Back-to-back protest demonstrations outside Myanmar’s embassy in Washington D.C. this week urged the United States to stop massacre of the Rohingya community, which the UN and human rights bodies say face state persecution.
On Friday, Americans from diverse communities including mostly Muslims joined demonstrations to register their condemnation of the ongoing massacres, which have displaced the Rohingya minority concentrated in Rakhine province.
Pakistani-Americans had staged a strong protest outside Myanmar embassy on Thursday, demanding an end to “state terror” against the minority community and called for international intervention to stop further bloodshed.
The protesters asked the Trump Administration to stop any aid to Myanmar and hold it to account of grave human rights violations.
The government in Myanmar has rejected accusations that it is carrying out a genocide of the Rohingya Muslims and claims it is fighting only militant groups fighting the state.
But images of bloodletting and violence against women, children and elderly men of the Rohingya community – which has been denied citizenship rights in by the Southeast Asian nation – outraged the international human rights organizations.
Meanwhile, the United Nations migration agency Friday confirmed that 270,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled violence in Myanmar for safety in neighboring Bangladesh over the past two weeks.
The number of new arrivals continues to increase amid a severe government crackdown while Myanmar denies observers to watch the situation.
“Humanitarian agencies are deploying mobile medical teams, installing emergency latrines, providing water, and are distributing tarpaulins for basic shelter and food rations to new arrivals. But much more is needed and we are fast running out of stock,” Margo Baars, who facilitates the Inter Sector Coordination Group convened by the International Organization for Migration.
![By English: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Flickr) [OGL (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/1/)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.viewsnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Displaced_Rohingya_people_in_Rakhine_State_8280610831.jpg)
The Rohingyas, Credit: British Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Wikimedia Commons
IOM said that new arrivals usually start by looking for space in the established makeshift settlements, where there are some services. But these are already full. Three new spontaneous settlements have sprung up in areas which still have very little services.
An estimated 130,000 of the new arrivals are now living in the registered refugee camps and three makeshift settlements of Kutupalong, Leda and Balukhali. Another 90,000 people are sheltering in host communities, and nearly 50,000 have settled in new spontaneous settlements.
IOM, which on Thursday allocated $1 million from its emergency funds to boost the humanitarian response in Cox’s Bazar.
Separately, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund also announced a further $7 million to help the thousands of destitute people who continue to flood into Bangladesh.
Most of the people now crossing the border are women, children and the elderly, many of whom are vulnerable and lack the ability to take care of themselves.
