RB News

September 13, 2017

Maungdaw -- A boat carrying ethnic Rohingya people fleeing violence in Myanmar capsized on Monday (Sept 13) night after a gang of pirates attempted to rob them in the Naff river, killing at least 6 people, according to reliable sources.

And with dozens still missing, it is feared that the death toll could rise up to at least 39 that include men, women and children.

The boat was carrying over 50 displaced Rohingya people escaping from brutal massacres, systematic arsons, tortures and rapes being carried out by the Myanmar armed forces (the military and the BGP) and the Rakhine Buddhist extremists in Northern Arakan since August 25.

Six dead bodies were found agrounded on the Naff river bank in Bangladesh, according to local fishermen.

11 people survived from the horrific incident, who told us what had happened. Of the survivors, three are men, 2 teenagers and one woman. All are from Buthidaung Township.

Since August 25, we have been witnessing widespread arson attacks on Rohingya villages, burning down villages one by one, horrific massacres and summary executions of countless (Rohingya) civilians, rapes against women, massive displacements, unimaginable stream of refugee exodus into Bangladesh and unimaginable horrors of atrocity crimes.

Almost two third of ethnic Rohingya people in Northern Arakan have been displaced and villages depoulated by the Myanmar armed forces under pretext of responding to attacks on some police posts and military bases by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on early August 25 morning.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein has called the violence against Rohingya 'a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.'
__________________

Below are some figures of Rohingya civilians killed/executed, displaced and forced to flee to Bangladesh and the numbers of villages affected, damaged, partially burnt or entirely burnt down.

1. Number killed, excecuted, or burnt or shot death: Over 3,500

2. Remained Internally displaced with no shelter and food in Northern Arakan: Over 200,000

3. Numbers fled to Bangladesh: more than 300 000

4. Numbers of people arbitrarily detained: Over 2,000

7. Villages (hamlets) damaged; burnt partially or wholly in 3 townships (Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung): Over 170

[Note: All figures give above are approximations based on our reports and trends of violence. We'll come up with figures as exactly as possible once the situation calms down.]

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[Reported by Rohingya Eye, Edited by M.S. Anwar]

Please email to: editor@rohingyablogger.com to send your reports and feedback.

By Al-Emrun Garjon and Tofayel Ahmed | 

Associated Press

September 12, 2017

UKHIYA, Bangladesh — The Bangladeshi prime minister demanded Tuesday that Myanmar allow the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled recent violence in the Buddhist-majority nation — a crisis she said left her speechless.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid, but that Myanmar should soon “take their nationals back.”

“We will not tolerate injustice,” she said at a rally at the Kutupalong refugee camp, near the border town of Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar district.

On Monday night, she lambasted Myanmar for “atrocities” that she said had reached a level beyond description, telling lawmakers she had “no words to condemn Myanmar.”

At least 370,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts, prompting Myanmar’s military to retaliate with what it called “clearance operations” to root out the rebels.

The crisis has drawn sharp criticism from around the world. On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader called the killing of Muslims a political disaster for Myanmar. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also called Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a “brutal woman,” and urged other Muslim countries to “increase political, economic and commercial pressures” on the country to stop the violence.

The U.N. human rights chief said Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya minority was facing what “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” U.N. rights investigators have been barred from entering the country.

“The Myanmar government should stop pretending that the Rohingya are setting fire to their own homes and laying waste to their own villages,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Monday in Geneva, calling it a “complete denial of reality.”

Meanwhile, a Rohingya villager in Myanmar said security forces had arrived Monday in the village of Pa Din village, firing guns, setting new fires to homes and driving hundreds of Rohingya to flee.

“People were scared and running out of the village,” the villager said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

Myanmar police disputed that, saying the houses were burned by terrorists they called Bengalis. That term is used derisively by many in Myanmar to describe the Rohingya, who they say migrated illegally from neighboring Bangladesh, though many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Myanmar’s military said that Rohingya villagers helped them arrest six suspected Rohingya insurgents armed with swords and slingshots on Monday. The military commander in chief’s office said Tuesday on its Facebook page that the six alleged insurgents were detained as they entered Ka Nyin Tan village in Maungdaw township.

In Bangladesh, Kutupalong and another pre-existing Rohingya camp were already beyond capacity. Bangladesh has said it would provide 2,000 acres (810 hectares) for a new camp in Cox’s Bazar district to help shelter newly arrived Rohingya. The government was also fingerprinting and registering new arrivals.

Some new arrivals were staying in schools, or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields. Basic resources were scarce, including food, clean water and medical aid.

Aid agencies have been overwhelmed by the influx of Rohingya, many of whom are arriving hungry and traumatized after walking for days through jungles or being packed into rickety wooden boats in search of safety in Bangladesh.

Many tell similar stories — of Myanmar soldiers firing indiscriminately on their villages, burning their homes and warning them to leave or die. Some say they were attacked by Buddhist mobs.

In the last two weeks, the government hospital in Cox’s Bazar has been overwhelmed by Rohingya patients, with 80 arriving with gunshot wounds as well as bad infections.

At least three Rohingya have been wounded in land mine blasts, and dozens have drowned when boats capsized during sea crossings.

Myanmar’s authorities said more than a week ago that some 400 people — mostly Rohingya insurgents — had died in clashes with troops, but it has offered no updated death toll since.

Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination and persecution in Myanmar and are denied citizenship despite centuries-olds roots in the Rakhine region.

Before Aug. 25, Bangladesh had already been housing some 500,000 Rohingya who arrived after bloody anti-Muslim rioting in 2012 or amid earlier persecution drives in Myanmar.

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Associated Press writer Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributed to this report.

By Associated Press

September 11, 2017

BANGKOK — Pointing to the ashes of a destroyed village that was once home to dozens of Rohingya Muslim families, the abbot of a nearby Buddhist monastery insisted he knew who had set it ablaze. It was the Rohingya themselves, he said, and there was photographic evidence to prove it.

“I even tried to stop them,” the abbot, Zawtika, told reporters who visited violence-torn northern Rakhine state last week after an explosion of communal violence that has so far compelled a staggering 313,000 Rohingya to flee into neighboring Bangladesh. “I told them not to do that, but it seemed like they wanted to.”

Shortly afterward, a local Buddhist resident who is close to the monk, a man named Maung Maung Htwe, shared photos he said he had taken on his mobile phone that showed several people setting fire to the buildings.

The alleged perpetrators could be clearly seen — too clearly for anyone trying to advance the lie that Rohingya were responsible.

Journalists on the trip recognized two of the people in the photos as Hindus from a nearby public school the government officials had brought them to hours earlier. The school was filled with displaced Hindus who said their own homes had been burned by Muslims. An Associated Press reporter interviewed one of them.

Like the monk, the country’s government contends that Rohingya insurgents have been burning down their own villages in northern Rakhine as they attacked both majority Buddhists and minority Hindus. The Rohingya, meanwhile, say Myanmar security forces and Buddhist mobs have attacked them and razed their homes in a conflict that the government estimates killed close to 400 people.

The latest fighting began after Rohingya insurgents launched a series of attacks Aug. 25 that they have portrayed as an effort to protect their ethnic minority from persecution. The government insists the Rohingya are actually Bangladeshis, though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

The attacks have triggered “clearance operations” by security forces who say they are trying to root out the insurgents, and stirred up a virulent spell of Buddhist nationalism directed against the Rohingya and their perceived supporters on social media.

The violence has also sparked a war pitting the truth against so-called “fake news,” with Myanmar’s government and its supporters taking a page right out of U.S. President Donald Trump’s war on the media.

Even if reporters had not met the two Hindus before viewing video of the fire, the images looked dubious. The women’s hair appeared to be covered in something like tablecloths, in lieu of Muslim headwear.

After a Yangon-based news outlet, Eleven Media Group, published an article showing the burned Rohingya homes in Ka Nyin Tan last week, government spokesman Zaw Htay tweeted a link to it.

“Photos of Bengalis setting fire to their houses!” he said, using a term for the Rohingya often used in Myanmar because it implies they are all from Bangladesh.

After the images began stirring doubt, however, Zaw Htay said the following day that the government was investigating the images and would take action against those who set the fires. He also said police were interrogating the Rakhine man who took the images; the man could not be reached by phone on Monday.

The images showed several people torching the thatched roof of one home. In one of the images, a man in a green-and-blue plaid shirt reaches up to a rooftop, appearing to pour something from a bottle. In another, a woman in an orange-and-white shirt wields a machete.

It was unclear when those images were taken. But pictures recorded at the public school housing displaced Hindus clearly showed the same man and woman, in the same clothes.

The woman — a mother of six who goes by the single name of Hazuli — said before reporters viewed the video of the fire that her family had been attacked by Rohingya. She referred to them using a derogatory word for Muslim that is commonly used in Myanmar.

“When we were about to have our meal, the kalars entered our village and started burning our houses. They were holding machetes and spears and started shouting, ‘We will shower with the Hindu’s blood.’ So we ran away from our houses,” she said. “If there are Muslims, the problems will never end, but if kalars are not here anymore, it will be more peaceful.”

Hazuli could not be reached after photos of the fire were released.

Misinformation has gone both ways. Earlier this month Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek, calling for an end to “ethnic cleansing” in Rakhine state, tweeted four photos allegedly from the conflict. He deleted the tweet after it was found most had nothing to do with Myanmar; one showed a Rwandan child crying.

Anti-Rohingya posters tweeted a photo allegedly showing Rohingya militants conducting rifle training; the image was actually from 1971, and showed volunteers training during the nation’s war for independence.

The claim that Rohingya had set fire to their own houses had taken another hit earlier in the same government-organized trip on which journalists met the monk and the Hindu villagers.

The reporters saw Rakhine men with swords walking out of a burning Rohingya village that had been abandoned days earlier. And while they saw smoke rising skyward across the fields in several other locations, they didn’t see a single Rohingya in any of the five destroyed villages they visited.

Allegations that Rohingya are burning their homes have been made in Rakhine state by local Buddhists and government officials ever since a wave of bloody anti-Muslim rioting erupted in 2012. Well over 100,000 Rohingya fled that year, either into Myanmar displacement camps or out of the country, often via dangerous boat journeys.

Officials rarely have offered any explanation as to why an already miserable and impoverished group of people would destroy their own homes and exhaust their meager savings to take treacherous journeys to unknown lands for lives of extreme uncertainty.

Last week, however, Myanmar’s minister of border affairs, Col. Phone Tint, told journalists on the trip that Rohingya insurgents were burning villages because they are routing out informants. They “also want people to be afraid of them and to join them.”

Refugees who have made it to Bangladesh, however, said they believe the fires are part of the military’s effort to purge Rakhine state of Muslims.

More than 6,800 homes have been destroyed in this wave of violence, the government has said, and all but about 200 belonged to Rohingya.

That estimate, however, is from last week. A Rohingya man and a police officer reached Monday in Rakhine said that in at least one village, the fires are still burning.

By Al Jazeera

September 11, 2017

A resident of Myanmar's Rakhine State discusses daily life and the abuses and attacks Rohingya endure.

Maungdaw, Rakhine State, Myanmar - For all my life, all 24 years of it, I've been a prisoner in this open air jail you know as Rakhine State.

I was born in Myanmar, as were my parents, but my citizenship was snatched away before I was even conceived.

My movement, education, access to healthcare and career have been heavily restricted because of my ethnicity.

I'm banned from working in the government, denied the right to pursue higher education, barred from visiting the capital, Yangon, and even stopped from leaving northern Rakhine State.

I'm subjected to the worst form of discrimination, all because I'm a Rohingya - a Rohingya Muslim.

For years, my people, who have been denied their most basic rights, are killed on a near daily basis. Shot dead in plain sight, forcibly and systematically made homeless, our homes razed in front of our very eyes; we're the victims of a brutal state.

For you to fully appreciate what our conditions are like, I'm going to use an analogy: imagine a mouse stuck in a cage with a hungry cat. That's what it's like for the Rohingya.

Our only method of survival is to run, or hope someone helps us get out.

For those of us that have remained, there's a systematic campaign to separate us from the wider Rakhine community.

We're called "Kalar" [a slur often used against Muslims] by Buddhists to our faces. Whether you're a child or an old man, no one escapes the abuse.

We face discrimination at schools and at hospitals, and there's been a boycott campaign by Buddhists to avoid us at all costs.

"Only buy from Buddhists," they say. "If you give a penny to a Buddhist, they'll help build a Pagoda (temple), but if you give a penny to a Muslim, they'll build a mosque."

These kinds of comments, they've become the norm and helped encourage Buddhist extremists to attack us.

When Aung San Suu Kyi, a Noble Peace Prize winner, won parliamentary elections in 2015 and ended half a century of dominance by the military, we had high hopes change was coming.

We were confident that this woman, hailed as a beacon of democracy, would end our abuse and oppression.

Sadly, it soon became clear that not only would she not be our voice, she would ignore our suffering.

Her silence showed she was complicit in the violence.

In the end, she failed us; our last hope, failed us.

In 2012, a huge number of the Rohingya were slaughtered in one of the worst bouts of communal violence. Around 140,000 were internally displaced, an event that would repeat itself in 2016.

Shot, slaughtered, and burned alive in front of their families, the violence last October would give rise to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a small group of men who decided to defend themselves and fight back.

Armed with just sticks and stones, they knew they couldn't fend off the well-equipped Myanmar army but they tried nonetheless.

Still, now our sisters and mothers are forced to give birth in paddy fields as we run for our lives in this violence that you say is between two equal sides. It is not.

Children being shot at as they flee and women's bodies floating in rivers is not an equal fight.

We're facing extinction, and unless the international community stands with us, one of the most persecuted people in the world, we will face genocide and you, you will all be a witness to it.

The author of this letter has requested anonymity due to fear of attacks from the government. 

He spoke to Al Jazeera's Faisal Edroos who can be followed on Twitter at @FaisalEdroos

The letter was edited for clarity.

By Associated Press

September 11, 2017

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — The U.N. human rights chief says violence and injustice faced by the ethnic Rohingya minority in Myanmar, where U.N. rights investigators have been barred from entry, "seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

Speaking at the start of a U.N. Human Rights Council session, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein denounced how "another brutal security operation is underway in Rakhine state — this time, apparently on a far greater scale."

Zeid, a Jordanian prince, noted that the U.N. refugee agency has reported that 270,000 people have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the last three weeks, and pointed to satellite imagery and reports of "security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages" and extrajudicial killings.

He said Monday that he was "further appalled" by reports of Myanmar authorities planting land mines along the border.

"The Myanmar government should stop pretending that the Rohingya are setting fire to their own homes and laying waste to their own villages," he added, calling it a "complete denial of reality" that hurts the standing of a country that recently enjoyed "immense good will."

CBC News

September 11, 2017

Aung San Suu Kyi called a 'criminal' as protesters warn of impending genocide

This Aug. 30, 2017 photo shows Rohingya refugees reaching for food aid at Kutupalong refugee camp near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. (AFP/Getty Images)

A protester holds a sign criticizing current Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi for her inaction, as thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee the country, outside the Myanmar Embassy in Ottawa. (Trevor Pritchard/CBC)

By Shafik Mandhai

Al Jazeera

September 11, 2017

Campaigners call on the British government to take a stronger stance against Myanmar over violence against the Rohingya.

London, UK - The lecture hall at the London Muslim Centre quickly filled up after late afternoon prayers for an urgent meeting on the crisis facing Myanmar's Rohingya people.

Over the past month, reports have filtered out from survivors of mass killings, torture, and other abuses directed at the majority-Muslim Rohingya by Myanmar's military. 

The latest round of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State began last month when Rohingya fighters attacked about 30 police posts and army bases, prompting a military crackdown. 

The violence is believed to have claimed more than 1,000 lives and catalysed a refugee crisis in neighbouring Bangladesh, where nearly 300,000 Rohingya have fled.

Buoyed by the turnout at the mosque in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets on Friday evening, organiser Abdullah Faliq issued a rallying cry to the audience, many of whom struggled to find a place to sit or stand in the hall.

"How many of us here wrote to our MP?" he asked, to which less than a dozen people raised their hands.

"How many of us called or wrote to the Burma [Myanmar] embassy here in the UK?" Faliq continued, to which even fewer hands raised.

"How many of us went to a demonstration recently?" he asked further, eliciting a more enthused response.

Faliq and the others addressing the crowd made no attempt to disguise their fear that the current attention to the Rohingya's plight is at the mercy of a news cycle that could easily move on to other issues, robbing the victims of violence in Myanmar of the opportunity to have their voices heard and allowing its government to get away with alleged abuses.

Speakers at the event, titled 'Silent Genocide', recalled previous instances where they said the world looked away or did not act soon enough, resulting in detrimental consequences.

The examples of the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia were brought up time and again at the event.

"What we don't want is for the story and the cause to just fizzle out," said Harun Khan, the chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, the UK's largest Muslim umbrella organisation.

"[The issue] will live for a couple of days and eventually the news stories will die down," he added before imploring those present to keep the momentum going on social media.

'Inexcusable'

The vast majority of those at the mosque were Muslims of Bangladeshi heritage, but the campaign movement's organisers say they are trying to bring together diverse strands of the Myanmar opposition movement. 

They include the Burma Campaign UK and its director Mark Farmaner, once a key supporter of the campaign to free Aung San Suu Kyi, but now a critic of the Myanmar de facto leader's response to the crisis.

An activist with decades of experience on Myanmar, Farmaner described his recent conversations with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

"Aung San Suu Kyi's behaviour is inexcusable, I campaigned for more than a decade for her release from house arrest, I pressured the government, I went around the world calling for her release ... and I am so disappointed with how she has behaved.

"I've spoken to this about her myself; she did not seem sympathetic ... I said to her, please go and see for yourself what's going on in northern Rakhine State to the Rohingya, but she refused."

Nevertheless, Farmaner cautioned against the focus on the once dissident leader, which he said distracted from the military's culpability for the abuses against the Rohingya.

The head of Myanmar's military, Min Aung Hlaing, is responsible for military operations in Rakhine state and the armed forces of the country operate independently of its civil administration.

Britain's ties

Britain's ties with Myanmar are historical, as the country's former colonial power, and have also strengthened more recently after Myanmar's military rulers loosened their grip on power to allow more civilian participation in government.

The British government provides 300,000 pounds ($396,000) in direct military aid to Myanmar in addition to burgeoning trade ties since the country held its first free election in 2015.

Myanmar soldiers have also visited the UK to take part in training courses paid for by the British government.

When Al Jazeera approached the British Foreign Office for its position on the ongoing situation in Rakhine and allegations of abuse, it was directed to a statement made by International Development Secretary Priti Patel, which did not directly address the accusations levelled against Myanmar's military.

"The appalling violence in Rakhine must stop now. Britain urgently calls upon the security forces to de-escalate the situation in Rakhine and the government of Burma to allow immediate and full humanitarian access and support for the people and communities affected," Patel said.

The campaigners at the London Muslim Centre do not believe the British government has been forceful enough in its condemnation and a large number of British MPs agree.

A letter calling on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to take action against Myanmar was authored by opposition Labour MP Rushanara Ali and signed by 157 of her colleagues.

"While there is no single measure which can persuade the military to halt its attacks, any leverage that can be used must be used," the letter reads, further calling for an end to military cooperation between the UK and Myanmar.

Thousands protest

For Rohingya advocates such as those in East London, there is a sense that the crisis is set to worsen and that campaigning is the very least they can do.

The past week has seen sporadic but nearly daily protests in London and other cities across the UK.

The largest, on Sunday, drew thousands flooding the streets outside the Myanmar embassy and attracted protesters from across the country.

"After the protest, we aim to continue to pressurise our local MP, the government and the people that hold the power that can make the required change," said Taslim Loonat who had made his way from the Midlands town of Walsall.

"We want to continue to highlight the atrocities that are being carried out to ensure this genocide does not become the norm."

By Al Jazeera

September 10, 2017

World leaders, NGOs and fellow peace prize winners speak out over Aung San Suu Kyi's response to the Rohingya crisis.

Myanmar's Nobel Peace Prize winning Aung San Suu Kyi is facing intense scrutiny over her response to the plight of her nation's Rohingya population.

Almost 300,000 Rohingya have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh, according to the UN, since renewed violence between state security forces and the minority group began more than two weeks ago.

The disruption started on August 25 after Rohingya fighters attacked police posts in Rakhine, on Myanmar's (formerly Burma) western coast, triggering a military crackdown.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the nation's state counsellor and de facto leader, claimed this week that the situation is being twisted by a "huge iceberg of misinformation".

"We make sure that all the people in our country are entitled to protection of their rights as well as, the right to, not just political but social and humanitarian defence", she reportedly told Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a phone call on September 5.

The Rohingya, frequently described as "the world's most persecuted minority", are a mostly Muslim ethnic group, who have lived in majority Buddhist Myanmar for centuries.

There are currently around 1.1m residents in the Southeast Asian nation, which is home to more than 100 ethnic groups and approximately 55 million people.

A number of high-profile individuals have publicly criticised Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her campaign supporting democracy in Myanmar, in light of the crisis.

However, not all world leaders have been united in condemning Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, has refused to speak out and has instead offered his support to her.

"We share your concerns about extremist violence in Rakhine state and especially the violence against security forces," he said during a state visit to Myanmar on September 6.

More than 400,000 people have signed an online petition calling for Aung San Suu Kyi to be stripped of her accolade, accusing her of doing "virtually nothing to stop this crime against humanity in her country".

"The... [prize is] only to be given to 'people who have given their utmost to international brotherhood and sisterhood.' These peaceful values need to be nurtured by the laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize, including Aung San Suu Kyi, until their last days," the change.org petition reads.

"When a laureate cannot maintain peace, then for the sake of peace itself the prize needs to be returned or confiscated by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee." 

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Nobel Peace laureate, has condemned Aung San Suu Kyi's apparent inaction in response to the emerging crisis in Myanmar.

"Every time I see the news, my heart breaks at the suffering of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar," Yousafzai, who famously survived being shot in the head by the Taliban, tweeted on September 3.

Yousafzai, 20, called on the international community to provide sanctuary for those fleeing the violence.

"Other countries, including my own country Pakistan, should follow Bangladesh's example and give food, shelter and access to education to Rohingya families fleeing violence and terror," she wrote.

"Over the last several years I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending South Africa's policy of apartheid, has also called on Aung San Suu Kyi to end the Rohingya's suffering.

Denouncing the "unfolding horror", the 85-year-old implored his "dearly beloved younger sister" to intervene in the crisis and "guide your people back towards the path of righteousness again", in an open letter published on September 7.

"If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep," he wrote.

"A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country. It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country; it is adding to our pain."

By AFP

September 10, 2017

Bangladesh's foreign minister said Sunday that genocide was being waged in Myanmar's violence-racked Rakhine state, triggering an exodus of nearly 300,000 Muslim Rohingya to his country.

"The international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide," A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters after briefing diplomats in Dhaka.

Ali met Western and Arab diplomats and the heads of UN agencies based in Bangladesh to seek support for a political solution and humanitarian aid for the Rohingya.

He told the diplomats that some 300,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh in the past two weeks, taking the total number of such refugees in the country to over 700,000.

"It is now a national problem," Ali said.

At least two diplomats who attended the briefings said the minister told them as many as 3,000 people may have been killed in the latest round of violence.

The United Nations says 294,000 bedraggled and exhausted Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since attacks by Rohingya militants on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major military backlash.

Tens of thousands more are believed to be on the move inside Rakhine.

Mainly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise its stateless Muslim Rohingya community, labelling them "Bengalis" -- illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Ali accused Myanmar of running a "malicious propaganda" campaign to term the Rohingya as "illegal migrants from Bangladesh" and the militants as "Bengali terrorists".

He said the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine are a "mixed group of people" with a history dating back 1,500 years and ancestors included Arab and Indian-origin people.

Ali described actions following the militant attacks on security forces on August 25 as "revenge" by Myanmar troops.

"Should all people be killed? Should all villages be burnt? It is not acceptable," he said, adding Dhaka was seeking a peaceful solution, not a "war" against Myanmar.

"We did not create the problem. Since the problem started in Myanmar, that's why they should resolve. We have said we'll help them," he said, adding that the problem took a "new turn" after the August 25 attacks.

A commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan last month said Myanmar must scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship for its Rohingya minority if it wants to avoid fuelling extremism and bring peace to Rakhine state.

Ali called on the international community to urge the Myanmar government to immediately implement the recommendations of the commission's report "in its entirety".

The list of total Rohingya villages and households; and numbers of Rohingya population in Rathedaung Township as of 1/10/2016 is:

No.	The Village Name	No. of Male	No. of Female	No. of Households	Total Population
1	Thin Gana	655	678		1333
2	Tha Pyi Taw	1100	1147		2247
3	Anauk Pyin	1340	1665	581	3005
4	Nyaung Pin Gyi	1000	1099		2099
5	Sin Kone Taing	1298	1394	384	2692
6	Chut Pyin	630	650	300	1280
7	Zay Kone Tan	147	159	53	306
8	Kyet Yoe Kone Tan	636	717	233	1353
9	Pyin Chaung	450	495	170	945
10	Koe Tan Kauk	2652	2840	692	5492
11	Chein Khali	2196	2547	743	4743
12	Chin Rwa	945	1228	325	2173
13	Bellamy	478	482	200	984
14	Taa Zaw	288	276	99	564
15	Pan Kaing	635	741	276	1376
16	Nilam Bor	407	680		1087
17	Kan Seik	547	628	182	1175
18	Aaga Taung	2269	2353	414	2622
19	Pyaing Ma Tet	301	306	104	607
20	Than Du	197	182		379
21	Zedi Pyin	335	317	107	652
22	Attet Nan Yar	829	1012	264	1941
23	Aadu	263	233	64	496
24	Auk Nan Yar	1554	1856	485	3410
		Total Population			44,961
Credit: Originally Compiled by Mohammed Hussain, a Rohingya Community Leader in Rathedaung