(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The rights group said in a Thursday statement that Dakar has imposed “cruel” restrictions on the relief work in the country by ordering three international charities -- Doctors Without Borders, Action Against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK -- to stop giving aid to the refugees.
“The Bangladeshi government is trying to make conditions for Rohingya refugees already living in Bangladesh so awful that people fleeing brutal abuses in neighboring Burma (Myanmar) will stay home,” said HRW’s Refugee Policy Director Bill Frelick.
“This is a cruel and inhumane policy that should immediately be reversed,” he said.
Some 300,000 Rohingyas are living in Bangladesh while tens of thousands of them have been displaced from their homes.
The Buddhist-majority government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas and classifies them as illegal migrants, although the Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origins, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.
According to reports, thousands of Myanmar’s Rohingyas are living in dire conditions in refugee camps after government forces and Buddhist extremists started burning down their villages on August 10.
Reports say some 650 Rohingyas have been killed in the Rakhine state in the west of the country in recent months. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 80,000 more have been displaced.
The UN human rights authorities point the finger of blame at Myanmarese security forces, who are believed to have been targeting the Muslims rather than bringing the ethnic violence to an end in the country.
The United Nations says decades of discrimination have left the Rohingyas stateless, with Myanmar implementing restrictions on their movement and withholding land rights, education, and public services from them. The UN has also described the Muslim community as the Palestine of Asia and one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
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