Independent :
Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have pleaded for safe passage from two remote Burmese villages cut off by hostile Buddhists and running short of food.
Villagers feared their houses would be burned down and said they could starve to death unless authorities helped them flee.
At least 430,000 Rohingya have escaped into neighbouring Bangladesh amid a campaign of violent persecution that United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
“We’re terrified,” Maung Maung, a Rohingya official at Ah Nauk Pyin village, told Reuters by telephone. “We’ll starve soon and they’re threatening to burn down our houses.”
Another Rohingya Muslim, who asked not to be named, said ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the same village and shouted: “Leave or we will kill you all.”
Fragile relations between Ah Nauk Pyin and its neighbours were shattered on 25 August, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants in the western Rakhine state prompted a ferocious response from Burmese security forces.
About a million Rohingya lived in the state until the crisis but endure systematic discrimination in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Most of the Muslim minority face draconian travel restrictions and are denied citizenship.
Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the the state’s government, said he had received no information about the plea for safe passage and claimed southern Rathedaung, the district in which the villages sit, was “completely safe”.
“There is nothing to be concerned about,” he added.
National police spokesman Myo Thu Soe also denied knowledge of the trapped Rohingya villagers but said he would investigate.
The US State Department’s East Asia Bureau called “urgently” for Burma’s security forces “to act in accordance with the rule of law and to stop the violence and displacement suffered by individuals from all communities.”
“Tens of thousands of people reportedly lack adequate food, water, and shelter in northern Rakhine state,” spokeswoman Katina Adams said.
Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have pleaded for safe passage from two remote Burmese villages cut off by hostile Buddhists and running short of food.
Villagers feared their houses would be burned down and said they could starve to death unless authorities helped them flee.
At least 430,000 Rohingya have escaped into neighbouring Bangladesh amid a campaign of violent persecution that United Nations has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
“We’re terrified,” Maung Maung, a Rohingya official at Ah Nauk Pyin village, told Reuters by telephone. “We’ll starve soon and they’re threatening to burn down our houses.”
Another Rohingya Muslim, who asked not to be named, said ethnic Rakhine Buddhists came to the same village and shouted: “Leave or we will kill you all.”
Fragile relations between Ah Nauk Pyin and its neighbours were shattered on 25 August, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants in the western Rakhine state prompted a ferocious response from Burmese security forces.
About a million Rohingya lived in the state until the crisis but endure systematic discrimination in a country where many Buddhists regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Most of the Muslim minority face draconian travel restrictions and are denied citizenship.
Tin Maung Swe, secretary of the the state’s government, said he had received no information about the plea for safe passage and claimed southern Rathedaung, the district in which the villages sit, was “completely safe”.
“There is nothing to be concerned about,” he added.
National police spokesman Myo Thu Soe also denied knowledge of the trapped Rohingya villagers but said he would investigate.
The US State Department’s East Asia Bureau called “urgently” for Burma’s security forces “to act in accordance with the rule of law and to stop the violence and displacement suffered by individuals from all communities.”
“Tens of thousands of people reportedly lack adequate food, water, and shelter in northern Rakhine state,” spokeswoman Katina Adams said.
