01 November 2017•Update: 02 November 2017
By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON
Oppression and intervention by Myanmar’s military against Rohingya Muslims intensified because the international community remains silent, a panel at the British parliament heard Tuesday.
Speaking at a meeting organized by the Union of the European Turkish Democrats (UETD), Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said thousands of children lost their lives due to restrictions on aid to Rakhine State.
The event “A Silent Ethnic Cleansing: the Rohingya Muslims” was hosted at the House of Lords by Lord Nazir Ahmed and also attended by Turkey’s ruling AK Party MP Ziya Altunyaldiz.
Farmaner said thousands of people live in squalid camps with almost no access to health care. Giving examples of some horrific incidents that took place during the genocide against the Muslim minority in the region since Aug. 25, Farmaner underlined that the Buddhist majority oppressed other minorities for decades.
"The current situation in Burma is the systematic failure by the international community to protect the Rohingya Muslims," he said.
Lord Ahmed said he visited Arakan together with some volunteers and saw Muslim children living in very dire conditions. He underscored that Turkey has provided a great deal of humanitarian aid to the region since the early days of the latest military campaign targeting Muslim civilians.
“The Turkish Red Crescent was there when I visited the region,” he said.
“I saw a woman with a badly broken arm. She told me the Burmese military broke her arm. There are thousands of stories like that.”
Altunyaldiz briefed the room about Turkish aid to Rohingya Muslims and said Turkey would always be with them.
He said the international community has reached a consensus to end the violence as soon as possible.
"The current situation in Burma should be a concern for the whole international community and also for humanity," Altunyaldiz said.
The UN said around 607,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed from Myanmar to Bangladesh since Aug. 25.
"Although the number of new arrivals is now slowing, people continue to arrive in the makeshift settlements of Cox’s Bazar every day, bringing the total Rohingya population of the district to over 820,000," Joel Millman, spokesman for the UN’s International Agency for Migration, told a news conference at the UN in Geneva on Tuesday.
The refugees are fleeing a military crackdown in which security forces and Buddhist mobs have killed men, women and children, looted homes and torched Rohingya villages.
The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.
The UN has documented mass gang rapes, killings – including those of infants and young children -- brutal beatings and disappearances committed by security personnel.
In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.
