- Title: Timeline of plight of Rohingya Muslims, as UN convenes Global Refugee Forum
- Date: 6th December 2019
- Summary: At the end of January, veteran U.S. mediator Bill Richardson quit an international advisory panel advising Aung San Suu Kyi's government on the Rohingya crisis. His resignation came during the board's first visit to troubled Rakhine state. He said the advisory board was conducting a "whitewash", that the Nobel laureate Suu Kyi had developed a "siege mentality" in her position as Myanmar's State Counsellor, and that he did not believe conditions were yet right for the repatriation process to begin. Suu Kyi's office said her government had asked Richardson to step down and accused him of pursuing "his own agenda." SANTE FE, NEW MEXICO, UNITED STATES (FILE - JANUARY 26, 2018) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) FORMER NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR, BILL RICHARDSON, SAYING: "Correct, they did not - I was pursuing my own agenda, which was against the agenda of the advisory board which was to whitewash everything." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) FORMER NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR, BILL RICHARDSON, SAYING: "I think the problem is she's unwilling to confront the military. She's unwilling to say to the military, 'stop these atrocities,' because she wants to get re-elected, because she is afraid of them. And that's a wrong moral position." President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, visited a Rohingya refugee camp in southern Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar region on January 28. Widodo's visit comes as Bangladesh is struggling to cope with a massive influx of Rohingya refugees who have fled an army crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state since last August. COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH (FILE - JANUARY 28, 2018) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF INDONESIAN PRESIDENT JOKO WIDODO STANDING IN FRONT OF TENT (CENTRE), POSTER ON TENT READING (English): "INDONESIAN HUMANITARIAN ALLIANCES. PEOPLE OF INDONESIA" WIDODO WORKING WATER PUMP WIDODO AND HIS WIFE IRIANA JOKO WIDODO TALKING TO REFUGEE CHILDREN
- Embargoed: 20th December 2019 00:45
- Keywords: Bangladesh Myanmar Rohingya Rohingya Muslims Rohingya crisis Rohingya timeline file footage refugee camps timeline
- Location: COX'S BAZAR, DHAKA AND GHUMDUM, BANGLADESH / YANGON, RAKHINE STATE AND NAYPYITAW, MYANMAR / PUNJAB, INDIA / LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM / NEW MEXICO, UNITED STATES
- City: COX'S BAZAR, DHAKA AND GHUMDUM, BANGLADESH / YANGON, RAKHINE STATE AND NAYPYITAW, MYANMAR / PUNJAB, INDIA / LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM / NEW MEXICO, UNITED STATES
- Country: Various
- Topics: Asylum/Immigration/Refugees,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA009B8UXUTJ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: This video timeline chronicles an ongoing crisis involving ethnic Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar in droves since August 2017, as the UN convenes Global Refugee Forum in Geneva.
More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since a 2017 crackdown by Myanmar's military, which U.N. investigators say was carried out with "genocidal intent". Buddhist majority Myanmar denies accusations of genocide.
Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingyas said Myanmar security forces and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes had launched a campaign of violence and arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population.
Myanmar had said its forces were carrying out clearance operations against the insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed responsibility for the August attacks and similar, smaller, raids in October in 2016.
The strife had triggered an outpouring of response from global bodies and humanitarian agencies.
Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi called the Rohingya crisis a "complex" issue which her government had inherited. She said that the strife between Muslims and other communities in Rakhine state had existed since the 19th century and restoring trust and harmony would take time.
Myanmar has publicly blamed the crisis on Rohingya "terrorists", referring to militants who attacked security posts in August 2017, prompting the army crackdown, and has branded reports of atrocities, including gang-rapes and mass killings, as fake news.
(Production: Phyllis Xu) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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