Prayers were offered in makeshift mosques across southern Bangladesh to celebrate the Islamic festival of sacrifice as cows were slaughtered in muddy fields across the sprawling camps. More than 2 million Muslims mark Eid'l Adha in Saudi Muslims pray for peace during Eid'l Adha feast In Kutupalong, a gigantic hill settlement crammed with hundreds of thousands of refugees, a muezzin called the faithful to pray as children played on a wooden carousel and ran about in dirt alleyways in new clothes for the special day. For many refugees, this Eid al-Adha is the first since their violent expulsion from western Myanmar a year ago in a campaign of orchestrated violence likened by US and UN officials to ethnic cleansing. Myanmar's military, backed by armed Buddhist militias, began sweeping through Rohingya villages in August 2017 just days before Eid celebrations got underway. Memories of his torched homeland, and misery in Bangladesh, overshadowed festivities for 19-year-old Mohammad Issa, … [Read more...] about News Rohingya mark Eid, one year after Myanmar crisis began
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News The Rohingya lists: refugees compile their own record of those killed in Myanmar
KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh - Mohib Bullah is not your typical human rights investigator. He chews betel and he lives in a rickety hut made of plastic and bamboo. Sometimes, he can be found standing in a line for rations at the Rohingya refugee camp where he lives in Bangladesh. Yet Mohib Bullah is among a group of refugees who have achieved something that aid groups, foreign governments and journalists have not. They have painstakingly pieced together, name-by-name, the only record of Rohingya Muslims who were allegedly killed in a brutal crackdown by Myanmar's military. The bloody assault in the western state of Rakhine drove more than 700,000 of the minority Rohingya people across the border into Bangladesh, and left thousands of dead behind. Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières, working in Cox's Bazar at the southern tip of Bangladesh, estimated in the first month of violence, beginning at the end of August 2017, that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed. But the … [Read more...] about News The Rohingya lists: refugees compile their own record of those killed in Myanmar
News IN PHOTOS: Rohingya refugees fish in troubled waters
SHAMLAPUR, Bangladesh - Some Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar are finding work in the fishing industry in neighboring Bangladesh, earning a tiny daily income and occasional share of the catch, all under the official radar. The Shamlapur refugee camp, near a fishing colony on one of the world's longest beaches, is home to about 10,000 Rohingya refugees, aid groups say, many driven out of Myanmar's Rakhine State by sectarian violence last year. "We saved our lives by escaping here, so we are happy to be here," said Mohammed Yosuf, 20, who works as a fisherman, earning about 200 or 300 taka ($1.20 to $3.60) for each five-day trip. Yosuf said he fled with his wife, Sobora Khatun, who was nine months' pregnant when they escaped after two months shackled in captivity. Their three-year-old son drowned in a river crossing, but baby daughter Rukia was born safely. They are among nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled a military crackdown, the United Nations and human rights groups say, … [Read more...] about News IN PHOTOS: Rohingya refugees fish in troubled waters
Fear, uncertainty grip Rohingya women in India
JAMMU, India: In the semi-lit makeshift tent covered with strips of cardboard, five women sit in a huddle. As their young children, covered in specks of mud and soot, move around noisily, the women try to hush them down. Hollow-eyed and visibly malnourished, all the women also appear afraid. Aged 19-30, they have two things in common: one, they are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and two, they all live in fear of being sent back to the country they were forced to flee. “I came here when I was 13. Now I am 19,” says Nur Kalina, the youngest. She faintly remembers running with her parents from their village in Myanmar’s violence-wracked Rakhine state. “From Akhyep (Akyab, currently known as Sittwe) we started. We ran through rice fields, then by the river. When we came to Cox’s Bazar (across the border in Bangladesh), our fellow villagers were there. My aunt was there. They said, there is no food, no work, no future here. So my parents came here.” … [Read more...] about Fear, uncertainty grip Rohingya women in India
‘Ethnic cleansing’ of Myanmar’s Rohingya continues: UN
A view of burned belongings lying on the ground at the destroyed Koe Tan Kauk Muslim village in Maungdaw district, Rakhine State, western Myanmar, 25 Jan 2018. (EPA photo) YANGON - Myanmar is continuing its "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya with a "campaign of terror and forced starvation" in Rakhine state, a UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday, six months after a military crackdown sparked a mass exodus of the Muslim minority. More than 700,000 Roghingya have fled violence in Myanmar since August, streaming over the border into Bangladesh where they now live in overcrowded refugee camps Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since violence erupted in August, taking with them horrifying testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs. While the majority of those refugees fled Myanmar last year, Rohingya continue to stream across the border by the hundreds every week. "The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues. I don't think … [Read more...] about ‘Ethnic cleansing’ of Myanmar’s Rohingya continues: UN