The mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Burma in just under three weeks is now triple the number of refugees who have tried to enter Europe across the Mediterranean so far this year, leaving aid agencies overwhelmed by the crisis.
An estimated 370,000 have escaped from Burma’s northern Rakhine state to overcrowded Bangladeshi refugee camps since August 25, compared to 128,012 people seeking to cross the Mediterranean since January.
Burma’s government has admitted that 176 out of 471 ethnic Rohingya villages are now empty.
Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general,on Wednesday called on authorities in Burma to end the violence against the Rohingya and acknowledged the situation there is best described as ethnic cleansing.
The humanitarian situation in Burma was "catastrophic," Mr Guterres said, and called on all countries to do what they could to supply aid.
The Burmese government said on Wednesday its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, will skip next week's UN General Assembly meetings, and give a domestic speech to address the crisis, amid growing international outrage at her refusal to condemn the killings.
Rohingyas have said their homes were set on fire and family members shot, slashed or burned to death. “This is the fastest growing refugee crisis in the past five years, with serious human rights concerns,” a UNHCR spokesperson told the Telegraph.
Chris Lom, a UN aid worker in Cox’s Bazar, on the frontline of the humanitarian disaster, said people were “very vulnerable, traumatised,” while relief agencies struggled.
“UN agencies and the government were expecting the possibility that as many as 100,000 more people could come across when there were already 600,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh,” he told UN News.
"But I don’t think anyone expected a mass exodus like this, unprecedented in terms of value and speed,” he said.
On Wednesday one Red Cross mobile medical team at the makeshift Balukhali camp managed to treat 100 people suffering from diarrhoea, old bullet wounds and burns before its supplies ran out.
“No-one expected this explosion of people, and there is unfathomable need. It is beyond the capacity of international actors to scale up this fast,” said Misada Saif of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Isolated rural locations with narrow, muddy roads, made worse by heavy rains and throngs of displaced people present major obstacles to supplying aid.
Increasingly desperate refugees, weak from hunger, are clambering onto the few trucks that do get through, trying to claim whatever supplies they can, causing fights to break out.
Aid that arrived by air earlier this week would not cover a tenth of refugee needs, said officials, estimating the relief effort would cost at least $77m [£58m].
Children being brought to an Action Against Hunger centre are being increasingly diagnosed as malnourished.
One mother, Rozia Begum, arrived with her four infant children, after travelling for four days.
“I had nothing to give my children, who were so hungry and thirsty they were crying. All I could do was give them river water to drink, even though I knew it was dirty and might make them sick,” she said.
Another woman, Sara Khatun, grieving the murder of her husband and daughter, said she had been so desperate for food that she had eaten tree bark.
The scale of the humanitarian crisis has led to comparisons with the Rwandan exodus of 1994 when over two million people fled to neighbouring countries after a brutal genocide.
Nigeria’s government on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the “horrendous human suffering” of the Rohingya, adding that it was “very reminiscent of what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1995.”
Meanwhile, terrorist group Al Qaeda issued a statement warning Burma it would face “punishment” for its “crimes”, calling for Muslims across the region to help secure Rohingya rights “by force.”
SOURCE: Telegraph
