed goes on to ask if the only fault of these people is that they are Muslims.

India has sought to deport as many as 40,000 Rohingya Muslims currently living across the country, a step "deplored" by the United Nations human rights body.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju had told Parliament last month that the central government had directed state authorities to identify and deport illegal immigrants, including Rohingya Muslims.

India suspects that persecuted Rohingya Muslims could be possible recruiting targets for some of the terror outfits that harbour animosity against the Indian state. The Indian government also contends that these “illegal immigrants” pose a threat to the national security.

In the latest spate of violence, at least 1,000 Rohingya Muslims are believed to have been killed in operations conducted by the Myanmar Army. More than 3,50,000 of them have fled to the neighboring Bangladesh from the western state of Rakhine after several of their villages were set afire.

The victims allege that the military and some armed civilians, encouraged by the army, have run amok, killing several of the family members, forcing them to flee their homes.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Prof. Yanghee Lee, had told The Hindu that the number of people killed in the violence since August 25 in Myanmar had crossed 1,000.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had recently called the state of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar "catastrophic" and "completely unacceptable".