73000 Muslims flee as conflict spreads in Myanmar

COX’S BAZAR/YANGON: Myanmar urged Muslims in the troubled north-west to co-operate in the search for insurgents, whose co-ordinated attacks on security posts coupled with an army crackdown have led to one of the bloodiest bouts of violence to engulf the Rohingya community in decades.

Aid agencies estimate about 73 000 Rohingya have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh from Myanmar since violence erupted last week, Vivian Tan, regional spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said yesterday.

Hundreds more refugees yesterday walked through rice paddies from the Naf River separating the two countries into Bangladesh, straining scarce resources of aid groups and local communities already helping tens of thousands.

The clashes and military counter-offensive have killed nearly 400 people during the past week.

The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by critics of not speaking out for the minority.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that violence against Muslims amounted to genocide. It marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October.

“Islamic villagers in northern Maungtaw have been urged to co-operate when security forces search for Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) extremist terrorists, and not to pose a threat or brandish weapons when security forces enter their villages,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said yesterday.

Arsa has been declared a terrorist organisation by the government. It claimed responsibility for attacks on security posts last week.

In Maungni village in northern Rakhine, villagers last week handed two Arsa members over to the authorities. The army wrote in a Facebook post that Rohingya insurgents had set fire to monasteries, images of Buddha, schools and houses in northern Rakhine. Myanmar officials blamed Arsa, but Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say arson and killings by the army aim to force the minority group out of the country. – Reuters