Almost 90,000 Rohingya Muslims arrive in Bangladesh amid crackdown

Nearly 90,000 Rohingya Muslims have arrived in Bangladesh since the Myanmar military unleashed another bloody crackdown on the persecuted Muslim community in troubled Rakhine State late last month.

According to a United Nations report published on Monday, a total of 87,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims—including women and children, many with bullet wounds— have arrived in Bangladesh since last month.

Dozens of Rohingya refugees, suffering gunshot wounds, arrived in a hospital near Bangladesh’s southeastern border to get treated, AP reported, saying that the hospital was overcrowded with injured refugees.

Myanmar’s military intensified attacks on Rohingya Muslims on August 25, after dozens of police and border outposts in the northern state of Rakhine came under attack by an armed group, which is said to be defending the rights of the Rohingya.

The Muslim community had already been under a military siege in Rakhine since October 2016. The government used a militant attack on border guards back then as the pretext to enforce the lockdown. The Rohingya had already been subject to communal violence by extremist Buddhists for years.

Myanmar’s military is accused of committing atrocities and crimes against Rohingya people, who are considered by the UN as the “most persecuted minority group in the world.”

The refugees, who have recently made it to Bangladesh, said military forces attacked, burned villages and shot civilians, forcing many thousands of people to take perilous boat journeys across the Naf River, which separates Myanmar from Bangladesh.

They witnessed “massacres” of civilians, whose villages were burnt by Myanmarese soldiers.

Bangladesh border guard commander Ariful Islam said earlier that at least 40 drowned in the river only this week.

Almost 400 people have been killed over the past week in Rohingya-majority Rakhine State, according to official figures.

The bloody military crackdown, along with a blockade on Rakhine State, has left thousands of people stranded without essential life-saving supplies in the conflict area, The Guardian reported on Monday.

The Myanmar government has blocked all United Nations aid agencies from delivering food, water and medicine to Rohingya Muslims.

SS