Arakan News Agency
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) signed an agreement with the Government of Bangladesh to provide health services to Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar. Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations Political Affairs Officer, is meeting with the Myanmar authorities to press for an end to the military campaign against Muslims Rohingya in the country, during a visit that began on Friday and lasts five days.
According to a United Nations statement, UNICEF has decided to set up 10,000 toilets in Cox-Bazar within the camps where Rohingya refugees reside, particularly after recent reports of water-borne diseases in those camps.
UNICEF and its health partners have recently launched a massive cholera vaccination campaign benefiting 650,000 people in Cox’s Bazaar by providing 900,000 immunization doses to protect new arrivals from the Rohingya and the host community, the statement said.
For his part, Feltman will stress repeated calls by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the government of Myanmar to stop “military cleansing” and violence that have seen more than half a million Rohingya Muslims flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq said Feltman would also press for unrestricted humanitarian access to northern Arakan and allow the government a safe, voluntary and sustainable return.
On the other hand, the Myanmar army has launched an internal investigation into the practices of its soldiers during a counter-attack that has driven more than half a million Muslim Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Many of them say they have witnessed the killing, rape and burning of the army.
The Army Chief of Staff’s office said on Friday that a committee led by Lieutenant-General A Win had launched an investigation into the practices of soldiers in the army, but stressed that the operations were justified in Myanmar’s Buddhist majority constitution.
Myanmar army chief General Min Aung Hlaing denied the Japanese ambassador, in an official press briefing, the existence of ethnic cleansing based on images showing Muslims “leaving quietly instead of fleeing in horror.”
