Cate Blanchett calls for Rohingyas to be protected

Mother-of-four Miss Blanchett, 49, said the World had “failed the Rohingya before” during an impassioned speech before the UN Security Council in New York earlier this week.

A shocking UN report stated Myanmar’s military had carried out mass killings, gang rapes and burnt down whole villages since the attacks begun last August.

And the actress, who is also a UN goodwill ambassador declared on the first anniversary of the outbreak of violence: “Please, let us not fail them again.”

She recalled “gut-wrenching accounts” of torture, rape, people seeing loved ones killed in front of them and children being thrown onto fires.

“I am a mother, and I saw my children in the eyes of every single refugee child I met,” she said.

“I saw myself in every parent. How can any mother endure seeing her child thrown into a fire?

“Their experiences will never leave me.”

The UN report recommended the country’s commander in chief and five generals be prosecuted for orchestrating genocide.

Military action in response to civil unrest, included attacks from insurgents, was “grossly disproportionate to actual security threats”, it said.

And Miss Blanchett told ambassadors about 90-year-old Gul Zahar who had twice before fled to refugee camps in Bangladesh.

The actress said the world had 'failed the Rohingya before' during her speech (Image: GETTY)

Gul is “sadly” a refugee living in poverty in Bangladesh “with the sole wish that her great grandchildren will have a better future”.

She added: “The need for this future to transpire inside Burma has never been more urgent.

“If we fail to act now, Gul’s grandchildren, like thousands of others, will be unable to escape this relentless cycle that generations of Rohingya have experienced.

“We have failed the Rohingya before,” Miss Blanchett said. “Please, let us not fail them again.”

Britain implored the UN Security Council, comprised of 15 members, to take “concerted action” over crimes committed during the conflict.

Minister for the UN Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said there had been “grave violations” of the Rohingya’s human rights after a report detailed widespread crimes, including rape and murder, committed by the Burmese military,

This Council should shoulder its responsibility and do justice to the gravity of the attacks on the Rohingya community”, he said. “We should not be just discussing and debating.

“We need to be acting, acting to bring an end to the appalling ethnic cleansing, to help those suffering refugees, and bring justice for the victims of appalling crimes.”

Lord Ahmad, who is the Prime Minister’s special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict, called on the council to “act for the sake of humanity”.

Sweden and Holland called for the council to refer the crimes to the International Criminal Court.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce, had said she was “not confident” the UN Security Council would unanimously back referral to the International Criminal Court.

Speaking after the session, she said the report had set out “reasonable grounds to call for an investigation and prosecution”.

She said: “It is not in itself an assessment mission designed to apportion blame. There needs to be a full judicial investigation.

“So we will be talking to our friends and partners on the Security Council and elsewhere about how to do justice to the very grave crimes and the need for accountability that the FFM report so graphically outlines.”