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Aid agency warns of mass deaths as Rohingya crisis deepens

COX’S BAZAR (BANGLADESH) — Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could die because of a lack of food, shelter and water available for the huge numbers of them fleeing violence in Myanmar, an aid agency warned yesterday as Myanmar’s military chief urged the country to unite over the issue.

Rohingya in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. Dhaka said yesterday that it has started immunising tens of thousands of children against diseases. Photo: Reuters

Rohingya in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. Dhaka said yesterday that it has started immunising tens of thousands of children against diseases. Photo: Reuters

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COX’S BAZAR (BANGLADESH) — Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could die because of a lack of food, shelter and water available for the huge numbers of them fleeing violence in Myanmar, an aid agency warned yesterday as Myanmar’s military chief urged the country to unite over the issue.

Nearly 410,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority fled from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state to Bangladesh to escape a military offensive that the United Nations has branded a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

“Many people are arriving hungry, exhausted and with no food or water,” Mr Mark Pierce, Bangladesh country director for the Save the Children aid agency said in a statement.

“I’m particularly worried that the demand for food, shelter, water and basic hygiene support is not being met due to the sheer number of people in need. If families can’t meet their basic needs, the suffering will get even worse and lives could be lost,” he added.

Bangladesh has for decades faced influxes of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the Rohingya are regarded as illegal migrants.

Bangladesh was already home to 400,000 Rohingya before the latest crisis erupted on Aug 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army camp, killing a dozen people.

Mr Pierce said the humanitarian response needed to be rapidly scaled up. “That can only be done if the international community steps up funding,” he said.

Mr Pierce also warned that the number of Rohingya refugees could “rise beyond one million by the end of the year if the influx continues, including about 600,000 children”.

The United Nations has said it was possible that all the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya could flee Rakhine.

Bangladesh and relief agencies are struggling to cope with new arrivals sheltering on roadsides, hills and open spaces close to existing refugees camps around Cox’s Bazar, which borders Myanmar. Aid agencies have said thousands of Rohingya were half-starving and a major health emergency could break out.

Bangladesh has announced it will build 14,000 shelters for some 400,000 refugees, but has said it was also readying a desolate island where many could be relocated.

Mr Pierce said his group is particularly worried about the traumatised children and orphans who have arrived alone in Bangladesh.

“This is a real concern as these children are in an especially vulnerable position, being at increased risk of exploitation and abuse, as well as things like child trafficking,” he said.

“Some children have witnessed violence and killing. Some have been shot at, others have seen their homes set on fire. Some have reportedly watched their parents being killed.”

Save The Children said it is setting up safe spaces in the camps for vulnerable children. They would receive 24-hour support and protection while attempts are made to find family members, it added.

As concerns grow over the plight of the Rohingya in Bangladesh, Dhaka announced yesterday that it has started immunising tens of thousands of children against diseases, as well as taken steps to restrict the movement of refugees into crowded border camps.

Mr Abdus Salam, the top government administrator in the Cox’s Bazar district hospital, said that some 150,000 children will be immunised over seven days for measles, rubella and polio.

“There are a lot of weak and malnourished children among the new arrivals,” UN International Children’s Emergency Fund representative in Bangladesh, Mr Edouard Beigbeder, said in an e-mail. “If proper preventive measures are not taken, highly infectious diseases, especially measles, could even cause an outbreak.”

Two pre-existing Rohingya camps are already beyond capacity and the new arrivals are staying in schools or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields.

The police are also checking vehicles to prevent the Rohingya from moving to nearby towns in an attempt to control a chaotic situation.

“There is an instruction from the prime minister that we must treat Rohingya Muslims while maintaining human rights,”’ said Police Superintendent A K M Iqbal Hossain. “As many private and social organisations are coming and distributing relief, sometimes chaos breaks out ... You understand the scale of a humanitarian crisis here — it’s very difficult to keep order, but we are doing so.”

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s army chief has urged the country to unite over the “issue” of the Rohingya, a group he says has no roots in the country, and which his troops are accused of systematically purging.

The military says its “clearance operations” in Rakhine are aimed at taking out Rohingya militants involved in the August attacks.

The status of the Muslim minority has also long been an explosive topic in Myanmar, where many in the Buddhist majority view the group as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh and deny the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, insisting they be called “Bengalis”.

Army chief General Min Aung Hlaing stated that view in comments posted on his official Facebook page on Saturday. “They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar. (The) Bengali issue is a national cause and we need to be united in establishing the truth,” the post said.

The defence of his army’s operations comes amid strident global condemnation of the violence.

Myanmar’s civilian leader, former democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, has also been castigated for failing to voice sympathy for the Rohingya — a group she has asked her government to refer to only as “Muslims of Rakhine state”.

The Nobel laureate is set to address the nation on the crisis for the first time tomorrow, a high-stakes speech that many outside the country hope will explain her near silence on the human tragedy that is unfolding.

Yet supporters inside the country, where she still enjoys saint-like status for championing Myanmar’s emergence from junta rule, say the leader must tread carefully around a military that ran the country for 50 years and still looms large in the fragile democracy. AGENCIES

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