Couple’s delay in fleeing Myanmar left them open to attack

The exodus is the largest movement of a civilian population in Asia since the 1970s.

“The situation has spiraled into the world´s fastest developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare”, he said, while calling for those displaced from the conflict to be allowed to return home. “This is unacceptable and must end immediately”.

The stream of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar into Bangladesh has continued unabated, with the United Nations saying that the number has now topped 500,000 people since August.

Rohingya who had crossed the border accused Myanmar’s military, backed by Buddhist mobs, of trying to drive them out with a brutal campaign of beatings, killings and village burnings. Rohingyas are not part of the recognised races, effectively rendering them stateless.

“We are still searching for more mass graves in that same area”, said Maj.

As of Thursday, Haq said, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners have received $36.4 million – just under half of the $77 million that the United Nations called for in early September to address the Rohingya crisis.

Myanmar rejects the accusations and has denounced rights abuses.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told the Security Council Thursday Myanmar’s actions in Rakhine State appeared to be ethnic cleansing, an allegation UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein first made weeks ago.

“The government-organized visit was postponed to next week because of weather conditions”, a spokesman from the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar said, without giving further details.

Australia co-sponsored the resolution in the human rights council to extend the mission’s mandate for six months to March next year.

But the increasingly repressive rule in our neighbourhood pales into insignificance compared to what is happening in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar.

“Not all stories are justified in the 360 format, but with this one, we wanted people to not only understand the crisis, but to feel what it is like to be inside a refugee camp and experience the space”.

Khan said a number of others were rescued and taken to hospitals, while some others were sent to Rohingya camps, without giving an exact number. He said he pushed her to come up with an urgent solution to the crisis.

“It’s a more complicated situation out there”, he said.

Aid groups estimate that more than 500,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar as the Burmese military continues a crackdown that witnesses and global monitors say includes rape, mass killings, and the razing of villages.

Myanmar officials on Thursday cancelled a trip for almost 50 foreign diplomats and United Nations officials to trouble spots in violence-ridden Maungdaw township in northern Rakhine state, citing poor weather conditions.