MYANMAR TO PROVIDE AID TO ROHINGYA
Three camps to be set up for displaced refugees in Rakhine State
CAMPS will be set up to provide aid for displaced Muslims inside Rakhine State, statebacked media said yesterday, the first time in a 16-day crisis Myanmar ’s government has offered any relief for Rohingya scattered by violence, many to Bangladesh.
Around 270,000 Rohingya have fled since Aug 25 when militant attacks sent unrest churning through Rakhine, arriving in Bangladesh hungry and exhausted and squashing into already overcrowded refugee camps.
Tens of thousands more are believed to be on the move inside Rakhine, fleeing burning villages, the army and ethnic Rakhine mobs, only to become stranded in hills without food, water, shelter or medical care.
Bangladesh has urged Myanmar to stem the exodus by providing for the displaced inside the country and provide “safe zones” for the Rohingya.
Around 27,000 Buddhists and Hindus have also been displaced following attacks by Rohingya militants and are receiving government help.
But the Rohingya, a stateless group refused citizenship by Myanmar, have been left to fend for themselves in what rights groups allege is a part of systematic campaign to force them out of the country.
Two weeks after violence scorched through the country, the government said it would establish three camps in north, south and central Maungdaw, the epicentre of the violence and a Rohingya majority area.
“Displaced people will be able to receive humanitarian aid and medical care” distributed by local Red Cross workers, the Global New Light of Myanmar reported yesterday.
The report did not refer directly to the Rohingya but mentioned village clusters where the minority lived until the unrest.
Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, on Friday said over 1,000 people may have been killed in the subsequent army crackdown, the majority likely to be Rohingya.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her long struggle against military rule, has come under increasing international criticism for the plight of the Rohingya.
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, also a Nobel laureate, wrote in a letter on Thursday that it was “incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country” that “is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people”.
Senator John McCain of Arizona also wrote to Suu Kyi this week, noting that he had been her friend and supporter and calling on her “to take an active role in putting a stop to this worsening humanitarian crisis as it spreads throughout the country”.