LONDON: Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Monday urged Myanmar leaders to take “immediate action” to prevent the persecution of the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

Also on Monday, Pakistani Taleban called on Muslims in Myanmar to rise up and fight the country’s rulers, saying the Taleban’s resources and training facilities were available to help them “take up the sword.”

Malala, who was shot by militants in her native Pakistan for campaigning for girls’ rights, said that Rohingyas deserved “equal rights and opportunities” and called for them to be integrated into the country.

“I call on the leaders of Myanmar and the world to take immediate action to halt the inhuman persecution of Burma’s (Myanmar) Muslim minority Rohingya people,” said Malala.

“The Rohingyas deserve citizenship in the country where they were born and have lived for generations,” added the teenager, who won the Nobel prize last year for her activism.

“Today and every day, I stand with the Rohingyas, and I encourage people everywhere to do so.”

Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the hard-line Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) movement, said they “shared the grief” of Myanmar’s beleaguered Rohingya Muslim minority. Myanmar refuses to recognize most of its 1.3 million Rohingya as citizens and places a series of restrictions on them, such as family size, movements and access to jobs.