The government continued struggling to distribute reliefs among about four lakh Rohingays, already entered Bangladesh fleeing ethnic cleansing in Mynamar, because of inadequate humanitarian aid response from international community while UN agencies on Thursday expressed fear that about 1 million ethnic minorities of Myanmar might flee to Bangladesh.
Rohingays who entered Bangladesh or were waiting in borders were facing untold sufferings with inadequate food, water and sanitation facilities at makeshift settlements or under open sky.
International aid groups rang the alarm bell to escalate efforts for relief works to avoid severe humanitarian crisis.
Children, women and aged Rohingyas were the worst suffers as they failed to make place through crowds elbowing others to collect reliefs distributed by local people. Many of them were seen stretching hands for assistance whenever a vehicle passed by.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina told parliament on Thursday that government engaged army to monitor international relief activities for the Rohingyas who entered Bangladesh.
She urged the administration and political parties to give special attention to ease the sufferings of Rohingyas.
‘Many countries have come forward to provide humanitarian assistance to Rohingyas. We should be careful so that these assistances can reach to them,’ Hasina said.
International humanitarian agencies on Thursday expressed fear that over 10 lakh Rohingyas might flee to Bangladesh when government and aid agencies were struggling to accommodate 4 lakh ethnic minorities already entered Bangladesh fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and International Organisation for Migration at a joint press conference in Dhaka on Thursday said that about 4 lakh Rohingyas already entered Bangladesh and they estimated that about 10 lakh persecuted ethnic minorities might enter Bangladesh.
IOM director operations and emergency Mohammed Abdiker Mohamud said that the international community had yet to come up with necessary humanitarian supports to handle the Rohingya crisis.
He said that Bangladesh alone could not tackle the crisis. ‘We urge the international communities to come up with more help,’ Mohammed Abdiker Mohamud said.
UNHCR assistant high commissioner (operations) George Okoth-Obbo said that all had to be careful about health situation so that another emergency did not occur.
UNICEF Bangladesh in a statement on Thursday said that about 60 per cent of Rohingyas entered Bangladesh were children.
‘There are acute shortages of everything, most critically shelter, food and clean water,’ said UNICEF representative in Bangladesh Edouard Beigbeder.
‘Conditions on the ground place children at high risk of water-borne diseases. We have a monumental task ahead of us to protect these extremely vulnerable children,’ he said.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing began in Rakhine State on August 25, when Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army reportedly attacked dozens of police posts and checkpoints and one military base in Rakhine.
An UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar estimated that more than 1,000 people, mostly minority Rohingya Muslims, might have already been killed in Myanmar violence.
The Rohingyas are a stateless ethnic minority in Myanmar not allowed to exercise their basic rights including the freedom to move, right to education, work and other social, civil and political rights.
Rohingyas were now living here and there making makeshift shelters beside roads and highways, cutting hills and forests in beach town Cox’s Bazar amid run out of water supplies and insufficient relief and medical services.
New Age correspondent in Cox’s Bazar added that the many children and women were found at Palungkhali who failed to receive reliefs. Whenever a van or truck full of relief martial reached the area, Rohingyas thronged there in their hundreds making difficult for the volunteers to control the situation, said local people.
‘Men and strong boys can reach the spot elbowing others and they get the relief,’ said elderly Rohingya woman Khodeza.
Cox’s Bazar additional district magistrate Khaled Mahmud, also the focal person on Rohingya issue, said that it was true that a disorder created at the place where relief was reaching. ‘We are trying to distribute all reliefs from one place at Balukhali camp to avoid the disorder,’ he said.
Cox’s Bazar district administration said that so far they received relief materials from Turkey and Azerbaijan.
‘We are struggling to deal with the situation as so many Rohingyas have entered the country,’ he said.
Local people were seen throwing packets of biscuits, chips, in some cases puffed rice, to the Rohingays living by the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf road and the Marine Drive.
At least five bodies of Rohingyas were recovered from the River Naf at Teknaf on Tursday, said Teknaf police station officer-in-charge Md Main Uddin. With these five, 110 bodies, mostly women and children, had been recovered from the river since August 25.
The Myanmar government rejected a proposal made by Bangladesh to create a ‘safe zone’ in Myanmar for Rohingyas, said a spokesperson from the Office of State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi, reported a Myanmar newspaper.
‘The government rejects the plan to create a safety zone. The international actors control if one is ever established,’ U Zaw Htay, director general at the ministry of the State Counsellor Office, told The Myanmar Times on Wednesday.
Earlier, Bangladesh sent the proposal for a safe zone in Rakhine to the Myanmar government through the International Committee of the Red Cross.
U Zaw Htay said that of the 417 Muslim villages in Rakhine State, residents from 34 villages had either fled or remained, while residents from 176 villages abandoned their homes. However, 260 villages were still inhabited by Rohingyas.
Agence France-Presse reported that Rohingya insurgents whose raids in western Myanmar provoked an army crackdown that spurred a humanitarian crisis, denied any links to global terror groups on Thursday, days after Al-Qaeda urged Muslims to rally to their cause.
‘ARSA feels that it is necessary to make it clear that it has no links with Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Lashkar-e-Taiba or any transnational terrorist group,’ the group said in a statement posted on its Twitter account.
Reuters reported that Smoke was rising from at least five places on the Myanmar side of the border on Thursday. It was not clear what was burning or who set the fires.
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