And not only fertile for terrorist recruiters, but also for human traffickers, criminal gangs, prostitution rings — anyone who preys on the vulnerable……….”
Archive for the ‘Rohingya’ Category
A Rohingya success story: “….After his rescue at sea and recovery in Sri Lanka, the International Organization for Migration helped Mr. Rafiq enter the United States and settle in New Hampshire. He heard that Dallas had a larger Rohingya community, so he moved there and began the paperwork to bring his family to America….”
Tuesday, November 21st, 2017“…..Around age 10, Mr. Rafiq began traveling on foot to sell vegetables and cheap clothing in nearby villages. The police would beat and rob him, he said. He sometimes begged them to let him keep half his earnings, but such pleas were ignored; Mr. Rafiq said the beatings were often so severe that it was painful to walk home. He continued this work until he was about 30, when he had two children and a pregnant wife to support.
He decided to join other Rohingya men in an attempt to find work in a neighboring country. Nearly 100 of them crammed onto a boat in February 2008 and set out for what they expected to be a 12-day journey to Malaysia.
The engine died at sea. Thirst and hunger set in, killing more than a dozen men. Bodies eventually had to be thrown overboard because the smell was so horrible, Mr. Rafiq said.
Adrift at sea for four weeks, Mr. Rafiq was stripped of energy and could not move. He watched a friend pass out and die after he drank seawater…..”
Bangladesh steps up vaccination for new Rohingya arrivals as measles cases rise
Tuesday, November 14th, 2017
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Officials from Bangladesh insist that Myanmar must take the Rohingya back.
Sunday, November 5th, 2017“…..Bangladesh now finds itself in an impossible situation. One of Asia’s poorest countries, it is home to 160 million people — half the population of the United States — squeezed into a space the size of Iowa. The Rohingya refugees have taken over hillsides, chopped down countless trees to build their shelters and put such a stress on the economy of Bangladeshi border villages that
Facing international pressure to host the refugees and some domestic pressure to push them out, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has said that her country would continue to help the refugees on humanitarian grounds but that Myanmar must “take their nationals back.”
She has ordered the army to seal off roads around the camps to make sure Rohingya do not start migrating to towns. Her government has also decreed that Rohingya were not allowed to work or register for local cellphone service…..
“If they stay where they are living now,” said Anup Kumar Chakma, a retired Bangladeshi Army officer, “the entire area will become a fertile breeding ground.”
Volunteer medical team spent 10 days treating patients at 3 Rohingya refugee camps
Sunday, November 5th, 2017“…..There is an acute shortage of medication. There are not enough medications and life-saving drugs. There are about 90,000 pregnant women and lots of people are arriving every day and people have walked for days in the jungle, for 10 to 14 days, hungry, eating banana leaves on their way then they crossed the border and entered into refugee camps.
There are lots of sick kids, I have seen lots of illnesses that I have not seen in my 18-year medical career. Lots of respiratory illnesses, every other child with pneumonia. There were no diagnostic imaging, no x-rays, no labs that I could do any work-up for them. A horrible situation…….There are about 12 camps total, and there about 70,000 registered people who are living in each camp. There are lots of unregistered people there. They are sharing small tents. I have seen lots of young children … they were naked running around in the streets.
There is a lack of proper washrooms, they need sanitation there. There is a lack of clean water, they have put some drinking water pumps but it’s not enough. It’s very, very poor……”
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US State Department: “The government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya.”
Tuesday, October 24th, 2017-
More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have battled terror, exhaustion and hunger to reach safety in Bangladesh since Myanmar’s army began a campaign of what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in late August.
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The new arrivals joined more than 300,000 Rohingya who had escaped in recent years.
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The number of people crossing the Naf River that divides the two countries has slowed to about 1,000 to 3,000 a day, down from a peak of 12,000 to 18,000 a day earlier in the crisis
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More than 300,000 children are among the Rohingya refugees.
- Hundreds of thousands of refugees were crammed on a strip of land that lacked roads or infrastructure to support the delivery of aid.
- 210 hospital beds available to support more than 900,000 people living with little access to clean water, sanitation or medical care
- The refugees’ situation is a “time bomb ticking toward a full-blown health crisis”: Doctors Without Borders
- The United Nations food aid agency said that it had distributed food to 580,000 people since the crisis erupted, but that it had so far received less than one-third of the $77 million it needs to aid a million people over six months.
An overwhelming body of published accounts has detailed the Myanmar Army’s campaign of killing, rape and arson in Rakhine, which has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya out of the country since late August, in what the United Nations says is the fastest displacement of a people since the Rwanda genocide.
Tuesday, October 24th, 2017“…..Government officials, opposition politicians, religious leaders and even local human-rights activists have become unified behind this narrative: The Rohingya are not rightful citizens of Buddhist-majority Myanmar, and now, through the power of a globally resurgent Islam, the minority is falsely trying to hijack the world’s sympathy.
Social media postings have amplified the message, claiming that international aid workers are openly siding with the Rohingya. Accordingly, the Myanmar government has blocked aid agencies’ access to Rohingya still trapped in Myanmar — about 120,000 confined to camps in central Rakhine and tens of thousands more in desperate conditions in the north…..”
“My World is Finished”: Rohingya targeted in crimes against humanity in Myanmar
Thursday, October 19th, 2017“…..The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists 11 types of acts which, when knowingly committed during such an attack, constitute crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has consistently documented at least six of these amid the current wave of violence in northern Rakhine State: murder, deportation and forcible displacement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhumane acts such as denying food and other life-saving provisions……”
“More than 530,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled northern Rakhine State in terror in a matter of weeks amid the Myanmar security forces’ targeted campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning, Amnesty International said today in its most detailed analysis yet of the ongoing crisis.
‘My World Is Finished’: Rohingya Targeted in Crimes against Humanity in Myanmar describes how Myanmar’s security forces are carrying out a systematic, organized and ruthless campaign of violence against the Rohingya population as a whole in northern Rakhine State, after a Rohingya armed group attacked around 30 security posts on 25 August.
Dozens of eyewitnesses to the worst violence consistently implicated specific units, including the Myanmar Army’s Western Command, the 33rd Light Infantry Division, and the Border Guard Police. ……”+
Since Sunday, 10,000 to 15,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh at Anjuman Para
Thursday, October 19th, 2017‘They Threw My Baby Into a Fire’: Rohingya atrocities
Saturday, October 14th, 2017“…..In the next violent blur of moments, the soldiers clubbed Rajuma in the face, tore her screaming child out of her arms and hurled him into a fire. She was then dragged into a house and gang-raped.
By the time the day was over, she was running through a field naked and covered in blood. Alone, she had lost her son, her mother, her two sisters and her younger brother, all wiped out in front of her eyes….”