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More Rohingya pour into Bangladesh; camps at utter capacity

The Associated Press

A Rohingya Muslim child places a smooch on his mother’s cheek as they rest after having crossed over from Myanmar to the Bangladesh side of the border near Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf area on Saturday.

9:47 pm, September 03, 2017

The Associated Press SHAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh (AP) — Aid officials said ease camps were reaching total capacity as thousands of Rohingya refugees continued to pour into Bangladesh on Sunday fleeing violence in western Myanmar.

Some 73,000 people have crossed the border since violence erupted Aug. Twenty five in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman Vivian Suntan.

The violence and the exodus began after Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar police and paramilitary posts in what they said was an effort to protect their ethnic minority from persecution by security coerces in the majority Buddhist country. In response, the military extracted what it called “clearance operations” to root out the insurgents.

Another aid official said Saturday that more than fifty refugees had arrived with bullet injuries and were moved to hospitals in Cox’s Bazar, on the border with Myanmar. Refugees reaching the Bangladeshi fishing village of Shah Porir Dwip described bombs exploding near their homes and Rohingya being burned alive.

Both Myanmar’s security officials and Rohingya insurgents are accusing each other of atrocities. The military has said almost four hundred people, most of them insurgents, have died in clashes.

Aid workers said that large numbers of refugees required instant medical attention as they were suffering from respiratory diseases, infection and malnutrition. The existing medical facilities in the border area were insufficient to cope up with the influx and more aid and paramedics were needed, aid workers said.

“We fled to Bangladesh to save our lives,” said a man who only gave his very first name, Karim. “The military and extremist Rakhine are searing us, searing us, killing us, setting our village on fire.”

He said Saturday he paid 12,000 Bangladeshi taka, or about $150, for each of his family members to be smuggled on a wooden boat to Bangladesh after soldiers killed one hundred ten Rohingya in their village of Kunnapara, near the coastal town of Maungdaw.

“The military ruined everything. After killing some Rohingya, the military burned their houses and shops,” he said. “We have a baby who is eight days only, and an old woman who is 105.”

Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Witness shows hundreds of buildings had been ruined in at least seventeen sites across Rakhine state since Aug. 25, including some seven hundred structures that appeared to have been burned down in just the village of Chein Khar Li, the rights watchdog said.

The government blames the insurgents for searing their own homes and killing Buddhists in Rakhine. Longstanding pressure inbetween the Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists erupted in bloody rioting in 2012, forcing more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps, where many still live.

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