10,000 Rohingya waiting at border to cross into Bangladesh: Report
Tue Oct 3, 2017
Over 10,000 more Rohingya refugees fleeing a military crackdown at home in Myanmar’s Rakhine State have amassed near a crossing point with Bangladesh awaiting entry into the neighboring country.
The refugees “are arriving at the western grove between Letphwekya and Kwunthpin village to emigrate to the neighboring country,” the state-backed Global new Light of Myanmar reported on Tuesday.
Bangladesh has already allowed more than 507,000 Rohingya into the country since late August, when the Buddhist-majority country launched a new campaign of terror and brutality against the Muslims under the pretext of flushing out anti-government militants.
Rohingya-majority Rakhine State has been emptied of half of its Muslim population over the past weeks and more people are on the move as unspeakable acts continue against the Rohingya.
Many witnesses and rights groups have reported systematic attacks, including rape, murder and arson, at the hands of the army and Buddhist mobs against Rohingya Muslims, forcing them to leave their generations-old homes and flee to overcrowded and squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The UN has described the new crackdown on Rohingya as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.
For those Muslims who remained inside Rakhine, conditions are deteriorating day by day.
United Nations officials who took part in a controlled tour of Rakhine state on Monday spoke of an “unimaginable” scale of suffering.
A European Union delegation accompanying them on the government-steered day trip urged an end to the violence after seeing “villages burned to the ground and emptied of inhabitants.”
In Bangladesh, the refugees were skeptical on Tuesday about their chances of ever going back home to Myanmar despite a recent agreement between the two governments on a refugee repatriation process.
There had already been about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the latest exodus.
Myanmar, however, said it would only take back those who arrived after October 2016, if they are “verified.”
Many refugees are suspicious of the Myanmarese government’s plan.
“Everything was burned, even people were burned,” said a refugee who identified himself as Abdullah, dismissing the chances that people would have the necessary documentation for verification of identity.
At the root of the crisis is the refusal by Buddhist-majority Myanmar to grant citizenship to the Muslim minority community.(Agencies)
