$8m aid package for Myanmar, Bangladesh
The Government will send more than $8million in aid to Myanmar and Bangladesh for the humanitarian crisis faced by displaced people, including the persecuted Rohingya people.
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, in a statement issued yesterday, said the Government would send $5.5m to the United Nations’ agencies and non-governmental organisations assisting the Rohingya in Bangladesh, and $2.75m for displaced people in Myanmar.
New Zealand was concerned a military coup in Myanmar, which took place in February, would have worsened conditions for nearly 336,000 people who were already displaced due to conflict, Mahuta said.
‘‘Aotearoa New Zealand continues to condemn the military coup and urge the immediate return to civilian government and the cessation of violence,’’ Mahuta said.
Mahuta said Myanmar’s military would not receive or benefit from the aid money.
New Zealand cut political and military ties with Myanmar on February 9, a week after the coup.
Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, took control of the country on February 1, after contesting an election result.
The country’s elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested along with leaders of her National League for Democracy Party, and Suu Kyi is to be tried on a range of charges this week.
Widespread protest action has been met with a crackdown. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-profit organisation that has been tracking the response to the coup, said on Sunday that 863 people had been killed, and more than 4800 people had been detained.
More than 700,000 Rohingya, an ethnic group that lived in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, fled across the border to Bangladesh in 2017 as the Tatmadaw waged a brutal campaign against them.
A United Nations fact-finding mission in 2018 said the country’s top military generals, including Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in the coup, should be prosecuted for genocide.
The Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have long been a stateless people as successive rulers and governments in Myanmar have denied them citizenship rights.