United Nations pressures Burma
Diplomats took no action but called meeting a start on Rohingya refugee crisis
Burma’s authorities came under intensifying pressure Thursday over the Rohingya refugee crisis, with the United Nations secretary general calling it a “human rights nightmare” that has driven more than a half-million civilians into Bangladesh in the past month.
The remarks by the secretary general, Antonio Guterres, came at a UN Security Council meeting devoted to the crisis, which has escalated into what he described as “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency.”
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, demanded that Burma’s authorities punish those in the military who have killed and abused members of the Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim group in Burma, a Buddhist-majority country. Haley also called for a halt to the shipment of foreign arms to Burma’s security forces.
“We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be: a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley said.
The 15-member Security Council took no immediate action, but diplomats called it a starting point and noted that the council had not discussed Burma publicly since 2009.
Haley’s remarks were the strongest she has yet made on the crisis and raised the possibility that the United States might reimpose sanctions on Burma that were rescinded under the Obama administration.
Guterres, who led UN refugee operations for 10 years, demanded an immediate halt to military operations by Burma’s security forces against Rohingya civilians and called for unfettered access by aid groups to areas that have been cut off.
“We have received bone-chilling accounts from those who had fled — mainly women, children and the elderly,” he told the Security Council.
Burma’s national security adviser, U Thaung Tun, who also attended the meeting, reiterated the government’s rejection of accusations that it has systematically persecuted the Rohingya. He described the military’s actions in Rakhine state, the centre of the crisis, as counterterrorism operations against Rohingya militants who killed members of the security forces on Aug. 25.
He also asserted that Burma wanted friendly relations with Bangladesh, where the total population of Rohingya refugees is nearing a million. Burma’s outreach to Bangladesh, he said, “gives the lie to the assertion that there is a policy of ethnic cleansing on our part.”
Hours before the Security Council meeting, officials in Burma abruptly postponed a planned visit by representatives of UN aid agencies and diplomats to Rakhine state.
The hosts blamed bad weather and said the trip would be postponed until Oct. 2, even though the envoys had gathered at the airport in Rangoon, Burma’s commercial capital, to board their flight.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees continue to flee into Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi diplomat said 20,000 had arrived on Wednesday alone.
Some have walked for days in search of safety, others have made the dangerous journey by boat, made even more treacherous by the monsoon rains.
At least 15 Rohingya people, including nine children, were killed Thursday when the trawler carrying them capsized in the Bay of Bengal. Their bodies washed up on the shore alongside some survivors.
“The women and children couldn’t swim,” one survivor, Nuru Salam, 22, told reporters. He had tried to cross with his entire family, he said, when the boat tipped. His son drowned, and he was still searching for his wife.
The International Organization for Migration, the UN agency that has been monitoring the influx of Rohingya into Bangladesh, said about 100 people had boarded the vessel a day earlier. A young woman who made it to shore said the captain had tried to anchor the boat in rough seas and lost control. Local residents saw the boat capsize from shore.
“These people thought they had finally arrived to safety but died before even touching land,” said Abdullah Al Mamoun, an International Organization for Migration staff member.
Nearly half of Burma’s Rohingya population has fled into Bangladesh since the government crackdown be- gan. Those who reach Bangladesh face overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the makeshift camps. The UN refugee agency has expressed concern about a health crisis.
In a statement on Thursday, aid groups called on the Burmese government to allow free access to Rakhine so they could “provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”