By Bernama

September 9, 2017

The Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) is ready to join the humanitarian mission to help the Rohingya community in Rakhine, Myanmar, if required, says its chief General Raja Mohamed Affandi Raja Mohamed Noor.

Raja Mohamed Affandi said the MAF was a well equipped organisation with extensive experience in humanitarian missions globally, and had a dedicated battalion to carry out the special tasks.

"Yesterday I was instructed by the Minister of Defence (Hishammuddin Hussein) to see what we can prepare in order to help the Rohingya people in Rakhine and those seeking shelter at the border of Bangladesh.

"We can move (with the humanitarian mission) if required, if there is need for medicine we can set up a field hospital, we have the capability," he told reporters during a press conference held in conjunction with the Malaysian Armed Forces’ anniversary on Sept 16.

Raja Mohamed Affandi said MAF had participated in humanitarian missions in Lebanon, Congo, Somalia, Namibia and Cambodia as well as organised missions in Acheh, Indonesia and the Philippines.

He said apart from that, Malaysia, which is known for its goodwill, facilitates MAF to join humanitarian and peacekeeping missions.

"Malaysians are generally good people, so it is easy for us to join any humanitarian and peacekeeping missions in turbulent countries," he said.

According to him, Malaysia's participation in several peacekeeping missions under the United Nations (UN) has been recognised by the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

An MAF squad supported by iM4U volunteers is expected to head to Dhaka and Chittagong, Bangladesh, tomorrow, to conduct a humanitarian mission survey following the crisis taking place in Rakhine and the Bangladeshi border.

By Daily Sabah

September 8, 2017

The solidarity between Rohingya Muslims and the Turks dates back to the First World War, when the former provided material and emotional support to the Ottoman Government, a document released by Deputy Prime Minister Fikri Işık showed Friday.

According to a records obtained from the Ottoman archives, Rohingya people sent 1,391 pounds to the Ottomans in 1913 for the relief of the Turkish people wounded in the Balkan Wars, which took place between 1912 and 1913.

The letter, written to Grand Vizier Prince Hilmi Paşa, congratulated the empire for its victory.

"I take this opportunity of congratulating your Highness and the members of your Cabinet and all my Turkish Co-religionists for the marvelous and magnificent fete of reoccupying Adrianople and some of the lost territory and thus restoring the Prestige of the Ottoman Empire" the head of Ottoman Relief Fund in Rangoon Ahmed Mawla Dawood said in the letter.

He also noted that the Rohingya people celebrated the victory of their fellow Muslim brethren and prayed at the mosques.

The deputy prime minister noted in a series of tweets that the letter shows deep solidarity between the Rohingya and Turkish people.

"Our grateful nation has always stood by the oppressed and the innocent, and has provided hope to those in need" Işık said.

He noted that Turkey, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will continue to provide assistance to everyone in need.

Ankara urged international action against the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Turkey sent humanitarian aid to the Rohingya following the call.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also spoke with counterparts from various countries to urge others to take action.

On Thursday First Lady Emine Erdoğan and a delegation of political and non-governmental organization officials went to Bangladesh to visit Rohingya refugees at a camp in Cox Bazaar.

Violence broke out in the Rakhine state after security forces launched an operation against Rohingya Muslims, forcing at least 120,000 people, including women and children to flee and seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when clashes began.

Myanmar security forces are accused of using disproportionate force and destroying homes of the Rohingya.

The U.N. documented mass gang-rape, killings -- including infants and young children -- brutal beatings and disappearances. Rohingya representatives have said approximately 400 people have been slain in the crackdown.

By The Daily Star

September 8, 2017

A lawyer today served legal notice to the prosecution of International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi for “genocide and crime against humanity” in Myanmar.

Supreme Court lawyer Mohammad Delwar Hossain also sought investigation into alleged genocide and crime against humanity against Suu Kyi and six other Myanmar officials.

Six other officials of Myanmar are – Senior General Min AungHIaing, commander in chief of armed forces, Lt Gen KyawSwe, union minister for home affairs, NaiThetLwin, union minister of ethnic affairs, Lt Gen Ye Aung, union minister of border affairs, General Zaw Win, chief of national police, and Monk Ashin Wirathu, Leader of ‘969 Movement’ currently representing Ma Ba Tha (Committee for the protection of Nationality and Religion), according to the legal notice. 

Delwar Hossain sent the legal notice through Advocate Yousuf Ali yesterday saying that he will seek relief in appropriate court, if the chief prosecutor of ICT does not take steps to investigate into the seven Myanmar leaders for the offence of “Genocide and Crime against humanity perpetrated against the ethnic minority group of Rhingya in the vicinity of Magndow Township of the Republic of Union of Myanmar” within seven days.

He said in the legal notice that CNN and Al Jazeera reported that the Rohingyas were being raped tortured or saw their homes burned down and family members executed.

The ongoing attacks of the Myanmar government, military, police and security forces on and persecutions of the Rohingya population in Myanmar constitute genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) which is ratified by both Bangladesh and Myanmar, he said in the legal notice, adding that the Convention declares that genocide is a crime under the international law.

The legal notice said, “The State Bangladesh had an ‘erga omnes obligation’ under genocide convention to bring end to the crime against humanity. Therefore to discharge that obligation the state has promulgated the International Crimnes (Tribunals) Act 1973 (the ICT) making provision of the setting up of the tribunals for the prosecution and trial of the perpetrators of the international crimes including the crime against humanity”.

By Shafiur Rahman

Dhaka Tribune

September 8, 2017

'With my own eyes, I saw the dead bodies of not less than 300 small kids and about 200 women of my age'

“There is no Rohingya left in Tulatoli”. These were the first words uttered to me by Nurul Huq, a gaunt 65-year-old Rohingya refugee who has fled the ongoing conflict in Rakhine state in northwest Myanmar.

Collapsing in a heap over a sack containing his belongings, he said: “I saw my son shot dead with my own eyes and the dead bodies of two of my daughters. Five other daughters of mine remain missing.”

He is one of a dozen or so Rohingya villagers I have met from Min Gyi or Tulatoli (as referred to by Rohingya) and the neighbouring village of Onsiprang. They have been describing what could prove to be one of the worst large-scale massacres in the continuing military operation against Rohingya villages immediately east of Bangladesh’s border. Eyewitnesses have claimed that over a period of three days beginning Wednesday 30th August, virtually all the villagers of Min Gyi were put to death.

If confirmed, this bloodshed would be one in a string of alleged mass killings perpetrated by the Myanmar army with support from the local Rakhine population, propelling 270,000 Rohingya people to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

Mohammed Nasir arrived in Bangladesh from No Man’s land in pitch darkness, having walked for three days with his family and struggling with a heavy sack on his head. What he told me matches the chilling accounts of the massacre recounted to me by other fellow villagers.

“After the military had surrounded the village and cut off all exit points, the Rakhine chairman of the village assured the villagers that the military would not harm them but that their homes would be torched. He told the villagers to assemble in one place where they would be safe.”

Nasir described how the destruction began in the morning with homes being torched. However soon the assurances that no physical harm would come to the villagers proved to be empty. All the eyewitnesses described the same killing methods – long swords, burning alive in torched homes, rifle shots, or “brush fire” by auto and semiautomatic weapons as well as a weapon the villagers called “launcher”.

Nasir himself had escaped to a nearby hillock with his family. From his vantage point and before he left for Bangladesh later that day, he recounted how “bodies were thrown into large pits near the river, covered in straw, doused in petrol and torched.”

I also met villagers who were much closer to the scene of violence. I came across Zahid and his 10-year-old nephew Osman near Balukhali makeshift camp. They were yet to pitch their tent, and wondering where to do so. Osman had witnessed the killing of both his parents as he hid in a bush and peeped out. Zahid, 20 years older, was emotional when he recalled what happened:

“I have lost nine family members including my wife, two sons, two young sisters, my brother’s wife and son”.

Zahid described in disturbing detail how many of the women villagers lost their lives. It is a gruesome scenario which suggests the military were vacillating about how exactly to kill the women. “Many of the women were near the river. After the military had torched the homes, they told the women to get out of the river and sit down on the bank. Then they changed their minds and ordered them to stand up. Then they again ordered them to sit down. Finally they said stand up and form a line. They then shouted at the women to run.

As they ran, they brush fired them. After the shooting, around 30 women survived. They told these women to wait in the water again. And from this group of 30, they would take 5 women at a time into huts to rape them. After raping them, they were robbed off their jewellery, and then beaten to death and the huts set on fire.”

Four women survived this ordeal according to Nasir. These women are now in Kutupalong MSF clinic with burns and other injuries. Nurul Amin’s niece, Shofika, is one of the victims receiving care at the MSF clinic. He simply cannot believe that she is alive.

He told me “you can see her brain such is the size of the fracture in her skull, and she has another wound down one side of her body. I do not know how she is still with us”. Shofika was transported to the MSF clinic in Kutupalong over a period of three days and through the very difficult terrain that characterises the border areas of Bangladesh.

Equally challenging was the journey undertaken by a mother of five. I found her crying in a makeshift encampment. I asked her what she had seen with her own eyes in Tulatoli. “With my own eyes, I saw the dead bodies of not less than 300 small kids and about 200 women of my age”.

It was touch and go whether she would make it out of Tulatoli herself. Her husband and son had both been killed in the army assault. When she tried to escape, she found that the river’s current was too fast and too high for

her to manage with her small children.

Thankfully her brothers were there to help. As she made her escape, she saw children hiding in the paddy fields. She said “The military caught these children, put them flat on the floor and drove long knives into their chests and their stomachs. The lifeless bodies were thrown in the river.”

She got separated from her brothers and made her way with her children with villagers from neighbouring villages. Now in Balukhali, she has been asked by the Bangladeshi who has a lease over that land to pay 1000 taka to have a spot for her to pitch a tent. She was muttering that maybe it would have been better if she had been burnt to death. “There is no one to buy me terpal (plastic sheeting) and no one to construct a hut for me. And I don’t know how I can feed my children”.

Shafiur Rahman is a documentary filmmaker engaged in making a documentary about Rohingya women.

Ro Mayyu Ali

RB News

September 8, 2017

Rathedaung is the most terrible place for approximately 30 percent of Rohingya people of its population among the three Northern Rakhine State's townships in western Myanmar. Since the 2012-June's sectarian violence in Rakhine State, Rohingyas in Rathedaung have been severely restricted in connection of commercial, social and agricultural ties to local Rakhine resident partners. The Rohingya villagers have been thus under often attacks carried by Myanmar Armed Forces coordinating with local Rakhine extremists. One of Rohingya's historical mosques in Rathedaung's Zedi Pyin has been under attack to burn down for many times by local Rakhine extremists. 

Since the last July, Rohingya villagers in Auk Nan Yar are being caged in by BGP Forces coordinating with local Rakhines. The villagers cannot access even to nearby neighbour Rohingya village for surviving resources and thus have been suffering severe humanitarian crisis. In the middle of August, five IDP Rohingya men in Rathidaung were shot to dead by BGP Forces. 

On 25 of August, the clashes between ARSA and Myanmar Armed Forces have been intensified. However, in Chut Pyin, the Rohingya village in Rathedaung, there was no attack to BGP check post. It is Rathedaung's Rohingya villagers who feel extremely panic if there any tension increases on Rohingyas in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships. As of geographical constraint, the Rohingyas in Rathedaung are totally trapped surrounded by Mayu River, Mayu mountain, Rakhine villages and the stations of Myanmar Armed Forces. It is somehow out of imagination for Rohingyas in there to escape to Maungdaw and Buthidaung if the violence erupts against them. 

On 27 of August, 2017, around 11 am in the morning, the military forces entered to Chut Pyin village. The forces caught a cow from Rohingya and took away without letting know the owner. Soon, the military forces with BGP entered to Rakhine hamlet in Chut Pyin and organized all young Rakhine men. And they started to move away Rakhine people first. All Rohingya villagers were wondered seeing the creation. 

It was around 1:45 pm, some Rohingya were at mosque for their mid-day prayers. Suddenly, the military and BGP forces coordinating with those organized local Rakhines started to destruct Rohingyas. The forces were firing the launchers to Rohingya houses and the Rakhine extremists with long swords were killing Rohingya villagers. It was the moment that the cloud above the sky of Kyauit Pyin were rushed by the helpless screaming of Rohingya children and women under the holocaust of Myanmar Armed Forces in broad day-light. 

"Two of my friends and I were hiding in a pond nearby my home. We saw everything what the Forces and Rakhines were doing. The forces were firing indiscriminately to our villagers" said the 25-years-old Hassan, an eyewitnessing Rohingya villager. "Soon, my sister was shot to her waist by an army. She was fallen down on the ground. And I was watching how my old father and young brother were slaughtered by Rakhines" he affirmed. Ali Ahmed, 55 years was his father and Sayed Hussein was his young. The 17-years-old Sayed was a student attending his grade-9 in Nyaung Chaung High School. And the 19-years-old Rajuma was his young sister. It had been just a week that Rajuma got married with a Rohingya man from neighbour. The three from a family were killed brutally. 

Ahmed thinks himself that he is worthless person as he was not able to take back the dead bodies of his father and brother from the burnt ground. Yet, many dead remained flat on the ground without funerals. Going to take back a dead body from there is a deadly cause for survived Rohingyas. 

"With my own hands, I washed 37 bodies of children and old men for funeral. While I watered, my tears were included in" said Kyaw Hlaing taking a very deep breath. "Many severely injured people were screaming a lots. How misfortune we are. We could bring no one. All are lying down still on ground" he added. Sayed Alom, a renowned mullah in the village was also killed by Rakhines entering into his home. According to villagers, the body was believed has thrown to arson. It was Sayed who has studied his degree in a Pakistan University. 

"Two of my sons were killed in front of me. One was a mullah and another was a matriculated" said the 70-years-old Moulana Abul Hashim, the most respected Arabic University teacher in the village. "We lost everything in our life. It is the cruelest inhumanity on Rohingyas" he quotes as saying. 

Chut Pyin in Rathedaung is a village tract consisting five small hamlets, over 1300 Rohingya people and 220 Rohingya households. It is surrounded by Zedi Pyin in east, Ahtet Nan Yar in south, Mayu mountain in west and Sein Taung mountain side in north. 

Following the casualties in the village, estimation of 800 Rohingya villagers are reportedly survived now including 95 injured people. The rest 500 among 1300 are believed have been killed and slaughtered or missing by Myanmar Armed Forces and local Rakhine extremists. Almost 220 houses including mosques and madrasahs of Rohingya have been burnt down to ash. A couple of days later, all Rakhine villagers whom were moved away before the incident were taken back to their houses in the village. Today, Chut Pyin in Rathedaung is no more a Rohingya village. It stands as a village without Rohingya.

By Habib Siddiqui

Dear Ambassador,

We are witnessing the genocide of Rohingyas of the Rakhine state of Burma and yet doing nothing to stop this crime unfolding in front of us. It is a painful reminder that some 70 years after the UN had issued the universal declaration of human rights, still such lofty goals seem so out of reach to so many of our humanity!

The published news reports from the UN Refugee Agency suggest that some 123,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh from Burma. A much larger number, estimated to be close to half a million have seen their homes and everything burned down by government forces there, aided by local fascist elements within the general Buddhist public and laity. The victims of the latest pogrom, which I continue to say genocidal crimes, are hiding in the forest or living in no-man's land between the two countries. News reports also show the consistency of the allegations made by the fleeing refugees against the Myanmar government forces of having committed serious crimes against humanity. 

Like most concerned human beings of our planet, I wanted to believe that with Ms. Suu Kyi in power things would turn for better inside Burma. Alas, I was so wrong to now see how things have simply become worse for this persecuted and repressed minority with no rights in the land of their birth. It is a sad story. Shame on our generation to let such gruesome crimes go unpunished! I am very saddened to see inaction from the world leaders (minus a few) who seemingly are unconcerned about the genocidal crimes of the Myanmar government and its military.

As the US ambassador to the UN, I am sure you are better informed than most of us about the gravity of the deteriorating situation there and how the heavy handed criminal responses of the Government forces of Burma since 2012 have contributed to the climax we face now. You are also aware that such measures pursued to this day by the Myanmar government can create permanent instability affecting the entire ASEAN and South Asian region and beyond. The government of Burma must be stopped from carrying out evil policies that are harmful to the entire region by threatening peace and security.

The right to live in one's homeland is a fundamental right, which continues to be denied to the persecuted Rohingyas in the Rakhine state, and needs to be addressed by the Burmese government - something that has been reiterated by Mr. Kofi Annan. If Suu Kyi's government fails in this urgent task the international community needs to take the matter to the UN Security Council and find ways to sober the government of Burma. That is the choice that civilized world has in dealing with a rogue government that defies commonly respected international laws. The sooner the better! 

Dear Ambassador, as a fellow US naturalized citizen of South Asian heritage, I would like you to champion the cause of the Rohingya people within the UN to save them from extinction. Without your prompt engagement in the UNSC, I am afraid we may see the end of this most persecuted people in our time. We shall then never be able to excuse ourselves from the guilt and shame of not doing the right thing to stop this 'slow genocide' (to coin Prof. Amartya Sen). Already more than half the Rohingyas of Burma have been forced to live as unwanted refugees outside their motherland. We can't let a rogue state to take advantage of your preoccupation with the North Korean nuclear crisis while it commits crimes against humanity to ethnically cleanse the territory of the last vestiges of a marginalized and persecuted people that trace their origin to the time of the Chandra Dynasty more than a millennium ago.

Please, help the Rohingyas of Burma to survive and live as equals in the 21st century, and surely not as a forgotten people - ignored by the world leaders who had other priorities than to saving the Rohingya people. 

Kind regards,

Habib Siddiqui

Philadelphia, USA

By Associated Press

September 7, 2017

BANGKOK — Journalists saw new fires burning Thursday in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and pages ripped from Islamic texts that were left on the ground. That intensifies doubts about government claims that members of the persecuted minority have been destroying their own homes.

About two dozen journalists saw the fires in Gawdu Zara village in northern Rakhine state on a government-controlled trip.

About 164,000 Rohingya from the area have fled across the border into Bangladesh in less than two weeks since Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police outposts in Gawdu Zara and several other villages, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

The military has said nearly 400 people, mostly Rohingya, have died in clashes and that troops were conducting "clearance operations." It blames insurgents for setting the villages on fire, without offering proof.

Rohingya who have fled Myanmar, however, have described large-scale violence perpetrated by Myanmar troops and Buddhist mobs — setting fire to their homes, spraying bullets indiscriminately, stabbing civilians and ordering them to abandon their homes or be killed.

On the Myanmar side of the border, reporters saw no Rohingya in any of the five destroyed villages they were allowed to tour Thursday, making it unlikely they could have been responsible for the new fires.

An ethnic Rakhine villager who emerged from the smoke said police and Rakhine Buddhists had set the fires. The villager ran off before he could be asked anything else.

No police were seen in the village beyond those who were accompanying the journalists. But about 10 Rakhine men with machetes were seen there. They looked nervous and the only one who spoke said he had just arrived and did not know how the fires started.

Among the buildings on fire was a madrassa, an Islamic school. Copies of books with texts from the Quran, Islam's holy book, were torn up and thrown outside. A nearby mosque was not burned.

Another village the journalists visited, Ah Lel Than Kyaw, was blackened, obliterated and deserted. Cattle and dogs wandered through the still-smoldering remains.

Local police officer Aung Kyaw Moe said 18 people were killed in the village when the violence began last month.

"From our side, there was one immigration officer dead, and we found 17 dead bodies from the enemy side," he said.

He said the fires were set Aug. 25, though some continued to burn Thursday. Virtually all buildings in the village seen by journalists had been burned, along with cars, motorbikes and bicycles that fleeing villagers left behind. A mosque was also damaged.

Columns of smoke could be seen rising in the distance, and distant gunshots could be heard.

"They burned their own houses and ran away," Aung Kyaw Moe said. "We didn't see who actually burned them because we had to take care of the security for our outpost. ... But when the houses were burned, Bengalis were the only ones in the village."

Buddhist-majority Myanmar refers to Rohingya as Bengalis, contending they migrated illegally from Bangladesh, though many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Burning the homes of Rohingya can make it less likely they will return. Tens of thousands of Rohingya were driven from their homes in another wave of violence in 2012. Many are now confined to camps, while the land they once held is either vacant or occupied by Buddhist squatters.

Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist and blogger based in Europe with contacts in northern Rakhine, said that according to witnesses, the Myanmar military, border guard police and Rakhine villagers came to Ah Lel Than Kyaw and burned the houses from Monday to Wednesday.

On Aug. 25, he said, young men with swords and knives tried to attack the border guard outpost in Aley Than Kyaw but failed. The authorities took away all Buddhist villagers, and many Rohingya villagers fled on their own.

Nay San Lwin said the remaining villagers left after the military warned them they would be shot if they did not leave.

Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has dismissed the Rohingya crisis as a misinformation campaign.

According to her office, she said such misinformation helps promote the interests of "terrorists," a reference to the Rohingya insurgents who attacked security posts on Aug. 25.

The crisis response director for Amnesty International called Suu Kyi's response "unconscionable."

On Thursday, Suu Kyi told reporters her government was working to improve security and livelihoods for Rohingya, but that "it's a little unreasonable to expect us to resolve everything in 18 months" since her administration took office.

With Rohingya fleeing by the thousands daily across the border, pushing existing camps in Bangladesh to the brink, the government in Dhaka pledged to build at least one more.

The International Organization for Migration has pleaded for $18 million in foreign aid to help feed and shelter tens of thousands now packed into makeshift settlements or stranded in a no man's land between the two countries' borders.

U.N. agencies said they were distributing food to new arrivals, about 80 percent of whom were women and children, joining about 100,000 who had already been sheltering in Bangladesh after fleeing earlier convulsions of violence in Myanmar.

Aid workers said many were arriving with violence-related injuries, severe infections or childbirth complications.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Thursday that her country offered refuge to Rohingya on humanitarian grounds, but called it a "big burden for us".

The "international community must take the responsibility," she said.

Hasina's government has taken an initiative to identify the refugees to prevent terrorists from entering Bangladesh under disguise, the local Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency reported, quoting the prime minister's Press secretary Ihsanul Karim.

With so many Rohingya fleeing, it is unclear how many remain in Myanmar amid reports of soldiers burning villages and killing civilians.

Before the recent violence, aid experts estimated about 1 million Rohingya were living in northern Rakhine state. But aid agencies have been unable to access the area since.

Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited a Rohingya camp in Bangladesh and then met with Hasina.

They said Myanmar agreed to allow its aid officials to enter Rakhine state with a ton of food and goods for Rohingya. They also pledged continuing support for the Rohingya.

___

Associated Press writers Muneeza Naqvi in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Grant Peck in Bangkok, Ashok Sharma in New Delhi and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Al Jazeera 

September 7, 2017

Members of Myanmar's Muslim minority urge international community to stop a 'targeted military campaign' against them.

Rohingya Muslims are warning that unless the international community takes a firm stance against the violence in Myanmar, the country could witness "ethnic cleansing on the scale of the Srebrenica massacre".

More than 22 years after 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb troops in the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica, separate Rohingya sources have told Al Jazeera that at least 1,000 of the persecuted Muslim minority, including scores of women and children, have been killed over the past two weeks.

Myanmar's security forces says they have killed at least 370 Rohingya "fighters" since the latest round of violence in Rakhine state began on August 25.

The violence has sent more than 164,000 Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, appealing to Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the country's security forces to end the violence.

Two sources told Al Jazeera on Thursday that several people had been shot dead near the Maungdow township in Rakhine, with thick plumes of smoke seen billowing from the village of Godu Thara after security forces burned down the homes of fleeing Rohingya.

The sources said that in other villages affected by the violence, community leaders had been unable to offer Islamic burials after imams had fled into the forest.

Access to the area has been blocked to foreign media so Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the sources' accounts.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Maungdow township under a pseudonym, Anwar, 25, said there was a "sustained and targeted military campaign against Muslims".

"The Myanmar army and Buddhist extremists are specifically targeting the Muslim population," he said.

"Women, children, the elderly - no one has been spared. The situation is continuing to get worse and Aung San Suu Kyi's government is failing to raise its voice," Anwar added.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner of Myanmar's military rulers, has so far not spoken publicly about the plight of the fleeing Rohingya.

Speaking for the first time on the issue on Wednesday, she said her government is doing its best to protect everyone in Rakhine and blamed "terrorists" for "a huge iceberg of misinformation" on the strife in the state.

But her silence has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups, activists and some politicians.

Stop pretending Aung San Suu Kyi might be solution to violence against Rohingya Muslims. She's part of the problem. https://t.co/nbEbIY2jBb pic.twitter.com/vsV4anVhGw

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) September 7, 2017

"Unless the international community acts, and stops giving our plight lip service, we will witness another genocide - our time is running out," Anwar said.

The latest bout of violence began when suspected Rohingya fighters attacked police posts and an army base in Rakhine.

The Myanmar government blamed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for the violence, but so far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Fleeing Rohingya refugees accused the country's security forces of responding with a campaign of arson and murder in a bid to force them out of Myanmar.

Myint Lwin, a resident of Buthidaung township, said photos being widely circulated on Twitter and Facebook "exposed a systematic campaign against Muslims".

"Our situation is no different to the massacres we witnessed in Bosnia," Lwin said.

"Only Muslims are being targeted by the Myanmar army. Buddhists, Christians and other ethnic groups living in Rakhine have been spared from much of the violence. There is a clear plan to wipe out Rohingya Muslims."

The Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim group who have lived in Myanmar's Rakhine state for centuries, have suffered decades of repression under the country's Buddhist majority.

Stripped of their citizenship by the military junta in the 1980s, they have endured killings, torture and mass rape, according to the United Nations - between the 1970s and early 1990s, around one million were forced to leave the country.

"We have been denied food, water, shelter, identity and now our very existence," said Ro Nay San Lwin, a 39-year-old Rohingya activist based in Europe.

"Other minorities are also being persecuted by the army, but our situation is far worse. We don't have freedom, dignity and citizenship. We are surrounded and suffering on several fronts."

The latest surge of refugees, many of them sick and wounded, has strained the resources of aid agencies and communities that are already helping hundreds of thousands displaced by previous waves of violence.

Many of the Rohingya are stranded in "no-man's land" - an area between the Myanmar-Bangladesh border - without shelter, with aid groups unable to provide clean water, sanitation and food, according to Joseph Tripura, a UN aid official in Cox's Bazaar.

Jamila Hanan, an independent human rights activist and director of the #WeAreAllRohingyaNow online campaign, said the "currently military operation was far greater than previous attacks".

"The dehumanisation process has reached peak levels with the Rohingya no longer seen as human, rather as vermin and disease so that the military can kill them without any hesitation," she said

"The government's communication office has effectively given the military a green light to perpetrate these atrocities," Hanan added.

"And with the international community failing to condemn the violence and regional powers eyeing up Myanmar's economic potential, it's unlikely we'll see condemnation anytime soon."

By Rebecca Wright and Ben Westcott

CNN

September 7, 2017

Bangladesh summoned the Myanmar ambassador Wednesday to urge an end to the violence that has engulfed the region and to raise concerns about reports of landmines being laid along the border between the two countries.

At least 164,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since August 25, according to the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) of humanitarian agencies in Bangladesh. The United Nations expects that number to jump to 300,000 by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, a senior Bangladeshi border guard, who did not want to be named, told CNN that one of his guards reported an incident from Monday in which two Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar were injured by separate landmines. They were carried across to the Bangladesh side of the border and are now in a hospital receiving treatment.

"That happened on the Myanmar side in the north of the border area," the senior border guard said.

"Some mines were placed there, then someone stepped into it, and it exploded, and a few Rohingyas got injured," he said, adding that a woman lost her leg and a boy also suffered injuries.

"It's possible the Myanmar military has planted the mines. There is no one else who could do it," he said.

The senior guard said some of the Rohingyas had learned how to defuse the mines.

A humanitarian official in the city of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, confirmed hearing reports of landmine injuries.

More than 400 killed in recent violence

At least 414 people have now been killed in violence in Rakhine State in recent weeks, according to a statement published by Myanmar's government.

Myanmar state media has blamed local "terrorists" for placing mines in Rakhine State -- where Rohingyas are concentrated -- although not specifically on the border.

Photos of a Rohingya man holding mines on the Myanmar side of the border were sent to CNN by activists and examined by a mine expert, who confirmed that the two objects are PMN1 antipersonnel devices.

An expert said the objects pictured being held by an activist are PMN1 antipersonnel devices.

"I can state with 100% certainty that the two objects being held up in the photograph are PMN1 antipersonnel landmines," said Chris Clark, global director of operations at UK-based Dynasafe Area Clearance Group, who said the Russian-made devices are one of the most common types of landmines around the world.

"The fact that it is in Myanmar is not at all unusual. It would be extremely usual for them to have access to that type of mine. That is most certainly not a handmade mine."

Clark also said that it is possible that some of the Rohingya could have learned how defuse mines, though he stressed that those seen in the photograph were still live.

Government puts blame on 'terrorists'

The government of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, blames "terrorists" for starting the violence that has shaken the region. Rohingya militants killed 12 security officers in attacks on border posts almost two weeks ago, according to state media, intensifying the latest crackdown.

The Rohingya, who are denied citizenship by Myanmar, are considered some of the most persecuted people in the world. The predominantly Buddhist country says they are Bangladeshi but Bangladesh says they're Burmese.

It is the second time in less than a year that a military crackdown has led to a mass exodus.

Bangladesh summoned the ambassador of Myanmar to lodge a "strong protest" at an "unprecedented level of influx of Myanmar nationals to Bangladesh," according to a statement from the country's foreign ministry.

"This new influx is (an) unbearable additional burden on Bangladesh which has been hosting around 400,000 Myanmar nationals who had to leave Myanmar in several rounds in the past owing to communal violence and repeated military operations," the statement said. 

During the meeting, Bangladesh demanded "immediate measures" from Myanmar to de-escalate the ongoing violence in northern Rakhine State and "regretted that appropriate measures for protection of civilian population have not been ensured during the military operation."

Aung San Suu Kyi criticized

It also urged Myanmar to stop the influx by addressing the "real cause of such unprecedented exodus," along with ensuring that Myanmar takes back all nationals who have arrived in Bangladesh, the statement added.

The news came as Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi made her first public comments on the plight of her country's Rohingya minority since the latest violence began week.

'There is genocide going on'

Following conversations with both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Suu Kyi issued statements that made it clear she was determined to deal with the "terrorist problem" in Rakhine State.

"We would like to thank India for its strong stance with regard to the terrorist threat that came to our country a couple of weeks ago," said Suu Kyi, after her meeting with Modi on Wednesday.

"We believe that together we can work to make sure that terrorism is not allowed to take root on our soil or on the soil in any neighboring countries."

Suu Kyi has been criticized in recent days for her continuing failure to speak in support of the minority Rohingya, a striking departure from her previous image as a champion of human rights.

On Tuesday, following a phone conversation with Erdogan, Suu Kyi's office released a readout of the call in which she claimed a "huge iceberg of misinformation" on the Rohingya was aiding "terrorists."

She said her government was already working to ensure the Rohingya had their rights protected.

"We know very well, more than most, what it means to be deprived of human rights and democratic protection," Suu Kyi said.

Journalist Farid Ahmed in Dhaka contributed to this article.