MINBYA, Myanmar: More than 22,000 people from mainly Muslim communities have been displaced in western Myanmar, the United Nations (UN) said on Sunday, after a fresh wave of violence and arson that has left dozens dead.
Whole neighborhoods were razed in unrest in Rakhine state this week where some 75,000 people are already crammed into overcrowded camps following clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in June, casting a shadow over the country’s reforms.
The UN chief in Yangon, Ashok Nigam, said that government estimates provided on Sunday were that 22,587 people had been displaced, 4,665 houses set ablaze in the latest bloodshed, and 21,700 of those made homeless were Muslims
The latest fighting has killed more than 80 people, according to a government official, bringing the total toll since June to above 170.
In Minbya, one of around eight townships affected by the fighting, a senior police official said that more than 4,000 people, mainly Muslims, had been made homeless after hundreds of properties in six villages were torched.
Nigam, who has just returned from a visit to the region, said that the UN was concerned both about the potential of a further spread of violence and that it would be “more challenging” to reach the displaced in some of the remote affected areas.
He said that the UN had already started mobilizing to take food and shelter to displaced communities, “but we will quickly need more resources.”
Boatloads of people have arrived in Sittwe seeking shelter in camps on the outskirts of the city that are already packed with Muslim minority Rohingya following June’s unrest.
Rakhine government spokesman Hla Thein on Saturday said that about 6,000 people had arrived in Sittwe, posing a challenge to overstretched local authorities who were looking to relocate them to another area.
Festering animosity between Buddhists and Muslims have continued to simmer in Rakhine since the outbreak of violence in June.
Myanmar’s 800,000 Rohingya are seen as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh by the government and many Burmese—who call them “Bengalis”—and face discrimination that activists say has led to a deepening alienation from Buddhists.
Human Rights Watch on Saturday released satellite images showing “extensive destruction of homes and other property in a predominantly Rohingya Muslim area” of Kyaukpyu, where a major pipeline to transport Myanmar gas to China begins.
The images showed a stark contrast between the coastal area as seen in March this year, packed with hundreds of dwellings and fringed with boats, and in the aftermath of the latest violence, where virtually all structures appear to have been wiped from the landscape.
The stateless Rohingya, speaking a Bengali dialect similar to one in neighboring Bangladesh, have long been considered by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities on the planet.
Bangladesh on Thursday mobilized extra patrols along its river border with Myanmar amid reports of dozens of boats carrying Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing the clashes.
Published : Friday January 18, 2013 | Category : World | Hits:151
By : AFP
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