Saturday, September 16, 2017

Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Myanmar said a visiting U.S. official would not be allowed to go to a region where violence has triggered an exodus of nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims. “There’s really no sign that this flow of people is going to dry up,” Chris Lom of the International Organisation for Migration, said ”There are still, we believe, thousands of people waiting to take boats across to Cox’s Bazar.”

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy will voice Washington’s concerns about the Rohingya and press for greater access to the conflict area for humanitarian workers, the State Department said.

“Not allowed,” Tin Maung Swe said, when asked if Murphy would be going to Maungdaw district, at the heart of the strife that began when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army camp, killing a dozen people.

 Amnesty International said evidence pointed to a “mass-scale scorched-earth campaign” across the north of Rakhine that was unmistakably ethnic cleansing. “The evidence is irrefutable – the Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine state ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar,” said Tirana Hassan, the group’s crisis response director.

It said it also had credible reports of Rohingya militants burning the homes of ethnic Rakhine and other minorities. 

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