Arakan News Agency
The number of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape “genocide” crimes in Arakan province in western Myanmar since 25th August has risen to 421,000, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
This came in a statement made by the spokesman for the organization, Joel Millman, during a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland on the latest developments in Arakan.
Melman explained that 171,800 of the Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh face serious challenges because there is no form of health care in the camps where they live.
He explained that the teams of the organization have identified between these cases of many cases of various diseases, especially among children in camps located on the outskirts of the city, “Cox Bazar”.
Since August 25th, Myanmar’s army and Buddhist militias have been committing crimes, assaults and brutal massacres against the Muslim minority of Arakan, resulting in the death and displacement of tens of thousands of innocent people, according to Rohingya obeservers.
The new refugees are suffering from hunger and exhaustion, as well as shortages of medicines, Millman said.
The UN official also pointed to the problem of lack of clean water in camps and refugee centers, and warned of the spread of many epidemics and infectious diseases due to contaminated water.
Millman said that the total number of refugees in the province of Cox-Bazar and neighboring villages reached 600,000, more than two-thirds of whom arrived in the country following the recent genocide in Arakan.
The government of Myanmar considers “Rohingya” Muslims “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh,” while the United Nations classifies them as “the most persecuted religious minority in the world.”
Under a law passed by Myanmar in 1982, some 1.1 million Rohingyi Muslims were denied citizenship and subjected to a series of massacres and displacements, becoming a persecuted minority under a majority of Buddhist and non-neutral governments.
