- The Sixth Anniversary of Genocide Against Rohingya – United States Department of State Department of State
- UN pledges continued support for voluntary, dignified return of Rohingya refugees Anadolu Agency | English
- ‘We want to go home’, plead Rohingya in Bangladesh 6 years after exodus South China Morning Post
- Facebook should pay for what it did to my people, Rohingya Al Jazeera English
- IOM Calls for Increased Support, Sustainable Solutions for Rohingya Refugees International Organization for Migration (IOM)
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Rohingya
Rohingya in Myanmar: Biden administration formally determines military committed genocide
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will publicly announce the determination, which human rights groups have been advocating for years, at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, on Monday.
Reuters first reported on the administration’s recognition of genocide.
Until now, the US had stopped short of declaring the atrocities — including mass killings and rape — committed in 2017 against the Muslim minority Rohingya population a genocide. The violence forced nearly a million people to flee, and the United Nations recommended that top military officials face genocide charges.
“I applaud the Biden administration for finally recognizing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya as genocide. While this determination is long overdue, it is nevertheless a powerful and critically important step in holding this brutal regime to account,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Sunday.
America, the Oregon Democrat said, “must lead the world to make it clear that atrocities like these will never be allowed to be buried unnoticed, no matter where they occur.”
A US State Department report released quietly in 2018 found that violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State was “extreme, large-scale, widespread, and seemingly geared toward both terrorizing the population and driving out the Rohingya residents.”
The State Department has sanctioned a number of Myanmar military officials, including commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, for their role in committing those human rights abuses.
This story has been updated with comments from Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Fears for Rohingya stranded at sea for 10 days, as engines fail and eight die | World news
The United Nations refugee agency has called for the immediate rescue of a group of Rohingya refugees adrift in their boat in the Andaman Sea without food or water, many of them ill and suffering from extreme dehydration.
The UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said it did not know the exact location of the vessel and understood that some passengers had died. The boat had left southern Bangladesh about 10 days ago and experienced engine failure, it said.
“Immediate action is needed to save lives and prevent further tragedy,” UNHCR said in a statement, offering to support governments by providing humanitarian help to those rescued.
A senior Indian coastguard official confirmed to Reuters that the boat has been tracked to an area off the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
At least eight people had died on the boat, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a group that monitors the Rohingya crisis.
Lewa said Indian navy vessels that were close by had provided food and water. “But we still don’t know what they will do afterwards,” he added.
A spokesperson for India’s navy did not provide details of the situation but said a statement would be issued later.
According to UNHCR, the boat set out from the Bangladesh coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, where about a million Rohingya live in dire conditions in sprawling refugee camps.
In Malaysia meanwhile, a court has temporarily stayed the deportation of 1,200 Myanmar nationals who were due to be returned home on boats provided by the Myanmar military. The migrants included members of vulnerable minorities, and had been sent to a military base on Malaysia’s west coas to be loaded on to three boats for the journey home .
The United States and the UN criticised the plan, and have called for the UN refugee agency to be granted access to the detainees to assess whether any are asylum seekers.
The UN says it knows of at least six are registered with them and in need of international protection.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a deadly crackdown by security forces in Myanmar.
Authorities in Bangladesh said on Monday they were unaware of any boats leaving the camps. “If we had such information, we would have stopped them,” said Rafiqul Islam, an additional police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar.
Amnesty International said in a statement that too many lives had already been lost from countries refusing to assist Rohingya people at sea.
“Another repeat of those shameful incidents must be avoided here,” said Amnesty South Asia campaigner Saad Hammadi.
“After years of limbo in Bangladesh and following the recent coup in Myanmar, Rohingya people feel they have no option but to undertake these perilous journeys.”
Caught in Myanmar’s Rohingya Tragedy, a Bride Fights to Reach Her Groom
In mid-March, Sadeka Bibi set off with a small bundle of her belongings for an unmarked spot on the side of a road in southeast Bangladesh, filled at once with hope and fear.
A truck would meet her there, drive her to a place near the shore about an hour south, and she’d get on a boat that would ferry her illegally to Malaysia, where a man she had never met was waiting to marry her.
She knew it was dangerous. The boat could capsize. She could be beaten, starved or extorted by human traffickers. She could die. Or, like the 10 previous attempts she had made to get across, her escape could be thwarted by rough seas or border authorities. Still, to Sadeka, a 21-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, making the journey seemed like the only way for a fresh start.
It was either that or languish behind barbed wire, potentially for the rest of her life, in the world’s largest refugee camp, her immediate family scattered across three countries.
Sadeka’s story is the Rohingya’s in microcosm. Driven to the brink of destruction by rampaging soldiers, human traffickers and hostile governments, a community that was once believed to have numbered well over a million in Myanmar has been sundered, not by a single action, but by a series of blows that have left a people with no place to call home.