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September 22, 2017

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Bangladesh aid truck for Rohingya refugees crashes, 9 workers dead

A TRUCK filled with aid for Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh veered off a road and fell into a ditch yesterday morning, killing at least nine aid workers, hours after another aid shipment in the refugees’ violence-wracked home state in Myanmar was attacked by a Buddhist mob.

Both shipments were from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Aid groups face different challenges on either side of the border: An influx of more than 420,000 refugees in less than a month in Bangladesh, and in Myanmar, government resistance and angry allegations from majority Buddhists that international organizations are favoring the long-persecuted Rohingya minority.

A Bangladeshi medical administrator said six people died instantly in the truck crash near the border in southeastern Bandarban district. Three people died after reaching hospital, and 10 others were injured and are receiving treatment.

ICRC spokeswoman Misada Saif said all of those killed were Bangladeshi workers hired to distribute food packages to 500 Rohingya families.

Saif said the truck belongs to the ICRC and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and was operated by a supplier who has been working for the two agencies for the last couple of weeks. She said agency officials are “very shocked and sad.”

“Our thoughts are with the families of the dead,” she said.

The Rohingya exodus began on August 25, after Rohingya insurgent attacks on police set off a military crackdown.

Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of homes have been burned in what many Rohingya have described as a systematic effort by Myanmar’s military to drive them out. The government has blamed the Rohingya, even saying they set fire to their own homes, but the United Nations and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.

Most refugees have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled prior rounds of violence. Bandarban is a neighboring district where thousands of Rohingya also have fled.

The violence in Myanmar occurred just across the border in Rakhine state, where police said a Buddhist mob threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers on Wednesday night as they tried to block Red Cross supplies from being loaded onto a boat. The vessel was headed to an area where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been chased from their homes. No injuries were reported and police detained eight of the attackers.

Dozens of people arrived at a jetty in the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, as a boat was being loaded with bottled water, blankets, mosquito nets, food and other supplies. As the crowd swelled to 300, they started throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the officers, who responded by firing into the air, said police officer Phyo Wai Kyaw.

The government of the predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million said police and several monks showed up to try to defuse tensions. The shipment ultimately was loaded and sent to northern Rakhine state.

Though Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi told diplomats this week humanitarian assistance was being sent to those who remain in northern Rakhine, the government has blocked all UN assistance to the area, granting access to only the Red Cross.

Buddhists in Rakhine have accused international aid agencies of favoring Rohingya, a group who Myanmar and many of its people contend migrated illegally from Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi’s speech this week in Naypyitaw, the capital, defended her government’s conduct in Rakhine state and avoided criticism of the military. The country’s top general went a step further, traveling to northern Rakhine yesterday to praise security forces for their “gallant” efforts to defend Myanmar.

At a meeting with military officials in Buthiduang township, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Min Aung Hlaing said that more than a century ago when the area was a British colony, Rohingya — whom he referred to as “Bengalis” — were allowed to settle without restrictions.

“Later, the Bengali population exploded and the aliens tried to seize the land of local ethnics,” Min Aung Hlaing said, according to his office’s Facebook page. He described repeated army efforts since Myanmar independence in 1948 “to crush the mujahideen insurgents,” including in 2012 and last fall.




 

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