By Reuters
Attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar
security forces in Rakhine State triggered a response by the army and Buddhist
vigilantes so brutal a senior U.N. official denounced it as a textbook example
of ethnic cleansing.
Days, weeks and months after the Aug. 25 violence, more
than 600,000 Rohingya fled to Muslim Bangladesh, trekking over mountains and
through forests and rice fields inundated by monsoon rain.
Many of the refugees were traumatized, exhausted and
hungry, some wounded by bullets, knives or clubs, many with burns. Many women
said they had been raped.
All of the refugees brought accounts of a campaign of
murderous violence and arson by the Myanmar security forces and Buddhist
civilians that they believed was aimed at driving them out of the country.
Mostly Buddhist Myanmar denies the accusations.
Read also here: https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/persecuted-rohingya-muslims-flee-violence-in-myanmar
Myanmar says the rebels responsible for the Aug. 25
attacks on about 30 security posts and an army camp - the Arakan Rohingya
Salvation Army - are terrorists and it is they who unleashed most of the
violence and arson that reduced hundreds of Rohingya villages nestled in emerald-green
rice fields to ash.
The Rohingya have long faced discrimination and
repression in Rakhine State where bad blood with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists,
stemming from violence by both sides, goes back generations.
Rohingya are not regarded as an indigenous ethnic
minority in Myanmar - the government even refuses to recognise the term
“Rohingya”, instead labelling them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Most
have been denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity.
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They have long lived under apartheid-like conditions,
with little access to even the limited opportunities in education and
employment open to their Buddhist neighbours in one of Myanmar’s poorest
regions.
About one million Rohingya were believed to have been
living in Rakhine State before the latest violence. Bangladesh was already home
to 400,000 of them who had fled earlier repression.
The new arrivals, many landing by boat after being
ferried across a border river, crammed into the existing refugee camps in the
Cox’s Bazar district, many camping out in the rain - lucky ones able to string
up a piece of plastic - beside muddy tracks.
Horrific Pictures of Rohingyas, fleeing native land for
ongoing State run Genocide against Rohingyas along it's ancestral land Arakan
(Rakhine State). https://lnkd.in/dAtk2z4
Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most crowded
countries, initially said the Rohingya were not welcome and ordered border
guards to push them back.
But it quickly changed its stand in the face of the scale
of the exodus and began gearing up, with the help of U.N. and other aid
agencies, to cope with the fastest-developing refugee crisis the world had seen
in years.
The crisis has raised grave doubts about Myanmar’s
transition from military-ruled pariah to budding democracy, and about the
commitment to human rights of the democracy leader who struggled to end nearly
50 years of harsh military rule - Aung San Suu Kyi.
The generals remain in full charge of security under a
constitution they drafted, even though Suu Kyi runs the government.
Analysts say Suu Kyi has to avoid angering the army and
alienating supporters by being seen to take the side of a Muslim minority that
enjoys little sympathy in a country that has seen a surge of Buddhist
nationalism.
Nevertheless, the failure of the Nobel peace laureate to
speak out forcefully in defence of the Rohingya would seem to have irreparably
damaged her reputation overseas.
The international community is demanding that the
Rohingya be allowed to go home in safety, and Bangladesh and Myanmar have begun
talks on repatriation, but huge doubts remain about the Rohingya ever being
able to return in peace to rebuild their homes and till their fields.