Over One Million Rohingya Muslim Refugees in Bangladesh
Ahmad Soltani, the Deputy for Planning and Specialized Education of the ICRS’s Relief and Rescue Organization, said that while there are no official figures, it is estimated that the number of refugees who have crossed the Myanmar-Bangladesh border until mid-October is around 1.2 million.
He made the remark while speaking at a forum on "Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar” on Saturday.
The forum was held at IQNA’s pavilion at the 23rd edition of the Tehran Press Exhibition.
Soltani said the presence of so many Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh means there are not many Rohingya Muslims left in Myanmar.
He highlighted the depth of the tragedy the Myanmarese Muslim minority has been going through, stressing that the situation of Rohingya Muslims is so dire that no one can remain silent.
He stressed that resolving the crisis requires active international diplomacy and the return of the refuges.
Referring to the aid and relief operations, Soltani said the IRCS along with aid organizations from other countries like Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands are currently providing relief aid to the refugees in Bangladesh.
He added that the IRCS’s relief activities in Bangladesh have been carried out in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
On the most urgent needs of the refugees, he said they are in need of shelters, drinking water, food, clothes, and sanitary and medical services.
Soltani noted that so far three convoys of Iran’s relief aid for Rohingya Muslims have been dispatched to Bangladesh.
He added that the IRCS, in cooperation with Iran’s Ministry of Health, is working to set up a field hospital and five clinics for the refugees in Bangladesh.
The Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar amid persecution at the hands of extremist Buddhists and the military.
Since October 2016, Myanmar’s army has been carrying out a military crackdown in Rakhine, where a large number of the Rohingya live.
The military crackdown has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee their homes and cross into the neighboring Bangladesh.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council in late September that "the situation has spiraled into the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare.”
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has described the violence against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar by the military and militia as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
