End human rights ‘nightmare’, UN chief tells Myanmar

More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have poured into Bangladesh in the last month, fleeing a vicious Myanmar military crackdown on Rohingya rebels that has gutted villages across northern Rakhine state.   

Scores have drowned while trying to cross waters separating the two countries, while those who survive face new dangers as they cram into squalid refugee settlements where food and clean water are in short supply. The billowing humanitarian crisis prompted the UN Security Council to hold its first meeting on Myanmar in eight years.   

UN chief Antonio Guterres exhorted Myanmar’s leaders to end the “nightmare” faced by Rohingya refugees fleeing an army campaign, after at least 19 people drowned with scores more feared dead when a boat carrying Rohingya families capsized off Bangladesh.   

The bodies of 16 people -- mostly children -- were found Thursday and brought to a local school, said coastguard commander Nasir Uddin.   

Two more bodies of young boys were retrieved Friday morning, he added, while another woman was washed ashore in a separate location.Speaking to the 15-member council, Guterres urged Myanmar to halt military operations and open humanitarian access to the conflict-wracked western region. 

 
“The situation has spiralled 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.   
UN, (Daily Mail), 29 September 2017