Thread: U.N. expects up to 300,000 Rohingya could flee Myanmar violence

Exclusive: U.N. expects up to 300,000 Rohingya could flee Myanmar violence to Bangladesh



By Simon Lewis
,Reuters•September 6, 2017

Rohingya refugees wait for food near Kutupalong refugee camp after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Ukhia, Bangladesh, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui More

By Simon Lewis

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Up to 300,000 Rohingya Muslims could flee violence in northwestern Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, a U.N. agency official said on Wednesday, warning of a funding shortfall for emergency food supplies for the refugees.

According to estimates issued by United Nations workers in Bangladesh's border region of Cox's Bazar, arrivals since the latest bloodshed started 12 days ago have already reached 146,000.

Numbers are difficult to establish with any certainty due to the turmoil as Rohingya escape operations by Myanmar's military.

However, the U.N. officials have raised their estimate of the total expected refugees from 120,000 to 300,000, said Dipayan Bhattacharyya, who is Bangladesh spokesman for the World Food Programme.

"They are coming in nutritionally deprived, they have been cut off from a normal flow of food for possibly more than a month," he told Reuters. "They were definitely visibly hungry, traumatized."

The surge of refugees, many sick or wounded, has strained the resources of aid agencies and communities which are already helping hundreds of thousands displaced by previous waves of violence in Myanmar. Many have no shelter, and aid agencies are racing to provide clean water, sanitation and food.

Bhattacharyya said the refugees were now arriving by boat as well as crossing the land border at numerous points.

Another U.N. worker in the area cautioned that the estimates were not "hard science", given the chaos and lack of access to the area on the Myanmar side where the military is still conducting its 'clearance operation'. The source added that the 300,000 number was probably toward the worst-case scenario.

The latest violence began when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counter-offensive killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of villagers to Bangladesh.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the violence could spiral into a "humanitarian catastrophe".

Based on the prediction that 300,000 could arrive, the WFP calculated that it would need $13.3 million in additional funding to provide high-energy biscuits and basic rice rations for four months.

Bhattacharyya called for donors to meet the shortfall urgently. "If they don't come forward now, we may see that these people would be fighting for food among themselves, the crime rate would go up, violence against women and on children would go up," he said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive...172221267.html

Feed them birth control. We need Global Population Control.

No one wants these people yet they continue to breed in filth and dirt. Disgusting!

No money, no aid, no oatmeal.

Feed and breed, feed and breed, feed and breed...end this cycle of poverty!

Majority are muslim so expect the UN to spread them @ the world as the muslim multiple wives, inbreeding, 20 children per man continues.

they are sick and want us to fix them to call them dreamers it's right because they are homles and wurst one nothing but we give them like they have working for us we own nothing of them

Look for UN to force these people onto western civilizations so we can pay for them to continue breeding. These people as well as those from myanmar (burma) have active TB and other diseases. The UN needs to make themselves worthwhile by forcing these governments to care for their own people - NOT US!

What the so called "humanitarians" do not understand is the breeding practices (mostly inbred) with 20 children per man from multiple wives is not acceptable in today's world. It is they that must adjust and stay in their own countries - accept your fate or change your government! And learn about birth control too - how can you continue to birth when you do not have a home?

Saddam and other muslim rulers did away with whatever groups they felt like - saddam did away with the "marsh people" by cutting off their water, etc. Assad was riding of excess population too. That is how these people function, their way of life. These rulers did what is the norm in the environments they call home. So don't bring them here!

UN: 270,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in two weeks

Another UN official says more than 1,000 people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, may have been killed.

More than 1,000 people may already have been killed in Myanmar, according to a UN official [Suzauddin Rubel/AFP/Getty Images]The number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh in the last two weeks to escape the violence in Myanmar has shot up to about 270,000, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
Vivian Tan said the number had jumped from an estimate of 164,000 on Thursday because the agency had found new pockets of refugees in border areas.
A UN official told AFP news agency on Friday that more than 1,000 people may already have been killed in Myanmar, mostly minority Rohingya Muslims.
"This [the refugee figures] does not necessarily reflect fresh arrivals within the past 24 hours but that we have identified more people in different areas that we were not aware of before," said Tan.
"The numbers are so alarming. It really means we have to step up our response and that the situation in Myanmar has to be addressed urgently."

The fresh influx of refugees across the border has overwhelmed camps in Bangladesh that were already bursting at the seams.
"The two refugee camps in Cox's Bazar in southeast Bangladesh - home to nearly 34,000 Rohingya refugees before this influx - are now bursting at the seams. The population has more than doubled in two weeks, totalling more than 70,000. There is an urgent need for more land and shelters," UNHCR said in a briefing note for reporters in Geneva.
"The vast majority are women, including mothers with newborn babies, families with children. They arrive in poor condition, exhausted, hungry and desperate for shelter."
OPINION: Aung San Suu Kyi does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize
The Rohingya have long been subjected to discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which denies them citizenship and regards them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even if they have lived in the country for generations.
Myanmar's army has previously said it had killed 387 Rohingya fighters. Authorities say they have lost 15 security personnel since the August attacks.
Myanmar's Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest when Myanmar was a military dictatorship, is now the country's de facto leader with the title of State Counsellor.
Rights groups, activists - including many who campaigned for her in the past - and her fellow Nobel laureates Malala Yousafzai and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have condemned her.

Nepal failing to recognise Rohingya as refugees

When it awarded Aung San Suu Kyi the 1991 Peace Prize, the Nobel committee said that she "emphasises the need for conciliation between the sharply divided regions and ethnic groups in her country".
But earlier this week, in her first statement since the violence erupted, Aung San Suu Kyi, 72, condemned a "huge iceberg of misinformation" on the crisis, without mentioning the Rohingya flocking to Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Rohingya Muslims are warning that unless the international community takes a firm stance against the violence, the country could witness "ethnic cleansing on the scale of the Srebrenica massacre".
On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, appealing to Aung San Suu Kyi and the country's security forces to end the violence.
Two Rohingya sources told Al Jazeera on Thursday that several people had been shot dead near the Maungdow township in Rakhine, with thick plumes of smoke seen billowing from the village of Godu Thara after security forces burned down the homes of fleeing Rohingya.
Access to the area has been blocked to foreign media so Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the sources' accounts.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Maungdow township under a pseudonym, Anwar, 25, said there was a "sustained and targeted military campaign against Muslims".
"The Myanmar army and Buddhist extremists are specifically targeting the Muslim population," he said.
"Women, children, the elderly - no one has been spared. The situation is continuing to get worse, and Aung San Suu Kyi's government is failing to raise its voice," Anwar added.

Rohingya Muslim refugees make their way into Bangladesh after crossing the Myanmar Bangladesh border [Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]

Rohingya refugees sit as they are temporarily held by the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) in an open area after crossing the border in Teknaf, Bangladesh [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/0...090357860.html