United Nations
\nFormer UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged Myanmar to make sure the half-million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled in the last<\/p>\n
two months can go home, and not go to camps.<\/p>\n
Myanmar\u2019s government needs to \u201ccreate conditions that will allow the refugees to return with dignity and with a sense of security\u201d and help them<\/p>\n
rebuild in violence-wracked Rakhine state, said Annan, who recently headed a commission on the crisis there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should not be returned to camps,\u201d he said after addressing an informal, private Security Council meeting on the issue. \u201cThey need<\/p>\n
assistance to get their homes back.\u201d Myanmar\u2019s UN mission didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment on yesterday\u2019s session. The country\u2019s<\/p>\n
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said Thursday that she had created a committee to oversee all international and local assistance in Rakhine and<\/p>\n
that the impoverished state needs development.<\/p>\n
Roughly 1 million Rohingya make up a long-persecuted minority in the Southeast Asian country. The Buddhist majority regards them as having<\/p>\n
migrated illegally from Bangladesh, although many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations.<\/p>\n
They were stripped of their citizenship in 1982.<\/p>\n
After earlier waves of Rohingya flight, about 1,20,000 live in camps outside Rakhine\u2019s capital, Sittwe.<\/p>\n
In an unprecedented exodus, more than 5,00,000 Rohingya have fled from Rakhine to neighboring Bangladesh since August 25, when security<\/p>\n
forces clamped down after the latest in a series of attacks on police posts by a Rohingya militant group.<\/p>\n
Many houses were burned in the crackdown, and Rohingya refugees have described rape, looting and abuse.<\/p>\n
The UN and some countries have called the events \u201cethnic cleansing,\u201d which Myanmar\u2019s government denies. It has blamed the crisis on<\/p>\n
terrorism.<\/p>\n
The August attacks came a day after the Annan-led commission released its report, which called for economic development and social justice<\/p>\n
to counter the deadly violence.<\/p>\n
The Security Council has repeatedly discussed Myanmar recently, but views have been divided among the veto-wielding members.<\/p>\n
At a meeting late last month, Britain, France and the US demanded an end to what they called ethnic cleansing, while China\u2019s ambassador<\/p>\n
called for patience. Russia\u2019s envoy warned that \u201cexcessive pressure\u201d could only worsen the problems.<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s meeting was \u201cparticularly useful and helpful to build consensus\u201d on two goals: supporting the recommendations of Annan\u2019s<\/p>\n
commission and denouncing \u201cthe totally inacceptable status quo,\u201d French Ambassador Francois Delattre said. He co-chaired the session with<\/p>\n
British envoy Matthew Rycroft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United Nations Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged Myanmar to make sure the half-million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled in the last two months can go home, and not go to camps. Myanmar\u2019s government needs to \u201ccreate conditions that will allow the refugees to return with dignity and with a sense of security\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7716","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\/7716","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=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7718,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions\/7718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}