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TEHRAN, September 7 - Iranian envoy to the UN said the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is ready to establish a contact group in order to pave the way for ceasing brutalities against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Gholam-Ali Khoshrou said “Over recent days, I have had contacts with envoys of Muslim countries, and it was agreed to form a a group named ‘the contact group of Islamic countries’ which is at the level of ministers and ambassadors,”
He then said Iran has begun contacts with the parties involved in the conflict one by one.
He also deplored atrocities against Muslims in Rohingya, saying that everyone should make effort to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar.
The Iranian envoy then stressed ceasing pressures on Muslims in Myanmar and providing them for humanitarian assistance.
Myanmar’s forces have been attacking Rohingya Muslims and torching their villages in Rakhine State since October 2016. The attacks have seen a sharp rise since August 25, following a number of armed attacks on police and military posts in the troubled western state.
The country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Ky has ignored international demands to call off the operation.
The Rohingya have also been subject to communal violence by extremist Buddhists for years, forcing large groups of Muslims to flee their homeland to take refuge in Bangladesh and other neighboring countries.
The latest eruption of violence in Rakhine has killed more than 400 people and triggered an exodus of the Rohingya to Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch earlier said satellite imagery showed 700 buildings were burned in the Rohingya village of Chein Khar Li, just one of the 17 locations in Rakhine where the rights group has documented burning of homes and property. It blamed Myanmarese forces for the fires.
UN warns of exodus of 300,000 Rohingya
On Wednesday, Dipayan Bhattacharyya, who is Bangladesh spokesman for the World Food Program (WFP), said the UN officials have raised their estimate of the total expected Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh from 120,000 to 300,000.
“They are coming in nutritionally deprived, they have been cut off from a normal flow of food for possibly more than a month. They were definitely visibly hungry, traumatized,” Reuters quoted Bhattacharyya as saying.
According to UN workers in Bangladesh’s border region of Cox’s Bazar, arrivals have already reached 146,000 over the past 12 days.
The refugees who are fleeing Myanmar’s army operations are arriving by boat as well as crossing the land border at numerous points, Bhattacharyya said.
On Tuesday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Security Council that the ongoing violence in Myanmar could spiral into a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
The WFP estimates that it would need $13.3 million in additional funding to provide basic food rations for four months.
Bhattacharyya urged the donors to urgently provide the fund, noting, “If they do not come forward now, we may see that these people would be fighting for food among themselves, the crime rate would go up, violence against women and on children would go up.”
Myanmar’s government brands more than one million Rohingya Muslims in the country as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims, however, have had roots in the country that go back centuries. They are considered by the UN the “most persecuted minority group in the world.”
There have been numerous eyewitness accounts of summary executions, rapes, and arson attacks by the military since the crackdown against the minority group began.
Myanmar’s forces have reportedly been putting landmines in their territory along the barbed-wire fence between a series of border pillars over the past three days in an attempt to prevent the return of the Rohingya who have already fled to Bangladesh.
The UN believes the government of Myanmar might have committed ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in its crackdown.
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