Mass grave of 28 Hindus found in Myanmar, Rohingyas suspected

Rakhine Twenty homes caught fire and a bomb was detonated near a mosque in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the government said, the latest unrest in a region that has seen hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee in under a month.

Amid escalating trouble for the immigrated Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Bangladesh has now banned telecom operators from providing mobile services to the refugees.

“This damning evidence from the ground and from space flies in the face of Aung Suu Kyi’s assertions to the world”, Tirana Hasan, Amnesty’s director of crisis response, said in a statement late Friday. He said, “We have tens of thousands of Hindu Rohingya refugees who have also taken shelter in our country”.

The top US diplomat for Southeast Asia says America remains deeply troubled by the ongoing crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and allegations of human rights abuses there.

Hindus from the area have told AFP that militants swept into their villages on 25 August, attacking people who stood in their way, killing many and taking others away into the forest.

Noor Karim – a Rohingya refugee – says he managed to escape firing by Myanmar forces but was somehow separated from his wife and children at some point on the way.

India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using “chilli and stun grenades” to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar, officials said on Friday. “They need everything, they need food, they need clean water, they need shelter, they need proper health care”, Grandi said after visiting the camps.

The UN said that the settlements have been stretched to the limit by the massive number of refugees who have arrived in less than a month and the refugees are living in extremely hard conditions, in addition to carrying severe trauma after escaping the violence in Myanmar.

In Bangladesh, relief agencies are struggling to meet the vast needs of the Rohingya cramming into shanties in Cox’s Bazar, an influx the United Nations has described as the “fastest and most urgent refugee emergency in the world”.

Around 429,000 Rohingya have fled Burma, where many of their families lived for generations.

A Rohingya petitioner on Friday told the Supreme Court that they were not illegal immigrants but refugees who fled Myanmar and came to India for shelter in wake of their persecution on the grounds of their religion and community identity and were entitled to all protection under the global conventions on refugees and treaties.

Amu, who chairs a cabinet committee on national security, said, “We want Rohingya to return to their own land”.