Rohingya fleeing violence in Myanmar now await safety of squalid border camps
Nearly two months after Muslim Rohingya began fleeing a military-led campaign of violence in western Myanmar, thousands of refugees continue to mass on the Bangladesh border, seeking the relative safety of squalid, muddy camps.
An estimated 582,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when the military began a wave of rape, killing and village burning following attacks on security posts by a Rohingya militant group. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights has called the campaign a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Drone footage released by the U.N. refugee agency Tuesday shows thousands of Rohingya crowded on embankments just inside Bangladesh, waiting to move to camps that have swollen with refugees in recent weeks.
Since Sunday, 10,000 to 15,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh at Anjuman Para, Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said Tuesday. As they waited to enter camps in Bangladesh, gunfire could still be heard from the Myanmar side of the border, he said.
Myanmar’s government has said Rohingya have burned their own villages. But human rights groups say that explanation defies logic.
An Amnesty International report issued Wednesday said the pattern of burning “is deliberate, organized, widespread, consistent over time and across northern Rakhine state, and targeted at Rohingya homes and other structures.”
The report, which is based on interviews with 120 refugees, said witnesses “indicate that in some instances burnings were clearly orchestrated and planned in advance by the military and local government authorities.”
Refugees continue to surge into Bangladesh one month after Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, said the government was prepared to welcome back those who had fled.
But refugee accounts and surveys of village destruction indicate the military and aligned vigilante groups are still trying to force the Rohingya from the country.
About 1 million Rohingya lived in Rakhine state in western Myanmar before the latest exodus. The latest estimates of arrivals to Bangladesh means more than half have fled their homes. Among those who remain in northern Rakhine are Rohingya who are trapped in isolated villages and cannot escape without passing by hostile communities of ethnic Rakhine.
The Rohingya are members of a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that have long faced discrimination and loss of basic rights in Myanmar, a majority Buddhist nation.
Rohingya who live near Sittwe, the provincial capital in central Rakhine, are largely interned in camps, with far less ability to flee. Ethnic Rakhine groups have blocked the shipment of aid to the internment camps in central Rakhine.