Pressure Rises at UN on Myanmar Over Rohingya Crisis
September 29, 2017 by admin
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Ms. Haley’s remarks were the strongest she has yet made on the crisis, and raised the possibility that the United States might reimpose sanctions on Myanmar that were rescinded under the Obama administration.
Mr. Guterres, who led United Nations refugee operations for 10 years, demanded an immediate halt to military operations by Myanmar’s security forces against Rohingya civilians and called for unfettered access by aid groups to areas that have been cut off.
“We have received bone-chilling accounts from those who had fled — mainly women, children and the elderly,” he told the Security Council.
Myanmar’s national security adviser, U Thaung Tun, who also attended the meeting, reiterated the government’s rejection of accusations that it has systematically persecuted the Rohingya. He described the military’s actions in Rakhine State, the center of the crisis, as counterterrorism operations against Rohingya militants who killed members of the security forces on Aug. 25.
He also asserted that Myanmar wanted friendly relations with Bangladesh, where the total population of Rohingya refugees is nearing one million. Myanmar’s outreach to Bangladesh, he said, “gives the lie to the assertion that there is a policy of ethnic cleansing on our part.”
Hours before the Security Council meeting, officials in Myanmar abruptly postponed a planned visit by representatives of United Nations aid agencies and diplomats to Rakhine State.
Inside a Rohingya Refugee Camp
Our correspondent reports from a sprawling makeshift city that houses hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people, driven from their homes by Myanmar’s military.
By BEN C. SOLOMON on Publish Date September 23, 2017.
Photo by Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
The hosts blamed bad weather and said the trip would be postponed until Oct. 2, even though the envoys had gathered at the airport in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, to board their flight.
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Thousands of Rohingya refugees continue to flee into Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi diplomat said 20,000 had arrived on Wednesday alone.
Some have walked for days in search of safety, others have made the dangerous journey by boat, made even more treacherous by the monsoon rains.
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At least 15 Rohingya people, including nine children, were killed Thursday when the trawler carrying them capsized in the Bay of Bengal. Their bodies washed up on the shore alongside some survivors.
“The women and children couldn’t swim,” one survivor, Nuru Salam, 22, told reporters. He had tried to cross with his entire family, he said, when the boat tipped. His son drowned, and he was still searching for his wife.
The International Organization for Migration, the United Nations agency that has been monitoring the influx of Rohingya into Bangladesh, said about 100 people had boarded the vessel a day earlier.
A young women who made it to shore said the captain had tried to anchor the boat in rough seas and lost control. Local residents saw the boat capsize from shore.
“These people thought they had finally arrived to safety but died before even touching land,” said Abdullah Al Mamoun, an International Organization for Migration staff member.
Nearly half of Myanmar’s Rohingya population has fled into Bangladesh since the government crackdown began. Survivors have recounted massacres in their villages in Rakhine State, both by government security forces and allied mobs.
Those who reach Bangladesh face overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the makeshift camps for the displaced. The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern about a health crisis.
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“We are trying to prepare ourselves, but if not enough is done, and not done quickly enough, then there is a risk of a disaster within a disaster,” said Hervé Isambert, the refugee agency’s senior public health officer.
Those Rohingya left behind in Myanmar have been cut off from aid.
In a statement on Thursday, aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, called on the Myanmar government to allow free access to Rakhine so they could “provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”
Officials associated with the office of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, have accused international aid groups of abetting Rohingya militants. Aid groups have rejected the accusations.
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