Bangladesh\u2019s foreign minister said Sunday that genocide was being waged in Myanmar\u2019s violence-racked Rakhine state, triggering an exodus of nearly 300,000 Muslim Rohingya to his country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide,\u201d A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters after briefing diplomats in Dhaka.<\/p>\n
Ali met Western and Arab diplomats and the heads of UN agencies based in Bangladesh to seek support for a political solution and humanitarian aid for the Rohingya.<\/p>\n
He told the diplomats that some 300,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh in the past two weeks, taking the total number of such refugees in the country to over 700,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is now a national problem,\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n
At least two diplomats who attended the briefings said the minister told them as many as 3,000 people may have been killed in the latest round of violence.<\/p>\n
The United Nations says 294,000 bedraggled and exhausted Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since attacks by Rohingya militants on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major military backlash.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands more are believed to be on the move inside Rakhine.<\/p>\n
Mainly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise its stateless Muslim Rohingya community, labelling them \u201cBengalis\u201d — illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Ali accused Myanmar of running a \u201cmalicious propaganda\u201d campaign to term the Rohingya as \u201cillegal migrants from Bangladesh\u201d and the militants as \u201cBengali terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine are a \u201cmixed group of people\u201d with a history dating back 1,500 years and ancestors included Arab and Indian-origin people.<\/p>\n
Ali described actions following the militant attacks on security forces on August 25 as \u201crevenge\u201d by Myanmar troops.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould all people be killed? Should all villages be burnt? It is not acceptable,\u201d he said, adding Dhaka was seeking a peaceful solution, not a \u201cwar\u201d against Myanmar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not create the problem. Since the problem started in Myanmar, that\u2019s why they should resolve. We have said we\u2019ll help them,\u201d he said, adding that the problem took a \u201cnew turn\u201d after the August 25 attacks.<\/p>\n
A commission led by former UN chief Kofi Annan last month said Myanmar must scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship for its Rohingya minority if it wants to avoid fuelling extremism and bring peace to Rakhine state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bangladesh\u2019s foreign minister said Sunday that genocide was being waged in Myanmar\u2019s violence-racked Rakhine state, triggering an exodus of nearly 300,000 Muslim Rohingya to his country. \u201cThe international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide,\u201d A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters after briefing diplomats in Dhaka. Ali met Western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4447,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions\/4447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}