The Jim Bakker Show

U.N. says still determining if Myanmar crisis is genocide

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations has yet to determine whether violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar meets the legal definition of genocide, Jyoti Sanghera, Asia Pacific chief at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has called the situation “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, but he has not used the word genocide.

“We are yet looking at the legal boundaries of that,” Sanghera said. “It could meet the boundaries, but we haven’t yet made that legal determination at OHCHR.”

A U.N. team took witness statements from Rohingya refugees last month, and another human rights mission is currently on the ground, gathering evidence from some of the 582,000 Rohingya who have fled into Bangladesh in the last two months.

“The testimony gathered by the team referred to unspeakable horrors,” Sanghera told an audience at Geneva’s Graduate Institute. “Even as I speak this evening the world is witnessing a horrific spectacle of massive forced displacement and suffering.”

A few hundred thousand Rohingya are thought to remain in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, she said.

The refugees described massive detention and systematic rape by Myanmar security forces, deliberate destruction of Rohingya villages so that people could not return, and deliberate targeting of cultural and religious leaders that aimed to “diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge”, she said.

Imams had their beards shaved or burnt off, and women and girls were raped inside mosques. Some refugees said their non-Rohingya neighbors had been given weapons and uniforms and worked in concert with the security forces.

“Unsettled post-colonial questions and tensions fueled by colonial powers of the past have been exploited by the military junta in Myanmar to keep ethnic rivalries simmering,” Sanghera said.

“Systematic and acute discrimination of the Rohingya Muslims continues to be kept alive by the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, to a point referred to recently by the High Commissioner for Human Rights as ‘ethnic cleansing’ of an entire people.”

Designating the Rohingya as victims of genocide under a 1948 U.N. convention would increase pressure on the international community to take action to protect them, and could expose Myanmar officials to a greater threat of international justice.

The U.N. convention, passed in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, requires countries to act to prevent and punish genocide, which it defines as any of a number of acts committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

It is one of four categories of crimes subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Ralph Boulton and Peter Graff)

U.S. says holds Myanmar military leaders accountable in Rohingya crisis

A Rohingya refugee woman who crossed the border from Myanmar a day before, carries her daughter and searches for help as they wait to receive permission from the Bangladeshi army to continue their way to the refugee camps, in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

By David Brunnstrom and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmar’s military leadership responsible for its harsh crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Tillerson, however, stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmar’s military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country.

Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmar’s civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China.

“The world can’t just stand idly by and be witness to the atrocities that are being reported in the area,” Tillerson told Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“We really hold the military leadership accountable for what’s happening,” said Tillerson, who said the United States was “extraordinarily concerned” by the situation.

Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Rohingya insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape.

Tillerson said Washington understood Myanmar had a militancy problem, but the military had to be disciplined and restrained in the way it dealt with this and to allow access to the region “so that we can get a full accounting of the circumstances.”

“Someone, if these reports are true, is going to be held to account for that,” Tillerson said. “And it’s up to the military leadership of Burma to decide, ‘What direction do they want to play in the future of Burma?'”

Tillerson said Washington saw Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, as “an important emerging democracy,” but the Rohingya crisis was a test for the power-sharing government.

He said the United States would remain engaged, including ultimately at the United Nations “with the direction this takes.”

The European Union and the United States have been considering targeted sanctions against Myanmar’s military leadership.

Punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals are among a range of options that have been discussed, but they are wary of action that could hurt the wider economy or destabilize already tense ties between Suu Kyi and the army.

Tillerson also said he would visit New Delhi next week as the Trump administration sought to dramatically deepen cooperation with India in response to China’s challenges to “international law and norms” in Asia.

Tillerson said the administration had began a “quiet conversation” with some emerging East Asian democracies about creating alternatives to Chinese infrastructure financing.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)

Myanmar army opens probe amid reports of killings, abuse of Rohingya Muslims

Aerial view of a burned Rohingya village near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine state, Myanmar September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

By Wa Lone and Simon Lewis

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s military has launched an internal probe into the conduct of soldiers during a counteroffensive that has sent more than half a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh, many saying they witnessed killings, rape and arson by troops.

Coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on 30 security posts on Aug. 25 sparked a ferocious military response in the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine state that the United Nations has said was ethnic cleansing.

A committee led by military Lieutenant-General Aye Win has begun an investigation into the behavior of military personnel, the office of the commander in chief said on Friday, insisting the operation was justified under Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s constitution.

According to a statement posted on Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s Facebook page, the panel will ask, “Did they follow the military code of conduct? Did they exactly follow the command during the operation? After that (the committee) will release full information.”

Myanmar is refusing entry to a U.N. panel that was tasked with investigating allegations of abuses after a smaller military counteroffensive launched in October 2016.

But domestic investigations – including a previous internal military probe – have largely dismissed refugees’ claims of abuses committed during security forces’ so-called “clearance operations”.

Thousands of refugees have continued to arrived cross the Naf river separating Myanmar’s Rakhine state and Bangladesh in recent days, even though Myanmar insists military operations ceased on Sept. 5.

Aid agencies now estimate that 536,000 people have now arrived in Cox’s Bazar district, straining scarce resources of aid groups and local communities.

About 200,000 Rohingya were already in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Myanmar, where they have long been denied citizenship and faced restrictions on their movements and access to basic services.

Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has pledged accountability for human rights abuses and says Myanmar will accept back refugees who can prove they were residents of Myanmar.

The powerful army chief has taken a harder stance, however, telling the U.S. ambassador in Myanmar earlier this week that the exodus of Rohingya – who he said were non-native “Bengalis” – was exaggerated.

In comments to Japan’s ambassador carried in state media on Friday, Min Aung Hlaing denied ethnic cleansing was taking place on the grounds that photos showed Muslims “departing calmly rather than fleeing in terror”.

(Additional reporting by Krishna N. Das in New Delhi; Editing by Nick Macfie)

SWIFT says hackers still targeting bank messaging system

By Jim Finkle

TORONTO (Reuters) – Hackers continue to target the SWIFT bank messaging system, though security controls instituted after last year’s $81 million heist at Bangladesh’s central bank have helped thwart many of those attempts, a senior SWIFT official told Reuters.

“Attempts continue,” said Stephen Gilderdale, head of SWIFT’s Customer Security Programme, in a phone interview. “That is what we expected. We didn’t expect the adversaries to suddenly disappear.”

The disclosure underscores that banks remain at risk of cyber attacks targeting computers used to access SWIFT almost two years after the February 2016 theft from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gilderdale declined to say how many hacks had been attempted this year, what percentage were successful, how much money had been stolen or whether they were growing or slowing down.

On Monday, two people were arrested in Sri Lanka for suspected money laundering from a Taiwanese bank whose computer system was hacked to enable illicit transactions abroad. Police acted after the state-owned Bank of Ceylon reported a suspicious transfer.

SWIFT, a Belgium-based co-operative owned by its user banks, has declined comment on the case, saying it does not discuss individual entities.

Gilderdale said that some security measures instituted in the wake of the Bangladesh Bank heist had thwarted attempts.

As an example, he said that SWIFT had stopped some heists thanks to an update to its software that automatically sends alerts when hackers tamper with data on bank computers used to access the messaging network.

SWIFT shares technical information about cyber attacks and other details on how hackers target banks on a private portal open to its members.

Gilderdale was speaking ahead of the organization’s annual Sibos global user conference, which starts on Monday in Toronto.

At the conference, SWIFT will release details of a plan to start offering security data in “machine digestible” formats that banks can use to automate efforts to discover and remediate cyber attacks, he said.

SWIFT will also unveil plans to start sharing that data with outside security vendors so they can incorporate the information into their products, he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Myanmar army chief says Rohingya Muslims “not natives”, numbers fleeing exaggerated

FILE PHOTO: Myanmar's General Min Aung Hlaing takes part during a parade to mark the 72nd Armed Forces Day in the capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar March 27, 2017. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

By Robert Birsel and Thu Thu Aung

YANGON (Reuters) – Rohingya Muslims are not native to Myanmar, the army chief told the U.S. ambassador in a meeting in which he apparently did not address accusations of abuses by his men and said media was complicit in exaggerating the number of refugees fleeing.

The U.N. human rights office said on Wednesday Myanmar forces had brutally driven out half a million Rohingya from northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh in recent weeks, torching homes, crops and villages to prevent them from returning.

Thousands of Rohingya were leaving the state on Thursday, aiming to reach Bangladesh by boat, citing a shortage of food and fear of repression, residents said. A Myanmar official said people were leaving but he dismissed the suggestion hunger and intimidation were factors.

The army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, gave his most extensive account of the Rohingya refugee crisis aimed at an international audience in the meeting with Ambassador Scot Marciel, according to a report posted on his Facebook page.

The general is the most powerful person in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and his apparently uncompromising stance would indicate little sensitivity about the military’s image over a crisis that has drawn international condemnation and raised questions about a transition to democracy under Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military campaign is popular in Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the mostly stateless Rohingya, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged.

Min Aung Hlaing, referring to Rohingya by the term “Bengali”, which they regard as derogatory, said British colonialists were responsible for the problem.

“The Bengalis were not taken into the country by Myanmar, but by the colonialists,” he told Marciel, according to the account of the meeting posted on Thursday.

“They are not the natives.”

Coordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on some 30 security posts on Aug. 25 sparked a ferocious military response.

The U.N. rights office said in its report, based on 65 interviews with Rohingya who had arrived in Bangladesh, that abuses had begun before the Aug. 25 attacks and included killings, torture and rape of children.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley last month denounced a “brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority” and called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar until its military put sufficient accountability measures in place.

The European Union and the United States are considering targeted sanctions against Myanmar’s military leaders, officials familiar with the discussions said this week.

Suu Kyi is due make a speech on television later on Thursday.

She was swept into office last year after winning an election, but the military holds immense power, including exclusive say over security.

‘FEEL INSECURE’

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has described the government operations as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and said the action appeared to be “a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return”.

Min Aung Hlaing did not refer to such accusations, according to the published account, but said the insurgents had killed 90 Hindus and 30 Rohingya linked to the government.

Insurgent opposition to a citizenship verification campaign, which used the term Bengali, was behind the Aug. 25 attacks that sparked the violence, he said.

“Local Bengalis were involved in the attacks under the leadership of ARSA. That is why they might have fled as they feel insecure,” he said, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army insurgents.

“The native place of Bengalis is really Bengal,” he said.

He said it was an exaggeration to say a “very large” number were fleeing to Bangladesh and there had been “instigation and propaganda by using the media from behind the scene”.

He did not elaborate but said the “real situation” had to be relayed to the international community. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman is due to visit on Friday.

Rohingya residents of Rakhine said up to 10,000 people had left over two days.

“I’ve seen a lots leaving, on motorbikes, on foot,” said one.

Another, a teacher, said there had been no military offensive recently but people were going.

“There’s no work, nowhere to get food and the government isn’t helping,” said the teacher, who, like the first resident, declined to be identified.

Rakhine state’s secretary, Tin Maung Swe, said people were leaving “every day” to join relatives already in Bangladesh.

“Nobody is starving in death in Myanmar. The government is trying to support those in need,” he said. “They can fish or catch shrimps in the creeks near their villages.

“No one’s killing them or intimidating them.”

Min Aung Hlaing repeated a promise from Suu Kyi that refugees would be accepted back under an agreement with Bangladesh in the early 1990s.

But many refugees doubt their chances of going home fearing they will not be able to prove their right to return.

(Additonal reporting by Wa Lone; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Trapped Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar get first substantial food aid in months

By Wa Lone

YANGON (Reuters) – Rohingya Muslim villagers cut off from food and threatened by Buddhist neighbors in Myanmar’s violence-racked Rakhine state received their first substantial food supplies in months on Wednesday after international pressure on the government to help.

Diplomats and aid groups called on the government to step in after Reuters exclusively reported the dire situation faced by thousands of Rohingya Muslims trapped in the villages of Ah Nauk Pyin and Nyaung Pin Gyi last month.

“A boat arrived yesterday evening with rice bags and six Red Cross staff came to our village this morning,” Maung Maung, an administrator in the riverside Rohingya village of Ah Nauk Pyin, told Reuters by telephone.

He said it was the first time in three months that significant supplies of food had been delivered to the village.

“The aid arrived just as we’re starving,” he said.

Fragile relations between the Rohingya villagers and their ethnic Rakhine Buddhist neighbors were shattered on Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants prompted a ferocious response from Myanmar’s security forces.

Rights groups say ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have joined in attacks on Rohingya, and the residents of Ah Nauk Pyin told Reuters in mid-September they had been threatened by Buddhists and they had pleaded with authorities for safe passage out.

The state government told them to stay put.

More than half a million Rohingya villagers have fled to Bangladesh to escape what the United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” aimed at pushing the Rohingya out of the country for good.

Myanmar dismisses that. It says it is fighting a legitimate campaign against Rohingya “terrorists”.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remain in Rakhine, many in fear of their security and facing growing hunger as food supplies dwindle, partly because of restrictions on the trade and movement of rice.

‘SUPPORT FOR ALL’

Minister for Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye, who is leading the government response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Rakhine, confirmed that the aid had arrived in Ah Nauk Pyin.

He said the government would support all vulnerable people.

“We’ll support these people continuously, until they can stand on their own feet,” he said. “Nobody wants to rely on aid all their lives.”

After Reuters reported on the plight of Ah Nauk Pyin, and the nearby village of Nyaung Pin Gyi, Myanmar-based diplomats had asked to visit on a government-organized trip to Rakhine state last week.

The itinerary of the trip mentioned the Reuters report.

Win Myat Aye has been to Ah Nauk Pyin several times with Rakhine state government officials, and has promised to protect the residents.

Myanmar has restricted access to Rakhine for most aid agencies, despite growing international calls for humanitarian groups to be allowed in to help.

Aid is being organized by three Red Cross organizations – the Myanmar Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The aid to the 600 families of Ah Nauk Pyin delivered on Wednesday included rice, oil, beans, salt, sugar and tinned fish for a month.

Residents of the other Rohingya village, Nyaung Pin Gyi, said they had not been visited and had yet to get any aid but ICRC communications official Khin Htay Oo said Nyaung Pin Gyi would get food aid on Tuesday.

“We help all people affected by the conflict, we do not take sides based on race or religion,” she said.

(Reporting by Wa Lone; Editing by Robert Birsel)

‘I can’t take this any more’ – Rohingya Muslims flee Myanmar in new surge

Rohingya refugees, who arrived from Myanmar last night, walk in a rice field after crossing the border in Palang Khali near Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh

By Tom Allard and Nurul Islam

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar fled to Bangladesh on Monday in a new surge of refugees driven by fears of starvation and violence the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing.

Reuters reporters on the Bangladeshi side of the border, in Palong Khali district, saw several thousand people crossing from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, filing along embankments between flooded fields and scrubby forest.

“Half of my village was burnt down. I saw them do it,” said Sayed Azin, 46, who said he had walked for eight days carrying his 80-year-old mother in a basket strung on a bamboo pole between him and his son.

Soldiers and Buddhist mobs had torched his village, he said.

“I left everything,” he said, sobbing. “I can’t find my relatives … I can’t take this any more.”

Some new arrivals spoke of bloody attacks by Buddhist mobs on people trekking toward the border.

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar make their way through the rice field after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

About 519,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts in Rakhine sparked a ferocious military response.

Refugees and rights groups say the army and Buddhist vigilantes have engaged in a campaign of killing and arson aimed at driving the Rohingya out of Myanmar.

Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing and has labeled the militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who launched the initial attacks as terrorists who have killed civilians and burnt villages.

Among those fleeing were up to 35 people on a boat that capsized off the Bangladesh coast on Sunday. At least 12 of them drowned while 13 were rescued, Bangladeshi police said.

“We faced so many difficulties, for food and survival,” Sayed Hossein, 30, told Reuters, adding that his wife, three children, mother and father in law had drowned.

“We came here to save our lives.”

‘GETTING WORSE’

The Myanmar government has said its “clearance operations” against the militants ended in early September and people had no reason to flee. But in recent days the government has reported large numbers of Muslims preparing to leave, with more than 17,000 people in one area alone.

The government cited worries about food and security as their reasons.

Some villagers in Rakhine said food was running out because rice in the fields was not ready for harvest and the state government had closed village markets and restricted the transport of food, apparently to cut supplies to the militants.

“The situation’s getting worse. We have no food and no guarantee of security,” said a Rohingya resident of Hsin Hnin Pyar village on the south of the state’s Buthidaung district.

He said a lot of people were preparing to flee.

“While the Myanmar military has engaged in a campaign of violence, there is mounting evidence that Rohingya women, men and children are now also fleeing the very real threat of starvation,” rights group Amnesty International said.

Senior state government official Kyaw Swar Tun declined to go into details when asked about the food, except to ask, “Have you heard of anyone dying of hunger in Buthidaung?”

The reports of food shortages will add to the urgency of calls by aid agencies and the international community for unfettered humanitarian access to the conflict zone.

The insurgents declared a one-month ceasefire from Sept. 10 to enable the delivery of aid but the government rebuffed them, saying it did not negotiate with terrorists.

The ceasefire is due to end at midnight on Monday but the insurgents said in a statement they were ready to respond to any peace move by the government.

The ability of the group to mount any sort of challenge to the army is not known, but it does not appear to have been able to put up resistance to the latest military offensive.

Students of a local madrasa watch from inside their classroom as bodies of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who were killed when their boat capsized on the way to Bangladesh, are brought to their school in Shah Porir Dwip, in Teknaf, near Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

COMING, GOING

Bangladesh was already home to 400,000 Rohingya who had fled earlier bouts of violence.

Mostly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens, even though many have lived there for generations.

But even as refugees arrive, Bangladesh insists they will all have to go home. Myanmar has responded by saying it will take back those who can be verified as genuine refugees.

Many Rohingya fear they will not be able to prove their right to return.

Myanmar leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has faced scathing international criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although she has no power over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution.

The United States and Britain have warned Myanmar the crisis is putting at risk the progress it has made since the military began to loosen its grip on power in 2011.

(Additonal reportin by Damir Sagolj in COX’S BAZAR, Wa Lone in YANGON; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Nick Macfie)

U.N. fears ‘further exodus’ of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar

Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, attends a news conference on his visit to Bangladesh for the Rohingya refugee crisis, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay and Robert Birsel

GENEVA/YANGON (Reuters) – The United Nations braced on Friday for a possible “further exodus” of Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar into Bangladesh six weeks after the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency began, U.N. humanitarian aid chief said.

Some 515,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine in an unrelenting movement of people that began after Myanmar security forces responded to Rohingya militant attacks with a brutal crackdown.

The United Nations has denounced the Myanmar military offensive as ethnic cleansing but Myanmar insists its forces are fighting “terrorists” who have killed civilians and burnt villages.

Rights groups say more than half of more than 400 Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine state have been torched in a campaign by the security forces and Buddhist vigilantes to drive out Muslims.

Mark Lowcock, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, reiterated an appeal for access to the population in northern Rakhine, saying the situation was “unacceptable”.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has blocked most access to the area, although some agencies have offices open in towns there and the International Committee of the Red Cross is helping the Myanmar Red Cross to deliver aid.

“This flow of people of Myanmar hasn’t stopped yet. Obviously there’s into the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still in Myanmar, and we want to be ready in case there is a further exodus,” Lowcock told a news briefing in Geneva.

Lowcock said a senior U.N. official was expected to visit Myanmar in the next few days.

An estimated 2,000 Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh every day, Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration, told a separate briefing.

Myanmar officials have said they attempted to reassure groups trying to flee to Bangladesh but could not stop people who were not citizens from leaving.

The official Myanmar News Agency said on Friday “large numbers” of Muslims were preparing to cross the border. It cited their reasons as “livelihood difficulties”, health problems, a “belief” of insecurity and fear of becoming a minority.

RAIN-DRENCHED CAMPS

Aid agencies have warned of a malnutrition crisis with about 281,000 people in Bangladesh in urgent need of food, including 145,000 children under five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Cholera is a risk, amid fears of disease spreading in the rain-drenched camps where aid workers are trying to install sanitation systems, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said.

About 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine are due to arrive this weekend and a vaccination campaign should start on Tuesday.

U.N.-led aid bodies have appealed for $434 million over six months to help up to 1.2 million people – including 300,000 Rohingya already in Bangladesh before the latest crisis and 300,000 Bangladeshi villagers in so-called host communities.

The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and most are stateless.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although a military-drafted constitution gives her no power over the security forces.

She has condemned rights abuses and said Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 by which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back.

Lowcock said talks between Myanmar and Bangladesh on a repatriation plan were a useful first step.

“But there is clearly a long way to go,” he said.

Both the United States and Britain have warned Myanmar the crisis is putting at risk the progress it has made since the military began to loosen its grip on power.

China, which built close ties with Myanmar while it was under military rule and Western sanctions, has been supportive.

In Washington, U.S. officials said sanctions and the withholding of aid were among the options available to press Myanmar to halt the violence but they had to be careful to avoid worsening the crisis.

“We don’t want to take actions that exacerbate their suffering. There is that risk in this complicated environment,” Patrick Murphy, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

Murphy said efforts were under way to identify those responsible for rights violations.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in WASHINGTON; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Bangladesh carving out forest land to shelter desperate Rohingya

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – Hard-pressed to find space for a massive influx of Rohingya Muslim refugees, Bangladesh plans to chop down a swathe of forest to extend a tent city sheltering destitute families fleeing ethnic violence in neighboring Myanmar.

More than half a million Rohingya have arrived from Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine since the end of August in what the United Nations has called the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency.

The exodus began after Myanmar security forces responded to Rohingya militants’ attacks on Aug. 25 by launching a brutal crackdown that the United Nations has denounced as ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has rejected that accusation, insisting that the military action was needed to combat “terrorists” who had killed civilians and burnt villages.

But it has left Bangladesh and international humanitarian organizations counting the cost as they race to provide life-saving food, water and medical care for the displaced Rohingyas.

Simply finding enough empty ground to accommodate the refugees is a huge problem.

“The government allocated 2,000 acres when the number of refugees was nearly 400,000,” Mohammad Shah Kamal, Bangladesh’s secretary of disaster management and relief, told Reuters on Thursday.

“Now that the numbers have gone up by more than 100,000 and people are still coming. So, the government has to allocate 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of forest land.”

Once all the trees are felled, aid workers plan to put up 150,000 tarpaulin shelters in their place.

Swamped by refugees, poor Bangladeshi villagers are faced with mounting hardships and worries, including the trafficking of illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamines, from Myanmar.

“The situation is very bad,” said Kazi Abdur Rahman, a senior official in the Bangladesh border district of Cox’s Bazar, where most of the Rohingya are settled.

“People in Cox’s Bazar are concerned, we are also concerned, but there’s nothing we can do but accommodate them.”

The pressure on the land is creating another conflict, this time environmental rather than ethnic.

Last month, wild elephants trampled two refugees to death last month and Rahman said more tragic encounters between animals and people appears inevitable as more forest is destroyed.

OVER A MILLION PEOPLE IN NEED

U.N. agencies coordinating aid appealed on Wednesday for $434 million to help up to 1.2 million people, most of them children, for six months.

Their figure includes the 509,000 who have arrived since August, 300,000 Rohingya who were already in Bangladesh, having fled earlier suppression, a contingency for another 91,000 and 300,000 Bangladesh villagers in so-called host communities who also need help.

The Save the Children aid group warned of a malnutrition crisis with some 281,000 people in need of urgent nutrition support, including 145,000 children under the age of five and more than 50,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women.

“In over 20 years as a humanitarian worker I’ve never seen a situation like this, where people are so desperate for basic assistance and conditions so dire,” Unni Krishnan, director of Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit, said in a statement.

U.N. agencies are wary of planning beyond six-months for fear or creating a self-perpetuating situation.

Myanmar has promised to take back anyone verified as a refugee but there’s little hope for speedy repatriation.

There is long-simmering communal tension and animosity toward the Rohingya in Myanmar, most of whom are stateless and derided as illegal immigrants.

“This crisis isn’t going to end soon,” said a Bangladeshi interior ministry official who declined to be identified.

(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Aid groups seek $434 million to help up to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar

By Rahul Bhatia

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Humanitarian organizations helping Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh said on Wednesday they need $434 million over the next six months to help up to 1.2 million people, most of them children, in dire need of life-saving assistance.

There are an estimated 809,000 Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh after fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar, more than half a million of whom have arrived since Aug. 25 to join 300,000 Rohingya who are already there.

“Unless we support the efforts of the Bangladesh government to provide immediate aid to the half million people who have arrived over the past month, many of the most vulnerable – women, children and the elderly – will die,” said William Lacy Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration, which is coordinating the aid effort.

“They will be the victims of neglect.”

About 509,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since attacks by Rohingya militants in August triggered a sweeping Myanmar military offensive that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar rejects accusations of ethnic cleansing. It says its forces are fighting insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who claimed responsibility for attacks on about 30 police posts and an army camp on Aug. 25.

The insurgents were also behind similar but smaller attacks in October last year that led to a brutal Myanmar army response triggering the flight of 87,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh.

The agencies’ plan for help over the next six months factors in the possibility of another 91,000 refugees arriving, as the influx continues, Robert Watkins, U.N. resident coordinator in Bangladesh, said in a statement.

“The plan targets 1.2 million people, including all Rohingya refugees, and 300,000 Bangladeshi host communities over the next six months,” Watkins said..

Half a million people need food while 100,000 emergency shelters are required. More than half the refugees are children, while 24,000 pregnant women need maternity care, the agencies said.

U.N. appeals for funds to help with humanitarian crises are generally significantly under-funded.

GROUP REPORTS MASSACRE

The Rohingya are regarded as illegal immigrants in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and most are stateless.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced scathing criticism for not doing more to stop the violence, although she has no power over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution.

She has condemned rights abuses and said Myanmar was ready to start a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993 under which anyone verified as a refugee would be accepted back.

But many Rohingya are pessimistic about their chances of going home, partly because few have official papers confirming their residency.

Most are also wary about returning without an assurance of citizenship, which they fear could leave them vulnerable to the persecution and discrimination they have endured for years.

Human Rights Watch said it had found evidence that the Myanmar military had summarily executed dozens of Rohingya in a village called Maung Nu in Rakhine state, on Aug. 27, two days after the insurgent attacks triggered the violence.

The rights group said it had spoken to 14 survivors and witnesses who were now refugees in Bangladesh. They described how soldiers entered a compound where people had gathered in fear of military retaliation.

“They took several dozen Rohingya men and boys into the courtyard and then shot or stabbed them to death. Others were killed as they tried to flee,” said the rights group, which has accused Myanmar of crimes against humanity.

Spokesmen for the government, the military and police did not answer their telephones and were not available for comment. Wednesday is a holiday in Myanmar.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

The U.N. committees for women’s and children’s rights called on Myanmar to immediately stop violence in Rakhine, saying violations “being committed at the behest of the military and other security forces” may amount to crimes against humanity.

The United States and Britain have warned that the crisis risked derailing Myanmar’s progress in its transition to democracy after decades of military rule.

The World Bank said it could hit foreign investment, though it did not factor the violence into its latest forecast for Myanmar’s growth, which it cut by 0.5 percentage points for both 2017 and 2018, to 6.4 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively.

The bank said businesses appeared to have delayed investment as they awaited a clearer government economic agenda.

(Addtional reporting by Shoon Naing in YANGON, Tom Miles in GENEVA, Michelle Nichols in NEW YORK; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

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