GENEVA: The United Nations warned on Friday that escalating fighting in conflict-torn Myanmar’s Rakhine State had forced around 45,000 minority Rohingya to flee, amid allegations of killings and burnings of property.
“Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent days by the fighting in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships,” UN rights office spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told reporters in Geneva.
“An estimated 45,000 Rohingya have reportedly fled to an area on the Naf River near the border with Bangladesh, seeking protection,” she said.
Clashes have rocked Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked forces of the ruling junta in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021.
The AA says it is fighting for more autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine population in the state, which is also home to around 600,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Rakhine in 2017 during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.
“Over a million Rohingya are already in Bangladesh, having fled past purges,” Throssell pointed out.
UN rights chief Volker Turk was urging Bangladesh and other countries “to provide effective protection to those seeking it, in line with international law, and to ensure international solidarity with Bangladesh in hosting Rohingya refugees in Myanmar,” she said.
James Rodehaver, head of the rights office’s Myanmar team, described the horrifying situation many were fleeing from.
He said his team had received testimonies and seen satellite images, online videos and pictures indicating that Buthidaung town had been “largely burned.”
“We have received information indicating that the burning did start on May 17... two days after the military had retreated from the town... and the Arakan Army claimed to have taken full control of the village.”
He stressed that the UN rights office was still working to corroborate that information, to clearly establish “who were the perpetrators.”
One survivor had described seeing dozens of dead bodies as he fled Buthidaung, while another had said he was among tens of thousands who fled the town only to find themselves blocked by the AA on the road west toward Maungdaw town.
Other survivors also said AA members had abused them and extorted money from them as they tried to make their way to Rohingya villages south of the town.
In the weeks leading up to the burning of Buthidaung, Rodehaver said the rights office had documented renewed attacks on Rohingya civilians by both AA and the military in northern Rakhine, including through air strikes.
The team had documented “at least four cases of beheadings,” he said, adding that they had determined with a high level of confidence that those were carried out by the AA.
Beyond Buthidaung, Throssell warned of “clear and present risks of a serious expansion of violence.”
She pointed to the beginning of a battle for Maungdaw town, where the military has outposts and where a large Rohingya community lives.
“In this appalling situation, civilians are once more victimized, killed, their properties destroyed and looted, their demands for safety and security ignored,” she said.
“They are again forced to flee their homes in a recurring nightmare of suffering.”
Some 45,000 Rohingya have fled fighting in Myanmar: UN
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Some 45,000 Rohingya have fled fighting in Myanmar: UN
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
