According to Bangladeshi officials, about 8,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh in recent months in a bid to escape escalating violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state,
The violence intensified as the conflict between Myanmar’s ruling junta and the Arakan Army (a powerful ethnic militia drawn from the Buddhist majority) continues to worsen.
Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior official in charge of refugees for the Bangladeshi government has said;
“We have information that around 8,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh recently, mostly over the last two months. Bangladesh is already over-burdened and unable to accommodate any more Rohingya.”
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh government has yet to give an estimate of how many Rohingya have crossed over in the last few months.
The Bangladesh de-facto foreign minister, Mohammad Touhid Hossain, had told reporters on Tuesday that the government will hold a “serious discussion at the cabinet” within the next two to three days to address this problem.
Hossain had further expressed sympathy for the Rohingya, saying that the country no longer had the capacity to provide humanitarian shelter to additional refugees.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh had held rallies on August 25, marking the seventh anniversary of the 2017 military crackdown that forced them to escape from Myanmar, clamouring for an end to the violence and the safe return to their homeland.
Over one million Rohingya are currently living in overcrowded camps in southern Bangladesh, with little to no hope of returning to Myanmar, where they are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights.
The recent surge in violence is the worst one the Rohingya have faced since 2017 when the Myanmar military-led campaign had viciously attacked them, leading to the United Nations tagging the attack as as “having genocidal intent.”
The Rohingya who recently sought refuge to Bangladesh have urged the government to provide them with shelter.
