Tag Archives: Rohingya Muslims

Trapped Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar get first substantial food aid in months

Trapped Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar get first substantial food aid in months

By Wa Lone

YANGON (Reuters) – Rohingya Muslim villagers cut off from food and threatened by Buddhist neighbors in Myanmar’s violence-racked Rakhine state received their first substantial food supplies in months on Wednesday after international pressure on the government to help.

Diplomats and aid groups called on the government to step in after Reuters exclusively reported the dire situation faced by thousands of Rohingya Muslims trapped in the villages of Ah Nauk Pyin and Nyaung Pin Gyi last month.

“A boat arrived yesterday evening with rice bags and six Red Cross staff came to our village this morning,” Maung Maung, an administrator in the riverside Rohingya village of Ah Nauk Pyin, told Reuters by telephone.

He said it was the first time in three months that significant supplies of food had been delivered to the village.

“The aid arrived just as we’re starving,” he said.

Fragile relations between the Rohingya villagers and their ethnic Rakhine Buddhist neighbors were shattered on Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants prompted a ferocious response from Myanmar’s security forces.

Rights groups say ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have joined in attacks on Rohingya, and the residents of Ah Nauk Pyin told Reuters in mid-September they had been threatened by Buddhists and they had pleaded with authorities for safe passage out.

The state government told them to stay put.

More than half a million Rohingya villagers have fled to Bangladesh to escape what the United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” aimed at pushing the Rohingya out of the country for good.

Myanmar dismisses that. It says it is fighting a legitimate campaign against Rohingya “terrorists”.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remain in Rakhine, many in fear of their security and facing growing hunger as food supplies dwindle, partly because of restrictions on the trade and movement of rice.

‘SUPPORT FOR ALL’

Minister for Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye, who is leading the government response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Rakhine, confirmed that the aid had arrived in Ah Nauk Pyin.

He said the government would support all vulnerable people.

“We’ll support these people continuously, until they can stand on their own feet,” he said. “Nobody wants to rely on aid all their lives.”

After Reuters reported on the plight of Ah Nauk Pyin, and the nearby village of Nyaung Pin Gyi, Myanmar-based diplomats had asked to visit on a government-organized trip to Rakhine state last week.

The itinerary of the trip mentioned the Reuters report.

Win Myat Aye has been to Ah Nauk Pyin several times with Rakhine state government officials, and has promised to protect the residents.

Myanmar has restricted access to Rakhine for most aid agencies, despite growing international calls for humanitarian groups to be allowed in to help.

Aid is being organized by three Red Cross organizations – the Myanmar Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The aid to the 600 families of Ah Nauk Pyin delivered on Wednesday included rice, oil, beans, salt, sugar and tinned fish for a month.

Residents of the other Rohingya village, Nyaung Pin Gyi, said they had not been visited and had yet to get any aid but ICRC communications official Khin Htay Oo said Nyaung Pin Gyi would get food aid on Tuesday.

“We help all people affected by the conflict, we do not take sides based on race or religion,” she said.

(Reporting by Wa Lone; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Rohingya insurgents open to peace but Myanmar ceasefire ending

A Myanmar soldier stands near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine state, Myanmar September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

By Robert Birsel

YANGON (Reuters) – Muslim Rohingya insurgents said on Saturday they are ready to respond to any peace move by the Myanmar government but a one-month ceasefire they declared to enable the delivery of aid in violence-racked Rakhine State is about to end.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) did not say what action it would take after the ceasefire ends at midnight on Monday but it was “determined to stop the tyranny and oppression” waged against the Rohingya people.

“If at any stage, the Burmese government is inclined to peace, then ARSA will welcome that inclination and reciprocate,” the group said in a statement.

Government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

When the ARSA announced its one-month ceasefire from Sept. 10, a government spokesman said: “We have no policy to negotiate with terrorists.”

The rebels launched coordinated attacks on about 30 security posts and an army camp on Aug. 25 with the help of hundreds of disaffected Rohingya villagers, many wielding sticks or machetes, killing about a dozen people.

In response, the military unleashed a sweeping offensive across the north of Rakhine State, driving more than half a million Rohingya villagers into Bangladesh in what the United Nations branded a textbook example of “ethnic cleansing”.

Myanmar rejects that. It says more than 500 people have been killed in the fighting, most of them “terrorists” who have been attacking civilians and torching villages.

The ability of the ARSA, which only surfaced in October last year, to mount any sort of challenge to the Myanmar army is not known but it does not appear to have been able to put up resistance to the military offensive unleashed in August.

Inevitably, there are doubts about how the insurgents can operate in areas where the military has driven out the civilian population, cutting the insurgents off from recruits, food, funds and information.

The ARSA accused the government of using murder, arson and rape as “tools of depopulation”.

‘NATIVE’

The ARSA denies links to foreign Islamists.

In an interview with Reuters in March, ARSA leader Ata Ullah linked the creation of the group to communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine in 2012, when nearly 200 people were killed and 140,000, mostly Rohingya, displaced.

The group says it is fighting for the rights of the Rohingya, who have never been regarded as an indigenous minority in Myanmar and so have been denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity.

The group repeated their demand that Rohingya be recognized as a “native indigenous” ethnic group, adding that all Rohingya people should be allowed “to return home safely with dignity … to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

The Rohingya have long faced discrimination and repression in Rakhine State where bad blood between them and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, stemming from violence by both sides, goes back generations.

The ARSA condemned the government for blocking humanitarian assistance in Rakhine and said it was willing to discuss ceasefires with international organizations so aid could be delivered.

Some 515,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh but thousands remain in Rakhine.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced scathing criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although a military-drafted constitution gives her no power over the security forces.

Suu Kyi has condemned rights abuses and said Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 by which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back.

Many refugees fear they will not have the paperwork they believe Myanmar will demand to allow them back.

(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Stephen Coates)

U.N. fears ‘further exodus’ of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar

Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, attends a news conference on his visit to Bangladesh for the Rohingya refugee crisis, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay and Robert Birsel

GENEVA/YANGON (Reuters) – The United Nations braced on Friday for a possible “further exodus” of Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar into Bangladesh six weeks after the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency began, U.N. humanitarian aid chief said.

Some 515,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine in an unrelenting movement of people that began after Myanmar security forces responded to Rohingya militant attacks with a brutal crackdown.

The United Nations has denounced the Myanmar military offensive as ethnic cleansing but Myanmar insists its forces are fighting “terrorists” who have killed civilians and burnt villages.

Rights groups say more than half of more than 400 Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine state have been torched in a campaign by the security forces and Buddhist vigilantes to drive out Muslims.

Mark Lowcock, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, reiterated an appeal for access to the population in northern Rakhine, saying the situation was “unacceptable”.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has blocked most access to the area, although some agencies have offices open in towns there and the International Committee of the Red Cross is helping the Myanmar Red Cross to deliver aid.

“This flow of people of Myanmar hasn’t stopped yet. Obviously there’s into the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still in Myanmar, and we want to be ready in case there is a further exodus,” Lowcock told a news briefing in Geneva.

Lowcock said a senior U.N. official was expected to visit Myanmar in the next few days.

An estimated 2,000 Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh every day, Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration, told a separate briefing.

Myanmar officials have said they attempted to reassure groups trying to flee to Bangladesh but could not stop people who were not citizens from leaving.

The official Myanmar News Agency said on Friday “large numbers” of Muslims were preparing to cross the border. It cited their reasons as “livelihood difficulties”, health problems, a “belief” of insecurity and fear of becoming a minority.

RAIN-DRENCHED CAMPS

Aid agencies have warned of a malnutrition crisis with about 281,000 people in Bangladesh in urgent need of food, including 145,000 children under five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Cholera is a risk, amid fears of disease spreading in the rain-drenched camps where aid workers are trying to install sanitation systems, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said.

About 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine are due to arrive this weekend and a vaccination campaign should start on Tuesday.

U.N.-led aid bodies have appealed for $434 million over six months to help up to 1.2 million people – including 300,000 Rohingya already in Bangladesh before the latest crisis and 300,000 Bangladeshi villagers in so-called host communities.

The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and most are stateless.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although a military-drafted constitution gives her no power over the security forces.

She has condemned rights abuses and said Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 by which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back.

Lowcock said talks between Myanmar and Bangladesh on a repatriation plan were a useful first step.

“But there is clearly a long way to go,” he said.

Both the United States and Britain have warned Myanmar the crisis is putting at risk the progress it has made since the military began to loosen its grip on power.

China, which built close ties with Myanmar while it was under military rule and Western sanctions, has been supportive.

In Washington, U.S. officials said sanctions and the withholding of aid were among the options available to press Myanmar to halt the violence but they had to be careful to avoid worsening the crisis.

“We don’t want to take actions that exacerbate their suffering. There is that risk in this complicated environment,” Patrick Murphy, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

Murphy said efforts were under way to identify those responsible for rights violations.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in WASHINGTON; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Bangladesh carving out forest land to shelter desperate Rohingya

Bangladesh carving out forest land to shelter desperate Rohingya

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – Hard-pressed to find space for a massive influx of Rohingya Muslim refugees, Bangladesh plans to chop down a swathe of forest to extend a tent city sheltering destitute families fleeing ethnic violence in neighboring Myanmar.

More than half a million Rohingya have arrived from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine since the end of August in what the United Nations has called the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency.

The exodus began after Myanmar security forces responded to Rohingya militants’ attacks on Aug. 25 by launching a brutal crackdown that the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has rejected that accusation, insisting that the military action was needed to combat “terrorists” who had killed civilians and burnt villages.

But it has left Bangladesh and international humanitarian organizations counting the cost as they race to provide life-saving food, water and medical care for the displaced Rohingyas.

Simply finding enough empty ground to accommodate the refugees is a huge problem.

“The government allocated 2,000 acres when the number of refugees was nearly 400,000,” Mohammad Shah Kamal, Bangladesh’s secretary of disaster management and relief, told Reuters on Thursday.

“Now that the numbers have gone up by more than 100,000 and people are still coming. So, the government has to allocate 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of forest land.”

Once all the trees are felled, aid workers plan to put up 150,000 tarpaulin shelters in their place.

Swamped by refugees, poor Bangladeshi villagers are faced with mounting hardships and worries, including the trafficking of illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamines, from Myanmar.

“The situation is very bad,” said Kazi Abdur Rahman, a senior official in the Bangladesh border district of Cox’s Bazar, where most of the Rohingya are settled.

“People in Cox’s Bazar are concerned, we are also concerned, but there’s nothing we can do but accommodate them.”

The pressure on the land is creating another conflict, this time environmental rather than ethnic.

Last month, wild elephants trampled two refugees to death last month and Rahman said more tragic encounters between animals and people appears inevitable as more forest is destroyed.

OVER A MILLION PEOPLE IN NEED

U.N. agencies coordinating aid appealed on Wednesday for $434 million to help up to 1.2 million people, most of them children, for six months.

Their figure includes the 509,000 who have arrived since August, 300,000 Rohingya who were already in Bangladesh, having fled earlier suppression, a contingency for another 91,000 and 300,000 Bangladesh villagers in so-called host communities who also need help.

The Save the Children aid group warned of a malnutrition crisis with some 281,000 people in need of urgent nutrition support, including 145,000 children under the age of five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.

“In over 20 years as a humanitarian worker I’ve never seen a situation like this, where people are so desperate for basic assistance and conditions so dire,” Unni Krishnan, director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit, said in a statement.

U.N. agencies are wary of planning beyond six-months for fear or creating a self-perpetuating situation.

Myanmar has promised to take back anyone verified as a refugee but there’s little hope for speedy repatriation.

There is long-simmering communal tension and animosity toward the Rohingya in Myanmar, most of whom are stateless and derided as illegal immigrants.

“This crisis isn’t going to end soon,” said a Bangladeshi interior ministry official who declined to be identified.

(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Aid groups seek $434 million to help up to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar

Aid groups seek $434 million to help up to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar

By Rahul Bhatia

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Humanitarian organizations helping Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh said on Wednesday they need $434 million over the next six months to help up to 1.2 million people, most of them children, in dire need of life-saving assistance.

There are an estimated 809,000 Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh after fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar, more than half a million of whom have arrived since Aug. 25 to join 300,000 Rohingya who are already there.

“Unless we support the efforts of the Bangladesh government to provide immediate aid to the half million people who have arrived over the past month, many of the most vulnerable – women, children and the elderly – will die,” said William Lacy Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration, which is coordinating the aid effort.

“They will be the victims of neglect.”

About 509,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since attacks by Rohingya militants in August triggered a sweeping Myanmar military offensive that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing. It says its forces are fighting insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who claimed responsibility for attacks on about 30 police posts and an army camp on Aug. 25.

The insurgents were also behind similar but smaller attacks in October last year that led to a brutal Myanmar army response triggering the flight of 87,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh.

The agencies’ plan for help over the next six months factors in the possibility of another 91,000 refugees arriving, as the influx continues, Robert Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh, said in a statement.

“The plan targets 1.2 million people, including all Rohingya refugees, and 300,000 Bangladeshi host communities over the next six months,” Watkins said..

Half a million people need food while 100,000 emergency shelters are required. More than half the refugees are children, while 24,000 pregnant women need maternity care, the agencies said.

U.N. appeals for funds to help with humanitarian crises are generally significantly under-funded.

GROUP REPORTS MASSACRE

The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and most are stateless.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced scathing criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although she has no power over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution.

She has condemned rights abuses and said Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 under which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back.

But many Rohingya are pessimistic about their chances of going home, partly because few have official papers confirming their residency.

Most are also wary about returning without an assurance of citizenship, which they fear could leave them vulnerable to the persecution and discrimination they have endured for years.

Human Rights Watch said it had found evidence that the Myanmar military had summarily executed dozens of Rohingya in a village called Maung Nu in Rakhine state, on Aug. 27, two days after the insurgent attacks triggered the violence.

The rights group said it had spoken to 14 survivors and witnesses who were now refugees in Bangladesh. They described how soldiers entered a compound where people had gathered in fear of military retaliation.

“They took several dozen Rohingya men and boys into the courtyard and then shot or stabbed them to death. Others were killed as they tried to flee,” said the rights group, which has accused Myanmar of crimes against humanity.

Spokesmen for the government, the military and police did not answer their telephones and were not available for comment. Wednesday is a holiday in Myanmar.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

The U.N. committees for women’s and children’s rights called on Myanmar to immediately stop violence in Rakhine, saying violations “being committed at the behest of the military and other security forces” may amount to crimes against humanity.

The United States and Britain have warned that the crisis risked derailing Myanmar’s progress in its transition to democracy after decades of military rule.

The World Bank said it could hit foreign investment, though it did not factor the violence into its latest forecast for Myanmar’s growth, which it cut by 0.5 percentage points for both 2017 and 2018, to 6.4 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively.

The bank said businesses appeared to have delayed investment as they awaited a clearer government economic agenda.

(Addtional reporting by Shoon Naing in YANGON, Tom Miles in GENEVA, Michelle Nichols in NEW YORK; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Eating leaves to survive in Myanmar’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ zone

Eating leaves to survive in Myanmar's 'ethnic cleansing' zone

MAUNGDAW, Myanmar (Reuters) – Along the main road that stretches nearly 40 kilometers north from Maungdaw town in Myanmar’s violence-riven Rakhine State, all but one of the villages that were once home to tens of thousands of people have been turned into smouldering ash.

Hundreds of cows roam through deserted settlements and charred paddy fields. Hungry dogs eat small goats. The remains of local mosques, markets and schools – once bustling with Rohingya Muslims – are silent.

Despite strict controls on access to northern Rakhine, Reuters independently traveled to parts of the most-affected area in early September, the first detailed look by reporters inside the region where the United Nations says Myanmar’s security forces have carried out ethnic cleansing.

Nearly 500 people have been killed and 480,000 Rohingya have fled since Aug. 25, when attacks on 30 police posts and a military base by Muslim militants provoked a fierce army crackdown. The government has rejected allegations of arson, rape and arbitrary killings leveled against its security forces.

“We were scared that the army and the police would shoot us if they found us … so we ran away from the village,” said Suyaid Islam, 32, from Yae Khat Chaung Gwa Son, near the area visited by Reuters north of Maungdaw. He was speaking by phone from a refugee camp in Bangladesh after leaving his village soon after the attacks.

Residents of his village told Reuters it had been burned down by security forces in an earlier operation against Rohingya insurgents late last year. Those that did not flee have been surviving since in makeshift shacks, eating food distributed by aid agencies.

Satellite photos showed that tens of thousands of homes in northern Rakhine have been destroyed in 214 villages, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. The U.N. detected 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of destroyed structures.

The government said more than 6,800 houses have been set on fire. It blames the Rohingya villagers and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which staged the Aug. 25 attacks.

“The information we obtained on this side is that terrorists did the burnings,” said Zaw Htay, spokesman for national leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reuters reporters have made two trips to northern Rakhine, visiting the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, and driving from Maungdaw through the most affected area along the main road north to the town of Kyein Chaung. (For a graphic of the area, click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2y8FgQ8)

The reporters talked briefly to residents but, because many were scared of being seen speaking to outsiders, most interviews were carried out by phone from outside the army operation area.

FOOD RUNNING LOW

Little aid has made it to northern Rakhine since the U.N. had to suspend operations because of the fighting and after the government suggested its food was sustaining insurgents. Convoys organized by the Red Cross have twice been stopped and searched by hostile ethnic Rakhines in the state capital Sittwe.

In U Shey Kya, where last October Rohingya residents accused the Myanmar army of raping several women, a teacher who spoke to Reuters from the village by phone said only about 100 families out of 800 households have stayed behind.

Those who remain are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the soldiers, who come to the village in the morning prompting the residents to hide in the forest and return at night.

“We don’t even have food to eat for this evening. What can we do?” said the teacher. “We are close to the forest where we have leaves we can eat and find some water to survive.” He refused to give his name because he had been warned by the authorities not to talk to reporters.

The man said escaping through bush in monsoon rain with his elderly parents, six children and pregnant wife was not an option.

Zaw Htay said the government has prioritized humanitarian assistance to the area.

“If there are any locations where aid has not reached yet, people should let us know, we will try to reach them as soon as we can,” he said.

About 30,000 non-Muslim residents of northern Rakhine have also been displaced.

Before the latest exodus there were around 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, mostly living in Rakhine, where they are denied citizenship and are regarded as interlopers from Bangladesh by the Buddhist majority.

“HAPPY THEY’RE GONE NOW”

Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh and human rights organizations say ethnic Rakhine vigilantes have aided the military in driving out the Muslim population.

Kamal Hussein, 22, from Alel Than Kyaw, south of Maungdaw town said his village was destroyed in early September, after which he fled to Bangladesh, where he spoke to Reuters.

Hussein said Rakhine mobs “poured petrol on the houses. Then, they came out and the military fired a grenade launcher at a house to set it alight”.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said some empty buildings in the area had been burned by ethnic Rakhines. “We told the regional government to take action on that,” he said.

The damage caused by the fires, Reuters interviews and satellite pictures show, is by far the largest in Maungdaw, where the bulk of insurgent attacks took place. Across the mostly coastal area, stretching more than 100 km (60 miles) through thick bush and monsoon-swollen streams, most villages have been burned.

Maungdaw town itself, until recently ethnically mixed with Rakhine Buddhists, Muslims and some Hindus, is now segregated, with the remaining Rohingya shuttered in their homes. Some 450 houses in Rohingya parts of the town were burned down in the first week after the attacks, HRW said citing satellite photographs.

“Those who stored food, sold it and raised money to flee to Bangladesh,” Mohammad Salem, 35, who used to sell cosmetics at the market, told Reuters by phone from the town.

In ethnically-mixed Rathedaung township, 16 out of 21 Rohingya villages have been burned, according to residents and humanitarian workers.

Of the remaining five, two villages in the south are now cut off from food and threatened by hostile Rakhine neighbors.

In many places people have no access to medicines, residents said.

Reuters talked to two Rakhine Buddhist officials who corroborated the scale of the damage.

Tin Tun Soe, a Rakhine administrator in Chein Khar Li, where a security post had come under attack, said the army response was rapid and all the Rohingya had been driven out. Nearly 1,600 houses were burned down a day after the attacks, he said, though he blamed the fires on the insurgents.

“They have so many people. If they are here, we’re afraid to live,” said Tin Tun Soe. “I am very happy that now all of them are gone.”

(Reporting by Wa Lone and Shoon Naing in Yangon; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis in Cox’s Bazar; Writing by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Alex Richardson)

U.S. seeks urgent action on Myanmar, while U.N. eyes $200 million for refugees

A woman reacts as Rohingya refugees wait to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

By Antoni Slodkowski and Rahul Bhatia

YANGON/DHAKA (Reuters) – The United States wants Myanmar to take urgent action to end violence in Rakhine state, where a military offensive has created a crisis that could jeopardize its economic and political transition, a U.S. official said on Friday.

Bangladesh and aid organizations are struggling to help 422,000 Rohingya Muslims who have arrived since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a Myanmar crackdown that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

A senior U.N. official said an estimated $200 million would be needed to help the refugees in Bangladesh for six months. Aid workers fear a humanitarian crisis is also unfolding in Rakhine state, though Myanmar has restricted access.

“We think, urgently, actions need to be taken to stop this violence and facilitate humanitarian assistance, lower the rhetoric, lower the tension and … start doing the hard work to solve the longer-standing problems,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy told reporters.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of international criticism over the plight of the Rohingya, for not speaking out more forcefully against the violence or doing more to rein in security forces over which she has little power.

Tension between majority Buddhists and Rohingya, most of whom are denied citizenship, has simmered for decades in Rakhine, but it has exploded several times over the past few years, as old enmities, and Buddhist nationalism, surfaced with the end of decades of harsh military rule.

Murphy, who spent three days in Myanmar this week, said there were “many points of responsibility” and he wanted to see everyone follow through on commitments Suu Kyi made to uphold rights and the law in an address to the nation on Tuesday.

“There’s the elected government, there are the security forces which have authorities that don’t fall under the purview of the civilian elected government, there are local leaders and there is the broader population, among which there are many emotions and many tensions,” he said.

“Significant responsibility sits with security authorities and local officials in Rakhine state and we are looking for their cooperation to make these commitments a reality,” Murphy told reporters on a conference call from Bangkok.

Myanmar dismisses accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying it has to tackle the insurgents, whom it accuses of setting fires and attacking civilians as well as the security forces.

While the United States has urged action to halt the violence, China, which has close economic and political ties with Myanmar, has welcomed measures by the government to alleviate the situation in Rakhine state.

‘INCENTIVE FOR TERRORISTS’

Murphy said the military’s response to the August insurgent attacks had been disproportionate and the country risked a terrorist backlash.

The attacks were claimed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which Murphy referred to as a “so-called group” of which little was known. It denies links to foreign militants but the government says it is connected to global terrorism.

“Whether or not this organization has ties elsewhere is not particularly germane, given the fact that it could be creating an incentive for foreign terrorists to look at a new opportunity and this is among the risks that we have shared with Burmese stakeholders,” he said.

Bangladesh was already home to some 400,000 Rohingya who fled earlier bouts of violence and persecution.

Given the “massive numbers” arriving in the past few weeks, the United Nations was expected to launch an appeal for $200 million to help them for the next six months, an official said.

“It has not been confirmed, but it is a ballpark figure, based on the information we have,” Robert D. Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh, told Reuters in an interview in Dhaka.

Watkins said the situation had not stabilized in terms of new arrivals so it was difficult to say how many people to plan for, or how long.

“We don’t want to plan a 10-year operation, obviously, because we want to maintain hope that there will be a way for negotiating a return of the population,” he said.

“We can’t plan too far in the future, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy … politically, it sends a strong signal, which we don’t want to send, which is that people are going to be here for a long time.

“And our donors are not prepared to respond to anything beyond a one-year time frame, given the massive amounts of money we are asking for.”

Aid groups in Bangladesh have warned of a public health disaster unless help is increased massively.

“We need to scale up quickly,” said Dr N. Paranietharan, the World Health Organisation representative in Bangladesh.

“If we don’t drastically improve water and sanitation we will face water-borne diseases including cholera.”

(For a graphic on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh click http://tmsnrt.rs/2xTAOon)

(Additonal reporting by Serajul Quadir in DHAKA, tommy Wikes in COX’S BAZAR; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Exclusive: ‘We will kill you all’ – Rohingya villagers in Myanmar beg for safe passage

A Rohingya refugee girl collects rain water at a makeshift camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 17, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Wa Lone and Andrew R.C. Marshall

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) – Thousands of Rohingya Muslims in violence-racked northwest Myanmar are pleading with authorities for safe passage from two remote villages that are cut off by hostile Buddhists and running short of food.

“We’re terrified,” Maung Maung, a Rohingya official at Ah Nauk Pyin village, told Reuters by telephone. “We’ll starve soon and they’re threatening to burn down our houses.”

Another Rohingya contacted by Reuters, who asked not to be named, said ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the same village and shouted, “Leave, or we will kill you all.”

Fragile relations between Ah Nauk Pyin and its Rakhine neighbors were shattered on Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine State prompted a ferocious response from Myanmar’s security forces.

At least 430,000 Rohingya have since fled into neighboring Bangladesh to evade what the United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

About a million Rohingya lived in Rakhine State until the recent violence. Most face draconian travel restrictions and are denied citizenship in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the Rakhine State government, told Reuters he was working closely with the Rathedaung authorities, and had received no information about the Rohingya villagers’ plea for safe passage.

“There is nothing to be concerned about,” he said when asked about local tensions. “Southern Rathedaung is completely safe.”

National police spokesman Myo Thu Soe said he also had no information about the Rohingya villages but that he would look into the matter.

Asked to comment, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department’s East Asia Bureau made no reference to the situation in the villages, but said the United States was calling “urgently” for Myanmar’s security forces “to act in accordance with the rule of law and to stop the violence and displacement suffered by individuals from all communities.”

“Tens of thousands of people reportedly lack adequate food, water, and shelter in northern Rakhine State,” spokeswoman Katina Adams said. “The government should act immediately to assist them.”

Adams said Patrick Murphy, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, would reiterate grave U.S. concern about the situation in Rakhine when he meets senior officials in Myanmar this week.

Britain is to host a ministerial meeting on Monday on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss the situation in Rakhine.

 

NO BOATS

Ah Nauk Pyin sits on a mangrove-fringed peninsula in Rathedaung, one of three townships in northern Rakhine State. The villagers say they have no boats.

Until three weeks ago, there were 21 Muslim villages in Rathedaung, along with three camps for Muslims displaced by previous bouts of religious violence. Sixteen of those villages and all three camps have since been emptied and in many cases burnt, forcing an estimated 28,000 Rohingya to flee.

Rathedaung’s five surviving Rohingya villages and their 8,000 or so inhabitants are encircled by Rakhine Buddhists and acutely vulnerable, say human rights monitors.

The situation is particularly dire in Ah Nauk Pyin and nearby Naung Pin Gyi, where any escape route to Bangladesh is long, arduous, and sometimes blocked by hostile Rakhine neighbors.

Maung Maung, the Rohingya official, said the villagers were resigned to leaving but the authorities had not responded to their requests for security. At night, he said, villagers had heard distant gunfire.

“It’s better they go somewhere else,” said Thein Aung, a Rathedaung official, who dismissed Rohingya allegations that Rakhines were threatening them.

Only two of the Aug. 25 attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) took place in Rathedaung. But the township was already a tinderbox of religious tension, with ARSA citing the mistreatment of Rohingya there as one justification for its offensive.

In late July, Rakhine residents of a large, mixed village in northern Rathedaung corraled hundreds of Rohingya inside their neighborhood, blocking access to food and water.

A similar pattern is repeating itself in southern Rathedaung, with local Rakhine citing possible ARSA infiltration as a reason for ejecting the last remaining Rohingya.

 

‘ANOTHER PLACE’

Maung Maung said he had called the police at least 30 times to report threats against his village.

On Sept. 13, he said, he got a call from a Rakhine villager he knew. “Leave tomorrow or we’ll come and burn down all your houses,” said the man, according to a recording Maung Maung gave to Reuters.

When Maung Maung protested that they had no means to escape, the man replied: “That’s not our problem.”

On Aug. 31, the police convened a roadside meeting between two villages, attended by seven Rohingya from Ah Nauk Pyin and 14 Rakhine officials from the surrounding villages.

Instead of addressing the Rohingya complaints, said Maung Maung and two other Rohingya who attended the meeting, the Rakhine officials delivered an ultimatum.

“They said they didn’t want any Muslims in the region and we should leave immediately,” said the Rohingya resident of Ah Nauk Pyin who requested anonymity.

The Rohingya agreed, said Maung Maung, but only if the authorities provided security.

He showed Reuters a letter that the village elders had sent to the Rathedaung authorities on Sept. 7, asking to be moved to “another place”. They had yet to receive a response, he said.

People reach out during the distribution of bananas in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 17, 2017.

People reach out during the distribution of bananas in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, September 17, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

VIOLENT HISTORY

Relations between the two communities deteriorated in 2012, when religious unrest in Rakhine State killed nearly 200 people and made 140,000 homeless, most of them Rohingya. Scores of houses in Ah Nauk Pyin were torched.

Since then, said villagers, Rohingya have been too scared to leave the village or till their land, surviving mainly on monthly deliveries from the World Food Programme (WFP). The recent violence halted those deliveries.

The WFP pulled out most staff and suspended operations in the region after Aug. 25.

Residents in the area’s two Rohingya villages said they could no longer venture out to fish or buy food from Rakhine traders, and were running low on food and medicines.

Maung Maung said the local police told the Rohingya to stay in their villages and not to worry because “nothing would happen,” he said.

But the nearest police station had only half a dozen or so officers, he said, and could not do much if Ah Nauk Pyin was attacked.

A few minutes’ walk away, at the Rakhine village of Shwe Long Tin, residents were also on edge, said its leader, Khin Tun Aye.

They had also heard gunfire at night, he said, and were guarding the village around the clock with machetes and slingshots in case the Rohingya attacked with ARSA’s help.

“We’re also terrified,” he said.

He said he told his fellow Rakhine to stay calm, but the situation remained so tense that he feared for the safety of his Rohingya neighbors.

“If there is violence, all of them will be killed,” he said.

 

(Reporting by Wa Lone and Andrew R.C. Marshall; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Ian Geoghegan and Peter Cooney)