Thu 22 October 2020:
A group of 35 organisations is now calling on the US and other countries to state publicly that what happened in Myanmar constituted genocide
The United Kingdom has announced new funding for tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees now living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar three years ago, as civil society groups urged the countries convening the conference to acknowledge that genocide had been committed against the ethnic minority.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab outlined a further 47.5 million British pounds ($63 million) in aid, for the mostly Muslim Rohingya and to help Bangladesh deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its frequent natural disasters.
The money was pledged as part of a virtual aid conference which starts on Thursday and is co-hosted by the UK, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the United States and the European Union.
Rohingya refugees want to return home.
But they need
Safety
Freedom of movement
Citizenship rightsTomorrow UNHCR 🇺🇳 joins 🇺🇸, 🇬🇧 + 🇪🇺 at the #RohingyaConf2020 to spotlight how the international community can take action.
Info: https://t.co/XfTlsS7YaV pic.twitter.com/sEJwK5xjcH
— Indrika Ratwatte (@IndrikaRatwatte) October 21, 2020
“Today I urge the world not to turn away from the Rohingya’s suffering and to take the action necessary to allow them to safely return to the homes they fled in terror,” Raab said in a statement.
The UNHCR has appealed for more than $1bn this year to meet the humanitarian needs of the Rohingya refugees, 860,000 of whom are living in sprawling camps across the Cox’s Bazar district in southeastern Bangladesh. Ahead of the conference, it said it had received less than half that amount so far.
“The people living in Cox’s Bazar face unimaginable hardship and many have been victims of violence,” Raab said.
“We have imposed sanctions on the perpetrators of this brutality and this new funding will save lives in the camp and help Bangladesh become more resilient to disasters such as coronavirus.”
A group of 35 organisations is now calling on the US and other countries to state publicly that what happened in Myanmar constituted genocide.
“A genocide determination would send a sense of urgency to spur the kind of multilateral diplomatic engagement and pressure needed to ensure that Burma (Myanmar) refrains from committing further atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities and, ultimately, creates the conditions conducive to the safe, voluntary, informed and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees to their place of origin,” human rights and refugee groups, including Fortify Rights, Refugees International and the Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, wrote in a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the eve of the conference.
Britain has sanctioned two Myanmar generals after a UN investigation found them responsible “for atrocities which amount to ethnic cleansing”, according to the British foreign ministry’s statement.
