Officials struggle to manage rising crisis of refugees
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — Authorities took steps Sunday to restrict the movement of Muslim Rohingya refugees living in crowded border camps after fleeing violence in Myanmar, while that nation’s military chief maintained the chaos was the work of extremists seeking a stronghold in the country.
Bangladesh has been overwhelmed with more than 400,000 Rohingya who fled their homes in the last three weeks amid a crisis the U.N. describes as ethnic cleansing. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who lambasted Myanmar for “atrocities” during a visit to border camps last week, left Dhaka to address the annual U.N. gathering in New York.
Refugee camps are beyond capacity and new arrivals are staying in schools or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields. In an attempt to control the situation, police were checking vehicles to prevent the Rohingya from moving to nearby towns.
“There is an instruction from the prime minister that we must treat Rohingya Muslims maintaining human rights,” said A.K.M. Iqbal Hossain, a police superintendent. “As many private and social organizations are coming and distributing relief, sometimes chaos breaks out.”
He said with the scale of the crisis “it’s very difficult to keep order, but we are doing so.”
The refugees began pouring from Myanmar’s Rakhine state after a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks on security posts Aug. 25, prompting Myanmar’s military to launch “clearance operations” to root out the rebels. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs.
Ethnic Rohingya have faced persecution and discrimination in majority-Buddhist Myanmar for decades and are denied citizenship. The government says there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and says they are Bengalis who illegally migrated to Myanmar from Bangladesh.
“The violence was an organized attempt of extremist Bengalis in Rakhine state to build a stronghold,” Myanmar’s powerful military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, said Saturday, according to a statement posted on his Facebook page. “They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar.”
With the U.N. saying there are some 240,000 children among the refugees living in dire conditions, Bangladeshi authorities have kicked off a massive immunization drive. The children will be immunized for measles, rubella and polio.