U.S. plans $32M in Rohingya aid

At U.N., Pence calls on Burma’s forces to end ‘savagery’

A Rohingya Muslim man who crossed over from Burma into Bangladesh builds a shelter for his family in Taiy Khali refugee camp Wednesday.
A Rohingya Muslim man who crossed over from Burma into Bangladesh builds a shelter for his family in Taiy Khali refugee camp Wednesday.

The United States plans to contribute nearly $32 million in humanitarian aid to help Rohingya Muslim refugees, the State Department said Wednesday, in the administration's first major response to the minority group's mass exodus from Burma.

President Donald Trump's administration announced the aid as world leaders met in New York for U.N. General Assembly meetings. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday lamented the "terrible savagery" of Burma's security forces as he addressed a U.N. Security Council session focused on peacekeeping.

"We are witnessing a historic exodus," Pence said.

In less than a month, more than 420,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, as the United Nations and others raise allegations of ethnic cleansing in Burma.

Last month, Rohingya insurgents attacked Burmese security forces, leading to a military crackdown in which Rohingya villages have been burned and hundreds of people have been killed. The Rohingya live mainly in Burma's northern Rakhine state, near the Bangladeshi border.

Burma's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, did not travel to New York for the U.N. meetings, but in a speech this week -- her first on the crisis -- she defend her country's actions and called for the Rohingya to return. She also spoke by phone with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who urged her to accept humanitarian aid and ensure that conditions are safe enough for the Rohingya to return home.

"While we welcome Aung San Suu Kyi's comments that returning refugees have nothing to fear, the United States of America renews our call on Burma's security forces to end their violence immediately and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution," Pence said Wednesday.

Burma is often called Myanmar, a name that military authorities adopted in 1989. Some nations, such as the United States and Britain, have refused to adopt the name change.

Simon Henshaw, the top U.S. diplomat for refugee and migration issues, said Burma's government must do more to secure the area and protect the people.

"We're concerned about the reports of attacks, extrajudicial murders, rapes, burning of villages," Henshaw said on the sidelines of the U.N. gathering.

The State Department will provide the money from an existing account for refugee and migration issues, officials said, and will coordinate the aid through the International Committee of the Red Cross and affiliated local groups.

Although Suu Kyi has said the "great majority" of Muslims in the conflict zone stayed put and that less than half of villages were emptied, the U.S. has expressed skepticism about that assertion.

"We don't have the access to evaluate that," Henshaw said. "But 420,000 people moving into Bangladesh suggests the vast majority of Rohingya are affected."

The U.S. said the money makes up about one-fourth of what global aid groups say they need to address the humanitarian crisis, with the expectation that the rest of the world will cover the rest of that cost. Over time, the overall cost will probably be hundreds of millions of dollars, said Eric Schwartz, the president of Refugees International.

"I've been doing this work for 30 years," Schwartz said. "This is as bad as anything I've ever seen in terms of the human misery that the Burmese military has created."

Schwartz said that in addition to food, water and shelter, the refugees will need clothing, security for camps being erected on the Burma-Bangladesh border, education for hundreds of thousands of child refugees, and support for those who have experienced trauma during the exodus.

Bangladesh already struggles with overpopulation and is poorly equipped to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees. Even so, the international community has praised the country for its willingness to help the Rohingya.

The new funding will raise the U.S.' total humanitarian aid for Burmese refugees and related issues to about $95 million this budget year.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Pennington of The Associated Press.

photo

AP/DAR YASIN

Rohingya Muslims reach for packets of biscuits Wednesday near Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh.

A Section on 09/21/2017

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