By William Gallo

Voice of America

September 25, 2018

Rohingya refugee women hold placards as they take part in a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp to mark the one-year anniversary of their exodus from Myanmar, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2018.

By Lisa Schlein | Published by Voice of America on July 4, 2018

GENEVA — U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein reports thousands of Rohingya refugees continue to flee violence and persecution in Myanmar. Speaking Wednesday before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, he presented a grim assessment of the situation of the Muslim minority in the country’s Rakhine state.

In his presentation, Zeid accused the authorities in majority-Buddhist Myanmar of trying to whitewash their treatment of the Rohingya people. In recent months, he says Myanmar has challenged allegations its security forces have engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign that has sent more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

He said Myanmar authorities also are trying to convince the world they are willing to allow the refugees to return to their homes and that it is safe for them to do so. Zeid disputes these assertions. He says he has evidence that the few people who have returned to Rakhine of their own accord have been imprisoned and ill-treated.

Since the start of this year, Zeid said more than 11,400 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar and more continue to flee. He said dozens of others have departed by boat for Malaysia and Indonesia, and some reportedly having died en route.

“All the newly arrived refugees who have been interviewed by OHCHR [Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights] described continuing violence, persecution and human rights violations, including killings and the burning of Rohingya homes.... No amount of rhetoric can whitewash these facts. People are still fleeing persecution in Rakhine - and are even willing to risk dying at sea to escape,” he said. 

Zeid urged the U.N. Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court to investigate all allegations of crimes against humanity and genocide perpetrated against the Rohingya.

Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar, Kyaw Moe Tun, tore into Zeid’s statement, calling it flawed, full of incomplete and misleading information. He blamed the deteriorating security situation in northern Rakhine on attacks against the government by ARSA, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which he calls a terrorist group. He said his government was setting up a Commission of Inquiry to look into allegations of abuse against the Rohingya.

High Commissioner Zeid said Myanmar indulges in what he called a “pattern of investigative whitewash."

Voice of America

March 6, 2018

Samsun Nahar, a Rohingya widow, along with her 9 children at her bamboo-and-plastic shack in a refugee colony in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Noor Ankis at her Balukhali Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, along with her husband and five children, after she fled Myanmar in September.

By Michael Bowman

CAPITOL HILL — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators moved to confront Myanmar over ethnic cleansing on Wednesday, with one Democrat accusing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of holding up action on the Rohingya crisis because of his ties to the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

“The problem comes down to one specific issue — the relationship and friendship between Senator McConnell and Aung San Suu Kyi,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois told VOA. “Time and again when we’ve tried to tell the Rohingya story, the atrocities that are occurring to these people at the hands of the Myanmar military and suggest the need for leadership in Myanmar to stop it, there’s been an effort by Senator McConnell and others to stop the conversation.”

For more than two decades, McConnell was a prime sponsor of numerous sanctions measures aimed at the military junta which finally released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and permitted elections won by her party in 2015.

McConnell “felt and we all felt years ago that she [Aung San Suu Kyi] showed extraordinary courage,” Durbin said, “but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore what’s happening today in her country and the need for her leadership.”

McConnell 'deeply troubled'

Voice of America reached out to the Republican leader’s communications director, David Popp, for comment and was referred to a statement from last September in which McConnell said he was “deeply troubled by the humanitarian situation along the Burmese-Bangladeshi border” but said that “publicly condemning Aun San Suu Kyi — the best hope for democratic reform in Burma — is not constructive.”

Hours earlier, Durbin and 14 other senators, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida as well as Democrats Tim Kaine of Virginia and Dianne Feinstein of California, introduced a Senate resolution condemning “the violence and displacement inflicted on Burma’s Rohingya and other ethnic minorities” and calling for “an immediate halt to all hostilities by Burmese authorities.”

The resolution seeks “voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation” for Rohingya refugees, who should “enjoy equal rights with others in Burma, including the restoration or granting of full citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to basic services.”

'The greatest hope'

The resolution also urges the United Nations “to consider the feasibility of Bangladesh’s proposal for a ‘safe zone’ or for a peacekeeping mission to protect and defend vulnerable communities under international supervision.” In addition, it calls for the release of two Reuters journalists arrested and charged with violating the country’s Official Secrets Act.

McConnell had declined to support an similar resolution in September, which demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi do more to protect the Rohingyas. “I don’t favor a resolution going after her,” he said at that time. “I think she’s the greatest hope that we have to move Burma from where it has been, a military dictatorship, to where I hope it’s going.”

Amid Capitol Hill’s renewed focus on the Rohingya crisis, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations quit a Myanmar government advisory board on the country’s troubled Rakhine State, decrying the panel as “a cheerleading squad for government policy.”

Absence of 'moral leadership'

In a statement Wednesday, Ambassador Bill Richardson, who also served as governor of New Mexico, described himself as a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi but accused her of an absence of “moral leadership” on the refugee crisis and of disparaging “the media, the United Nations, human rights groups, and in general the international community.”

Richardson added, “Without the commitment and moral leadership needed from the top, my engagement on the Advisory Board is no longer tenable.”

Neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor her spokesman responded to questions for comment.

Bipartisan outrage building

In Washington, bipartisan outrage over the refugee crisis has been building to a boiling point among lawmakers.

“Since August, more than 650,000 innocent men, women and children have been forced to flee a campaign of unspeakable violence that the United Nations has called a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” McCain said in a statement. “Many Rohingya believe their return home will be met with more violence. These displaced families deserve to have confidence that their return will be safe, voluntary and dignified. The United States and the international community should stand for nothing less,” added McCain.

“It is a most horrific circumstance,” Durbin told VOA. “When you go to a country and you say the word ‘Rohingya’ and the people of Myanmar stop to correct you, saying, 'There is no such thing — you can’t use that term,’ they deny, literally, the existence of the people who are the victims.”

By Ben Dunant

Voice of America

January 23, 2018

YANGON, MYANMAR — Myanmar’s top business leaders have rallied behind State Counselor Aung San Kyi’s plan for Rakhine State, expending money and resources on frontline efforts to resettle refugees and rebuild infrastructure.

A government agency chaired by the country’s de facto leader is also wooing private capital into an area cleared of a substantial portion of its people. Rohingya militant attacks on police posts in August provoked a military sweep driving more than 650,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

In an e-mailed statement to VOA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said, “conditions in Rakhine State are not yet fully conducive to the safe and sustainable return of refugees.” 

The repatriations have been put on hold and Rohingya community leaders have demanded the restitution of community land, legal redress for atrocities, and a path to citizenship as essential preconditions.

While Myanmar’s civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), is constitutionally barred from holding the army to account, it has tried to take control in other ways, chiefly via the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine, or UEHRD. It was formed in October to mobilize Myanmar society in a shared patriotic venture. 

Roads and fences

Pivotal to the vision is the support of Myanmar’s tycoons—the dozen or so business leaders who made fortunes during military rule and continue to dominate the economy through privately owned, highly diversified conglomerates.

They were quick to oblige. A UEHRD ceremony held in the capital, Naypyidaw, in October drew close to $13.5 million from a roster of well-known company chairmen: Aung Ko Win of KBZ, Zaw Zaw of Max Myanmar, Steven Law of Asia World, Chit Khine of Eden, and Khin Shwe of Zaykabar, among others.

Nyo Myint, senior managing director of KBZ Group, told VOA some of the $2.2 million donated via its charitable arm, the Brighter Future Foundation, would be spent on a new fence across a stretch of the border with Bangladesh. He said this would benefit “both countries” in deterring illegal migration, a supposed conflict trigger.

Other support has been more direct. Chit Khine, the Eden Group chairman, told VOA over the phone that his company—which constructed substantial parts of Naypyidaw, launched as Myanmar’s new capital in 2005—was now helping build structures in Nga Khu Ya, one of two processing sites for returning refugees established near the border.

In early January, Myanmar state media ran a press release from Asia World, Myanmar’s largest conglomerate. It depicted a “non-for-profit” 80-kilometer road in northern Rakhine State built under the banner of its own charitable foundation—a “proud” effort undertaken as part of UEHRD’s construction taskforce.

The thaw

The heads of Eden, KBZ, and Asia World were previously under Western sanctions for their alleged links with the former military junta. Their prominence in Aung San Suu Kyi’s plan marks a broader rapprochement between the former dissident leader and the tycoons whom, during her years of house arrest, she lambasted as military “cronies.”

The thaw began early in her government tenure. In an October 2016 event for top taxpayers, she told assembled tycoons she wouldn’t dwell on past misdeeds but asked for, “those who have previously worked for their own self-interest work for others in the future.”

Gerard McCarthy, associate director of the Myanmar Research Center at the Australian National University, told VOA that enlisting the support of tycoons for national causes is not a departure from core NLD values, which center on “a morally virtuous project,” defined by individual acts of merit. Under this ethos, he said, “capitalists can be moral as long as they contribute.”

But Aung San Suu Kyi’s public-private fix for Rakhine State doesn’t stop at charity. It also involves presenting Rakhine State as a promising business opportunity in answer to a recommendation by the Advisory Commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for increased, albeit responsible, investment in one of Myanmar’s poorest states.

Former glories

To spur private sector interest, the government in October rebooted a stalled economic zone, with a focus on trade facilities, in Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State, by signing a memorandum of understanding with a consortium of local and Yangon-based firms.

The Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) is coordinating a private sector investment drive in Rakhine, on behalf of UEHRD, covering sectors ranging from agriculture to micro-finance to tourism.

Ye Min Aung, vice chair of the UMFCCI and secretary-general of Myanmar Rice Federation, told VOA, “Some people, they don’t want to donate, but they want to invest.”

“The root of all the problems in Rakhine is the desperate economic situation,” he said, adding they would promote “agribusiness for peace” by establishing a new firm, the Rakhine Agribusiness Public Company, which would eventually trade on the Yangon Stock Exchange.

He said he was lobbying the government to offer more concrete incentives for investors.

Patriotic duty

Vicky Bowman, director of the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business, told VOA via email that while humanitarian needs should come first, there was “a need for public investment in infrastructure to combat Rakhine’s isolation and associated poverty.” She added, “the private sector may be a suitable partner.”

However, among other risks, Bowman noted “local resentment that businesses from outside of Rakhine have had more opportunity than locals.” The entry of major conglomerates could foment tensions at a time of heightened Rakhine nationalism.

On January 16, the local government’s banning of a ceremony commemorating the 1784 fall of the Rakhine kingdom to the Burmese, led to deadly confrontations between the police and thousands of angry locals in the town of Mrauk-U. 

Yet, both Ye Min Aung of UMFCCI and Nyo Myint of KBZ described their efforts in terms of patriotic duty. “This is the time the Myanmar private sector should be united to show solidarity under the leadership of the present government,” said Ye Min Aung.

By Lisa Schlein

Voice of America

January 22, 2018

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The World Food Program warns food shortages and undernutrition in Myanmar's Rakhine State are seriously affecting the health of women and children.

More than one million Rohingyas lived in Myanmar's Rakhine State before a brutal military crackdown against the civilian population began in late August. Since then, more than 655,000 refugees have fled to Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Myanmar authorities have cut off access by the U.N. and other international organizations to Rakhine State. But local aid workers are allowed to distribute a limited amount of aid to the Rohingyas.

Before the mass exodus, the World Food Program provided aid for some 250,000 people across Rakhine State. WFP spokeswoman, Bettina Luescher, said that number has gone down. But, with the help of local staff on the ground, WFP is succeeding in gradually reaching more people.

"In December, we reached 63,600 people in Northern Rakhine, twice as many as in November. And in Central Rakhine… we assisted 114,000 people. We are working with local NGO's and government authorities to distribute the food and we are coordinating with the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] so we do not overlap. And, food is given to vulnerable people from all communities based on needs irrespective of ethnicity and religion," she said.

WFP reports child malnutrition rates in northern Rakhine State already were above emergency thresholds before the recent violence. It says the violence and displacement have likely made this situation worse.

In a welcome move, Luescher said the Myanmar Government has asked WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization to conduct a Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission in Rakhine State to assess the food situation on the ground. She said no date has yet been set for the start of the mission.

By Lisa Schlein

Voice of America

January 10, 2018

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF) reports tens of thousands of Rohingya children are living under appalling, prison-like conditions, with little or no access to basic services in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

More than 655,000 Rohingya have fled to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, since the end of August to escape violence and persecution in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State. About half of those are children.

UNICEF senior advisor Marixie Mercado recently returned from a month-long visit to Myanmar. She said it was difficult to get a true picture of the children remaining there because of lack of access.

But she was able to obtain, what she calls a deeply troubling view of the precarious existence of children living in central Rakhine State. Mercado said more than 60,000 Rohingya children remain there, almost forgotten and trapped in 23 camps where they were driven by violence in 2012. She described conditions of two camps she visited.

“The two camps are below sea level. There is almost no tree cover. The first thing that you notice when you reach the camps is the stomach-churning stench. Parts of the camps are literally cesspools. The shelters teeter on stilts above garbage and excrement. In one camp, the pond where people draw water from is separated by a low mud wall from the sewage,” said Mercado.

Mercado said children walk barefoot through the muck and invariably some of them die from accidents and disease. She said it is extremely difficult for Rohingya to leave their camps for medical treatment. So, people are turning to traditional healers, untrained physicians or self-medication.

She said basic living conditions and access to lifesaving services urgently need to be improved. She said children are also suffering from an inability to get a decent education. She said learning takes place in poorly equipped temporary classrooms, with determined volunteer teachers who have little formal training.

By Steve Sandford

Voice of America

January 3, 2018

COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH — At Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, unclean water, cramped living quarters and squalid conditions create a prime environment for outbreaks of preventable diseases among the estimated 650,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled strife in neighboring Myanmar.

While 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine already have been delivered by more than 200 mobile vaccination teams, another contagious bacterial infection, diphtheria, has emerged.

"Diphtheria is a vaccine preventable disease. It's an illustration of how the Rohingya population that are living in the makeshift settlements here had very little access to health care in their place of origin in Myanmar," said Kate Nolan, emergency coordinator with international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.

Diphtheria often causes the buildup of a sticky grey-white membrane in the throat or nose. The infection causes airway obstruction and damage to the heart and nervous system. The fatality rate increases without the diphtheria antitoxin.

"This is an extremely vulnerable population with low vaccination coverage, living in conditions that could be a breeding ground for infectious diseases like cholera, measles, rubella and diphtheria," said Dr. Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the World Health Organization representative to Bangladesh.

Myanmar's health sector is rated among the worst in the world, particularly in the ethnic regions where conflict and poverty have delayed medical development.

The Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar's northern Rakhine state after insurgents attacked security forces in late August, prompting a military crackdown that has since been described as ethnic cleansing.

'Appalling' health care

Myanmar's government denies it has engaged in ethnic cleansing, and it insists that a majority of the violence and burning of Rohingya villages was done by the Rohingya militants who attacked the Myanmar security forces.

"The health care facilities for the Rohingya in Rakhine state are appalling and just a small amount of the needs were being met, even before the attacks in August," said Rohingya expert Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, a human rights organization that monitors and documents the situation.

According to Lewa, the impoverished Rohingya population in northern Rakhine say they are treated with discrimination by Myanmar medical staff at government hospitals and face severe movement restrictions when traveling to health care facilities.

Lewa points to Myanmar's Maungdaw District, where the army conducted so-called "clearance operations" following deadly insurgent attacks last year.

"Health facilities set up by INGOs [international nongovernmental organizations] in Maungdaw have been burned to the ground, which will make it even more difficult for them if and when they are allowed to return," Lewa added.

Currently, INGOs are not allowed in the areas outside Maungdaw.

Doctors Without Borders has responded to the rapid spread of diphtheria in neighboring Bangladesh by converting one of its mother and child inpatient facilities at the Balukhali makeshift settlement, and at another inpatient site, into treatment centers.

"The emergence of this disease is a concern because it contributes to an existing precarious public health situation that we have in the makeshift settlements," Nolan said.

Tracking down carriers

Now, potential carriers must get antitoxins and antibiotics to prevent the further spread of the bacterium and kill it.

"We need to find all the suspected cases in the camps and get them all here to start the antibiotic treatment and keep them isolated for 48 hours," said on-duty doctor Thomas Hansen.

Because the disease spreads easily through water droplets from sneezing and coughing, medical teams are tasked with following up on initial quarantine with visits to a patient's family to trace and treat people who might have come in contact with the disease in the community.

Doctors Without Borders and health partners like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are working together to isolate suspected cases.

One of the biggest challenges for health workers, however, is getting to remote locations where potential outbreaks can occur.

With the sudden influx of the 650,000 refugees, new land clearance has led to huts being constructed well beyond the main roadways.

"They live in areas that are difficult to reach. You cannot reach them by cars or Tom Toms [three-wheeled taxis] because of no roads, so they will have to carry their patients to where they can get treatment," said Dagne Hordvei, team leader with the Norwegian Red Cross.

"We have an agreement with [Doctors Without Borders] that we take the measles patients from them, and they take the diphtheria patients, with lots of activity going out to the communities to try to reduce the speed of the spreading of diphtheria."

Vaccination campaign

As Bangladesh's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare — working with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other health partners — implements a vaccination campaign to prevent future outbreaks of diphtheria, it appears that at least some of the next generation of Rohingya will have protection from preventable diseases.

"We are working with partners to ensure that clinical guidance is available to health workers, and that there are enough beds and medicines for those who get sick. But the only way to control this outbreak is to protect people, particularly children, through vaccination," said the WHO's Paranietharan.

As of December 21, Doctors Without Borders has seen more than 2,000 suspected diphtheria cases in its health facilities, and the number is rising daily. Most of the patients are between the ages of 5 and 14 years old.

More than 20 Rohingya in Bangladesh have died from the disease.

By Steve Sandford

Voice of America

December 29, 2017

Rohingya women who say they fled mistreatment by the military in Myanmar have told tales of horror that leading human rights groups have documented.

Now, living in massive refugee camps and settlements near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, victims must deal with past traumas and face new risks.

Rejina is a grandmother who didn't want her last name used. She said she has felt empty inside since losing contact with her 15-year-old granddaughter, following the army's first wave of so-called clearance operations targeting the teenager's village of Khadi Bil in Myanmar's Maungdaw township. The military action in October 2016 followed deadly insurgent attacks on border guard posts in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state.

"I heard that the military came and entered the house and grabbed her and stole her property," said Rejina, 65, now living in the Kutipalong camp in Bangladesh.

"They checked the house and grabbed whatever they wanted. If they found any young women, they took them away. Lots of women were raped," Rejina said.

Severe after-effects

While thousands of female refugees might appear to be coping with conditions in the border camps, many survivors of alleged sexual violence by Myanmar security forces suffer from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Accounts gathered by rights groups support the accusations of widespread rape by the Myanmar army on the Rohingya population.

Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, interviewed survivors in Bangladesh in November and said, "I heard the most heartbreaking and horrific accounts of sexual atrocities, reportedly committed in cold blood out of a lethal hatred for these people, solely on the basis of their ethnicity and religion. The wounds are extremely raw, dozens of women and girls dissolving to tears when recounting acts of unmitigated brutality."

Access to therapy and treatment is lacking as more pressing issues like food supplies and adequate shelter take precedence in the 10 camps. Lack of communication adds to the dilemma, as efforts to get the word out to women in need prove difficult.

"Many women also lost their husbands, so you have many female-headed households," said Jessica Olney, regional spokeswoman for the Center for Social Integrity.

"Women are still needing to figure out how services work and how to access them, and they don't necessarily have experience advocating for them, so they are going without and that puts them in a vulnerable position," Olney said.

To aid in treatment, NGOs like the International Organization for Migration are building women's safe areas where they can receive psychosocial support from medical professionals.

Safe place to talk

"In these centers, it's safe and secure and there are only other women there and they can talk about the things that are important to them," said Fiona MacGregor, IOM communications officer.

"It's an opportunity to hear what their needs are and find ways of reacting to that," MacGregor said. 

"These are also people who come from very small villages, and suddenly they are finding themselves in a place where there are more than 800,000 people living in the camps," she said.

In addition to previous traumas, many of the new arrivals face the added risk of human trafficking as criminal networks prey on those seeking work.

"One thing we identified as a particular risk in the camps here is trafficking," MacGregor said. "Women and girls are particularly vulnerable, and we're hearing about traffickers approaching women and tricking them or persuading them to go for what they think are safe jobs somewhere else and they are ending up in situations of real exploitation." She said some wind up "in the sex industry, or we are hearing about girls and women being promised domestic work and find they're in different situations."

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have left Rakhine state since August 25, after insurgents attacked security forces and prompted a brutal military crackdown that has been described as ethnic cleansing. Since then, the IOM has provided 2,500 people with psychological first aid, but if stories gathered by rights groups are accurate, the refugees face a long road to recovery. 

Myanmar's government has repeatedly rejected claims that atrocities, including rape and extrajudicial killings, are occurring in northern Rakhine, the epicenter of the violence.

By Steve Sanford

Voice of America

December 25, 2017

COX BAZAR, BANGLADESH — Many Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh facing diminished income are supplementing their needs with work in the camps. Some have set up new businesses in the refugee zones.

Many Rohingyas arrived in Bangladesh with just the clothes on their back after fleeing a brutal and sudden Myanmar army crackdown.

While aid groups are struggling to provide basic food and shelter, many new arrivals are seeking extra income to make ends meet. They are setting up new businesses in refugee zones.

Twelve-year-old Abul Kazeem got a loan of 75 cents to start his beetle nut business and now makes double that in a day to help buy food for his family of eight.

"We are doing OK in the camp when we can get rice," he said. "We haven’t got any distribution card. If we sometimes get a distribution card we can get rice with it but we don’t have money for curry. That’s why I am selling the beetle nuts."

With more than 850,000 mouths to feed in 10 camps, some local businesses are struggling to keep up with the demand.

Many NGOs are partnering up with local food producers so that refugees have access to extra nutritional vegetables — at non-inflated prices.

"The WFP’s always run food shops here for the registered refugees which have a selection of 19 food items and those suppliers are across the country so that we make sure we don’t affect local market prices," says Shelly Thakral, communication officer of the World Food Program. 

But no plan is perfect and some local Bangladeshi businesses, such as chicken producers, are hiking up prices to profit from hungry consumers.

Rohingya worker Mohamid Eitunazu, who worked as a clerk in Myanmar before fleeing with his family, makes a few dollars a day and tries to keep a positive perspective on things.

"I want to open a shophouse to sell goods," he said. "I want to see the economy grow so I can make money and start my life again. That’s what I wish for. "

As more Bangladeshi-backed businesses open inside the camps with Rohingya workers getting paid half the normal salary, time will tell who benefits the most.

Voice of America

December 18, 2017

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The U.N. refugee agency is mounting a multi-million dollar operation aimed at keeping thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh warm during the winter ahead.

The U.N refugee agency reports on Sunday it will start distributing the first of nearly 200,000 items of warm clothing to help recently arrived Rohingya refugees weather the colder climate ahead.

More than 646,000 Rohingya, fleeing persecution and violence in Myanmar, have arrived in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh since the end of August. The UNHCR says it is worried about their squalid living conditions and lack of protection from myriad risks, including their ability to survive the cooler temperatures in the weeks and months ahead.

UNHCR spokesman, Babar Baloch, said winters in Bangladesh are milder than in other regions. But, he notes temperatures dip low at night and the Rohingya don’t have adequate clothing and shelter to protect themselves.

“Children, who are 55 percent of Rohingya refugee population, are particularly vulnerable. So are the women and they represent more than half of all refugees in Bangladesh. An estimated 10 percent are either disabled or have serious medical conditions or are older persons at risk,” he said.

Baloch said UNHCR is working to improve the quality of shelters in the camps and has distributed thousands of new shelter kits as part of this strategy. He says the refugees also are receiving core relief items, including blankets, kitchen sets and solar lights.

He said UNHCR is distributing cooking fuel composed of compressed rice husks to replace firewood. He says this will protect both children and the environment.

He explained refugee children gathering wood in adjacent forests are vulnerable to attacks and rape. At the same time, he says gathering firewood degrades the environment by stripping back swathes of woodland.

By Margaret Besheer

Voice of America

December 13, 2017

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. envoy on Sexual Violence in Conflict urged the Security Council on Tuesday to demand an immediate end to the violence against civilians in Myanmar's Rakhine state, which has seen more than 626,000 mainly Rohingya Muslim residents flee to neighboring Bangladesh since August. 

"I urge this body to do everything in its power to seek a swift end to the atrocities; to ensure the alleged perpetrators of sexual and other violence are brought to justice; and to create conditions for a safe and dignified future for the survivors," Pramila Patten told the council. 

She also urged council members to see firsthand the situation in Myanmar and at the refugee camps at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. 

Patten said Myanmar authorities have invited her to visit Naypyidaw and Yangon on Thursday through Saturday of this week, where she plans to meet with de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as military and security officials.

She did not say whether she would have access to Rakhine state, the source of the exodus. There have been numerous reports and satellite images of the Myanmar military burning villages and killing and terrorizing minority Rohingya there after militants launched deadly attacks on state security forces in August.

Atrocities

The U.N. envoy visited Bangladesh in early November and over three days heard horrific testimony from survivors. 

"Women and girls recounted how, upon the arrival of soldiers in their village, they were forced to strip naked and threatened with rape in front of their husbands and fathers while their homes were set ablaze," Patten said. "They related how, in some cases, village leaders were compelled to sign documents stating that they had set fire to their own homes, in order to save the women of their community from rape."

Others were not as fortunate.

"Some witnesses reported women and girls being tied to either a rock or a tree before multiple soldiers literally raped them to death," Patten told the council.

Even Rohingya infants were not spared.

"Some women recounted how soldiers drowned babies in the village well," she said. "A few women told me how their own babies were allegedly thrown in the fire as they were dragged away by soldiers and gang-raped."

She said the accounts of survivors and witnesses were consistent and corroborated by international medical workers at the camps. 

"Ethnic cleansing must never be allowed to achieve its goal," Patten said. 

She also warned that the U.N. and its partners were facing a $10 million funding gap for gender-based violence programs to assist survivors. 

"As regards the alleged sexual violence, the government of Myanmar has made its position clear that it will not condone any human rights abuses," Myanmar Ambassador Hau Do Suan told the council. "If there is concrete evidence, we are ready to take action against the aggressor in accordance with the law, no matter what or who he is."

He said the government would continue to cooperate with the U.N. and its partners to alleviate humanitarian problems and to find a long-term solution to issues related to Rakhine state. 

Aid access needed

U.N. political chief Jeffrey Feltman told the council that humanitarian workers did not have sufficient access to Rakhine. 

"Although Myanmar permitted some ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and, more recently, WFP [World Food Program] assistance, access by other U.N. agencies and partners to northern Rakhine is still highly restricted," he said. 

He told the council that although refugee flows had slowed in recent weeks, new arrivals were "exhausted, destitute and traumatized." 

Separately, a coalition of more than 80 human rights and faith-based organizations issued an appeal to the Security Council to impose an arms embargo against Myanmar's military, as well as targeted sanctions against those officers found responsible for serious crimes and human rights violations.

By Katherine Gypson

Voice of America

December 7, 2017

CAPITOL HILL — The U.S. House of Representatives condemned the "ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya" on Wednesday, passing a resolution (423-3) by a two-thirds voice vote "calling for an end to the attacks" against the Muslim minority in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The resolution is the first step in congressional action that could eventually include a stand-alone sanctions bill aimed at putting financial pressure on the Burmese military and providing U.S. economic assistance for the resettlement of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh back to Myanmar.

“This is a moral issue and a national security issue,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, a Republican from California, said on the House floor Tuesday. “No one is secure when extremism and instability is growing in this part of the world.”

Hundreds of thousands flee

An estimated 600,000 Rohingya have been displaced in recent months, fleeing into Bangladesh and creating a humanitarian crisis.

“Hundreds have been killed,” Royce said as he described the scope of the crisis. “At least 200 villages have been burned to the ground, landmines have been placed inside Burma’s border with Bangladesh, maiming refugees who are seeking safe haven. There are reports of rapes and all types of violence committed against the Rohingya.”

The bipartisan resolution - co-sponsored by Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley of New York and Republican Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio - calls for “an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma.”

The resolution also calls on Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of Myanmar's government, and the Burmese military to work together to implement humanitarian aid and reconciliation.

"The Burmese military's widespread brutality toward Rohingya civilians over the last few months and its attempts to drive them out of the country are deeply disturbing.” Chabot told VOA in a statement on the passage of the resolution. "That is why Congressman Crowley and I introduced H.Con.Res. 90, to condemn this ethnic cleansing and show the American people’s outrage at these attacks.

"This resolution calls on Burmese authorities to work with the international community to resolve the crisis while also calling on Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson to impose sanctions on those responsible for human rights abuses," Chabot added.

Tillerson shifted the U.S. approach to the crisis last month when he deemed the violence against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, saying, “This violence must stop, this persecution must stop.”

Sanctions effort

A bipartisan sanctions bill introduced last month by New York Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and by Chabot would end U.S. military ties with Myanmar while imposing harsh sanctions on industries that fund the Burmese military.

If passed, the bill also would reimpose sanctions on the lucrative Burmese gem trade that were lifted last year by then-president Barack Obama in an executive order.

A companion bill in the U.S. Senate is sponsored by Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Todd Young of Indiana, and Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ben Cardin of Maryland.

“If they want to go back to the bad old days when we had all sorts of restrictions on them – economic restrictions, trade restrictions, political restrictions – then we’re forced to go back to those bad old days because if they’re going to perpetuate ethnic cleansing, we don’t want to be complicit,” Engel told VOA in an interview last month.

Chabot told VOA the sanctions bill also provides key economic funding for Rohingya refugees returning to Myanmar.

“The goal here is to get those who have been displaced and in general have gone to Bangladesh to allow them to return to Burma to return to their homes, although a lot of those homes have been burned to the ground by the military, so there’s an awful lot of economic development that’s going to be necessary,” Chabot said.

A source on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told VOA there is strong bipartisan interest in the bill, but that it is still undergoing refinements with outside groups as it collects cosponsors.

With just six working days left in the House legislative calendar and a full congressional agenda that includes funding the government, the bill is highly unlikely to move forward until next year.

But passage of the resolution is a key first step for the U.S. Congress.

“The United States certainly cannot solve every problem in the world,” resolution co-sponsor Crowley said Tuesday. “But there are some things that we can, and that we must do. And imposing sanctions against the perpetrators of atrocities in Burma is one of the things that we must do. Doing so will send an important signal that we are watching, and we are not standing by idly.”