Rohingya refugees collapse from exhaustion as they arrive by a small wooden boat from Myanmar to the shore of Shah Porir Dwip, in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.
The humanitarian crisis in Myanmar had long gotten no attention from the world community. That’s changing, and quickly, as the scope of the disaster comes into clearer focus. The latest evidence came Thursday, when the United Nations reported that some 500,000 Rohingya ethnic Muslims had fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August 25. They’re trying to escape a campaign of indiscriminate violence at the hands of the Myanmarese military. Even Myanmar authorities themselves now say that 176 of 471 Rohingya villages are empty.
In recent weeks, the enormity of the catastrophe has prompted France, the United States, and the UN itself to make their strongest statements yet condemning what has widely been called ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims at the hands of the Myanmarese Buddhist military. “The situation has spiraled into the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said Thursday at a session of the UN Security Council focused on the crisis. “We have received bone-chilling accounts from those who fled — mainly women, children, and the elderly.” He demanded the violence end immediately — and that the Rohingya be allowed to return to Myanmar.
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