Chittagong
\nThousands of Islamist hardliners marched in Bangladesh\u2019s port city of Chittagong on Friday calling for the government to arm Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing a crackdown in Myanmar\u2019s troubled Rakhine state.<\/p>\n
More than half a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since attacks by militants belonging to the Muslim minority on Myanmar police posts sparked brutal reprisals by security forces.<\/p>\n
The refugees accuse Myanmar\u2019s army\u2014flanked by mobs of ethnic Rakhine\u2014of slaughtering them and burning their villages in a campaign which the United Nations says amounts to \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Myanmar\u2019s military have blamed the unrest on the Rohingya.<\/p>\n
Up to 15,000 people joined the demonstrations in Bangladesh\u2019s second largest city, police said, organised by hardline Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam to protest against the killings of the Rohingya.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe demanded a halt to the genocide of the Rohingya,\u201d Hefazat spokesman Azizul Hoque Islamabad told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also asked the government to train and arm the Rohingya so that they can liberate their homeland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Communities in Chittagong share close cultural, religious and linguistic ties with the Rohingya, and images on social media purportedly showing abuses against the Muslim minority in mainly Buddhist Myanmar have aroused strong sympathy in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Islamist parties, including Hefazat, have staged several demonstrations over the issue in recent weeks and some firebrand leaders have called on the government to go to war with Myanmar to liberate Rakhine for the persecuted Rohingya.<\/p>\n
Experts said Bangladeshi Islamist extremist groups could exploit the situation and forge closer ties with Rohingya militants.<\/p>\n
The plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority who are reviled and denied citizenship in Myanmar, has roused anger across the Islamic world, with protests held in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chittagong Thousands of Islamist hardliners marched in Bangladesh\u2019s port city of Chittagong on Friday calling for the government to arm Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing a crackdown in Myanmar\u2019s troubled Rakhine state. More than half a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since attacks by militants belonging to the Muslim minority on Myanmar police posts sparked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7006","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\/7006","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=7006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7008,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7006\/revisions\/7008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}