BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand’s foreign ministry, in a rare statement on an ongoing crisis in neighboring Myanmar’s Rakhine state, said late on Saturday that it was “closely following the situation” and would provide aid to the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh.

FILE PHOTO: People displaced by violence walk in the banks of Mayu river with their belongings while moving to another village, in Buthidaung in the north of Rakhine state, Myanmar September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Violence erupted in Rakhine last month when Rohingya militants attacked security posts, triggering a crackdown by the Myanmar army.

More than half a million ethnic Rohingya - a mostly Muslim minority who are denied citizenship by Myanmar - have fled to Bangladesh since then.

Those who fled accuse Myanmar’s army, backed by Buddhist mobs, of a brutal killing campaign. The United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing a sweeping government offensive in the north of Rakhine State in response to those attacks.

“Thailand is closely following the situation in the Rakhine State with concern,” the ministry said.

“The Royal Thai Government has always placed great importance to providing care and protection to Myanmar displaced persons,” it added, pointing to some 100,000 refugees from Myanmar who live in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

But many of those living in the camps are long-term residents who fled conflict decades ago. None are Rohingya, according to non-governmental organizations who work there.

The Thai foreign ministry said its statement was in response to views raised by some human rights groups regarding Thailand’s position on the unrest in Rakhine.

Amnesty International last week said Thailand must not “push back” Rohingya fleeing violence and that it should provide refugees formal legal status and protection.

Thailand does not recognize the status of any refugees or recognize the Rohingya as legitimate migrant workers.

Thailand said it supported a statement on the issue by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a grouping of 10 nations.

In the statement, ASEAN foreign ministers condemned the attacks on Myanmar’s security forces and “all acts of violence which resulted in loss of civilian lives”.

Malaysia, an ASEAN member, disassociated itself from the statement, saying it misrepresented issues relating to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.

So far, “none of the affected victims from the August unrest in Rakhine State have been found in Thailand,” the Thai foreign ministry said. </s> Minister of the Office of State Counselor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe arrives in the capital tonight to discuss the Rohingya issue with Bangladesh authorities.

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi is sending the minister as her representative to Dhaka for discussing the Rohingya issue with Bangladesh government amid growing international pressure on Myanmar following exodus of over five lakhs of its nationals in Bangladesh.

During his visit, the Myanmar minister will hold meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali tomorrow.

The Myanmar minister will not visit Cox’s Bazar to see the plight of Rohingya people, who were forcibly displaced by Myanmar government, although Dhaka earlier made a request to Naypyidaw in this regard.

Over half a million Rohingyas have taken shelter in Bangladesh since Aug 25 when the military crackdown began in the northern Rakhine State over alleged terrorist attacks on security outposts.

International pressure has been mounted on Myanmar for violence against Rohingya people in Rakhine state where another 250,000 faced the risk of displacement. </s> BEIJING (Reuters) - China supports the Myanmar government’s efforts to protect domestic stability and approach to resolving the Rohingya issue, Premier Li Keqiang told the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence offered a strong rebuke.

Pence on Wednesday voiced Washington’s strongest condemnation yet of Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims, telling Suu Kyi that “persecution” by her country’s army was “without excuse”.

Meeting Suu Kyi on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Singapore, Li said China attaches great importance to its ties with Myanmar and would build on their tradition of friendship, China’s Foreign Ministry said late on Thursday.

“The Chinese side supports Myanmar’s efforts in maintaining its domestic stability, and supports Myanmar and Bangladesh appropriately resolving the Rakhine state issue via dialogue and consultation,” the ministry cited Li as saying.

China is “willing to provide the relevant parties with necessary support in this regard”, he added, without elaborating.

More than 700,000 Rohingya refugees crossed into Bangladesh from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, U.N. agencies say, after Rohingya insurgent attacks on Myanmar security forces in August 2017 triggered a sweeping military crackdown.

The two countries agreed on Oct. 30 to begin returning refugees to Myanmar in mid-November. The U.N. refugee agency has said conditions in Rakhine are “not yet conducive for returns”.

China has close relations with Myanmar, and backs what Myanmar officials have called a legitimate counter-insurgency operation in Rakhine.

China’s statement cited Suu Kyi as expressing thanks to China for the many times it has extended help to Myanmar, especially the constant understanding and support for the Myanmar peace process and the Rakhine issue.

A plan to begin repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar stalled on Thursday, amid protests by refugees at camps in Bangladesh and recriminations between the officials in both countries. </s> SINGAPORE: The Singapore Government will donate approximately S$300,000 worth of humanitarian relief supplies to Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) on Friday (Sep 29).

The supplies will go towards the communities affected by the crisis in the Rakhine state, where almost half a million people have fled the violence in Myanmar.

"Singapore is concerned about the humanitarian situation," MINDEF said in the news release.

The Ministry also said that Singapore was ready to support efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to "utilise existing mechanisms to provide humanitarian assistance in accordance with the principles of the ASEAN Charter". 



Offers of assistance have been conveyed to both governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh, it added. </s> Myanmar has warned its ASEAN counterpart Malaysia to respect the principle of non-interference after the leader of the Muslim-majority nation reportedly agreed to attend a protest condemning the ongoing military operations in Rakhine State.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s office told AFP that the country’s 63-year-old leader would be taking part in the protest, which has yet to have a confirmed location.

“The major gathering on December 4 is to express our concern over the violence taking place on the Rohingya,” Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi was quoted as saying by the Malay Mail Online on November 29.

In response, deputy director general of the President’s Office U Zaw Htay said yesterday that the neighbouring country should respect sovereign affairs.

“According to ASEAN principles, a member country does not interfere in other member countries’ internal affairs. We have always followed and respected this principle. We hope that the Malaysian government will continue to follow it,” U Zaw Htay told The Myanmar Times.

He added that the protest appeared to be a calculated political decision to win the support of the Malaysian public and had little to do with Myanmar.

“We will call on the Malaysian ambassador regarding the protest and to ask if the Malaysian prime minister is participating. If so, we will monitor the event,” said U Zaw Htay.

The announcement by Mr Najib’s office follows a series of recent moves by Malaysia to dial up the rhetoric in response to violence in northern Rakhine State, where the Tatmadaw has been conducting a crackdown since October 9.

On November 25, the Malaysian cabinet discussed Rakhine State and issued a strongly worded statement condemning the escalation of violence “resulting in the loss of innocent lives and displacement of people”.

“Malaysia also calls on the government of Myanmar to take all the necessary actions to address the alleged ethnic cleansing in northern Rakhine State,” the statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Last week, Malaysia summoned the Myanmar ambassador in Kuala Lumpur while around 500 people staged a protest outside Myanmar’s embassy.

Malaysia also abruptly pulled out of two scheduled football matches against Myanmar this week. The last-minute cancellation was announced on November 30 and cited the handling of the Rakhine State crisis as the reason Malaysia would not compete in the December 9 and 12 matches.

According to the Tatmadaw’s True News and Information Team, 69 people have been killed and hundreds of suspects have been rounded up in the Muslim-majority townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw since the military began sweeps to find suspects connected to a spate of lethal attacks on border-guard posts on October 9. The Myanmar government has repeatedly denied allegations of abuse and has said the situation on the ground is being carried out within the parameters of the rule of law. Journalists and outside observers have been restricted from accessing the military operation zones, making it impossible to independently verify information.

According to the UN refugee agency, as many as 10,000 Muslim residents of Rakhine State who self-identify as Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh over the past few weeks. The UN estimates that 30,000 people in northern Rakhine State have been displaced by the violence.

U Zaw Htay said that amid the public denunciations and protests in Malaysia, the government is concerned for the safety of Myanmar citizens living in the country. He advised them to keep in contact with the Myanmar embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

“Myanmar citizens should be careful and they should not go outside without companions,” he said. </s> The conflict in Rakhine has sent hundreds of Rohingya Muslims fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh and poses a serious challenge to leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who swept to power last year on promises of national reconciliation.

At least 86 people are reported to have been killed in escalating violence that has displaced about 30,000 in the region's most serious bloodshed since hundreds were killed in communal clashes in 2012.

The Malaysian foreign ministry called on all parties involved to refrain from actions that could aggravate the situation.

"Malaysia also calls on the government of Myanmar to take all the necessary actions to address the alleged ethnic cleansing in the northern Rakhine State," it said in a statement.

"The ministry will summon the ambassador of Myanmar to convey the government of Malaysia’s concern over this issue," it added, without giving a timeframe.

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims marched in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, condemning the bloody crackdown on the persecuted minority and slamming Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi for her inaction.

Protesters demanded humanitarian aid for Rakhine, and urged that the military seize all attackers.

"The Myanmar government says the claims are all fabricated but they are not fabricated," Rohingya community leader Muhammed Noor told reporters, referring to reports of incidents of killing, rapes of wives and daughters and home burnings.

"This movement has to continue, to pressure the government to stop the killing."

This week, Muslim-majority Malaysia it was considering pulling out from a regional soccer tournament co-hosted by Myanmar in protest against the crackdown. But it later decided to continue.

Protests were also held simultaneously in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand, and in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

Protesters in Jakarta called for the Nobel panel to cancel its award to Suu Kyi.

Indonesia is "ready and willing" to help Myanmar initiate dialogue, its foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, said this week.

Many among the Buddhist majority in Myanmar view its 1.1 million Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Persecution and poverty led thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar following the violence between Buddhists and Muslims there four years ago. Many of them were smuggled or trafficked to Thailand, Malaysia and beyond. </s> The September 28th Security Council 8060th Session on the crisis in Myanmar – following the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) terrorist attacks on the 25th of August – highlighted once again two opposing trends in current international relations.

After several speeches by the US, UK and French UN ambassadors blaming the Burmese government for massacres carried out by ARSA terrorists, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors praised Naypyidaw for its handling of the security crisis in the country.

“China condemns the recent violent attacks in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and supports Myanmar’s effort to keep its domestic situation stable. We sincerely hope order will prevail again as soon as possible. So no more harm will come to innocent civilians and social stability, unity among ethnic groups and economic development in Myanmar will be sustained. The question of Rakhine state is rooted in a nexus of complex historical, ethnic and religious factors.”

The nexus of complex factors outlined by the Chinese deputy ambassador have been reduced by the Western corporate press to meaningless and mendacious soundbites accusing the Burmese state of committing ‘genocide’ against its Muslim minority, when in fact the opposite is closer to reality, namely that terrorist groups living among the Muslim majority of northern Rakhine State have been ethnically cleansing the Buddhist, Hindu and other religious and ethnic minorities. Muslims who refuse to collaborate have also been murdered.

Wu praised the efforts of the Burmese government in dealing with the humanitarian crisis caused by the Western-backed ARSA terrorists:

“China has taken note of a series of measures taken by the government of Myanmar to ease the situation in Rakhine State and keep it stable. This is conclusive to the search for a long-term solution to this issue.”

In a clear reference to what Myanmar’s State Councilor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has called an ‘iceberg of misinformation‘, Wu politely criticised the aggressive media war waged by the international community (the US and its vassal-states) against Myanmar:

“It behoves the international community to view the difficulties and challenges confronting the government of Myanmar through objective optics, exercise patience and provide support and help.”

Since the communal violence of 2012, a low intensity war has been waged by Islamist terrorists against the government of Myanmar. The terrorists have received funding and training from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and have links to British,French and US intelligence agencies and NGOS. The strategic objective of the US-backed destabilisation is to carve out a Muslim enclave in north Rakhine State, breaking up the Union of Myanmar.

The Myth of the Rohingya

Since 2012 the term ‘rohingya’ has become known to an international audience. The historical records of Burma prove that no such ethnicity ever existed. Rohingya is a Bengali term for someone who lives in Rakhine State. Through various well-funded lobbying groups such as the Arakan Rohingya Union, the Rohingya Council of Europe, Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, and many more, there has been increasing media focus on the so-called ‘plight of the rohingyas’, that is to say the Bengali community in northern Rakhine State.

Although Islam has been present in Arakan for at least 500 years and possibly far longer, at least 500,000 of the residents in northern Rakhine State are Bengali refugees or their descendants from the 1971 Bangladesh independence war.

Others are descendants of Chittagonian laborers brought in by the British colonial regime in the mid 19th century, while many more are newly arrived illegal immigrants who regularly cross the badly-secured border with Bangladesh. In his paper ‘Geopolitics of the Powers and the Bengali Problems in Burma’, historian Khin Maung Saw writes:

‘In 1975 the Bangladeshi ambassador in Burma, K.N. Kaiser, admitted to the then British ambassador to Burma, Mr. T.J. O’Brien that there were still around five hundred thousand illegal Bangladeshi immigrants inside Burma. That report can be seen in British Archives in London.’

Myanmar has developed a verification process which will determine who can qualify for citizenship according to the country’s laws, but many Muslim leaders in the Rakhine Bengali community are refusing to cooperate with the authorities. There are some analysts who seek to play down the role of Jihadist terrorism in Rakhine State. They admit that the US is attempting to balkanise the country but seek to divert attention from the horrendous crimes committed by the ARSA and other groups by claiming the Myanmar government is also a puppet of the US and that it is in fact persecuting the ‘rohingya’. They also argue that the Rohingya are indeed a separate ethnicity, ignoring all the academic and diplomatic literature which proves the falsity of such claims.

Such analysts oversimplify to the point of absurdity and obfuscate the real forces at play in what is beginning to look like an Asian Yugoslavia scenario. Many of the agencies financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy such as the Karen Women’s Organisation, have come out in opposition to Aung San Suu Kyi. To therefore suggest that US agencies are supporting Aung San Suu Kyi is patently false. Aung San Suu Kyi has criticised the US government for using the term rohingya; yet US-funded media and NGOS in the country continue to defy the State Councillor’s requests.

Bangladesh’s population explosion has also led to global human trafficking networks who often operate through UN agencies, smuggling migrants to Europe as ‘refugees fleeing genocide’. Videos have appeared on the internet of Bengali activists training other Bengalis how to pretend they are rohingya in order to get refugee status in Europe; it has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Many of the people in the Bangladeshi camps are women and children who are waiting for their husbands to supply them with money once they reach Europe. The money for refugees in Germany is coming from the German tax payer as the German government funds some of the logistics companies involved in the mass migration such as ORS Systems Europe.

A health worker from north Rakhine State explained the refugee racket to this author on the phone:

“I just called called my friend from Buthidaung and asked him why people were fleeing to Bangladesh. He said the people from Bangladesh told the Muslims who are staying in Myanmar to come to Bangladesh because they will get opportunities and benefits from the UN. So the Muslims are fleeing to Bangladesh every day! They are selling their properties and fleeing to Bangladesh! Most of them are poor because they have many wives and a lot of children and are not able to feed their families! So they want to increase the Muslim population and take over the land. They planned it and are intentionally doing it!”

The Burmese government is attempting to resolve the crisis according to the 1982 Citizenship Law and the 1993 Memorandum of Understanding with Bangladesh.

As part of the US ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy, the Pentagon seeks to establish military bases all along the South East coast of Asia. Many parts of South Asia Asia’s coastlines are heavily populated with Muslims. US militarization of those regions would serve to contain China’s growing economic and military power.

China has become Myanmar’s chief economic partner. Myanmar is a key strategic interest for China’s One Belt One Road initiative. Chinese gas pipe-lines and the construction of the Deep Sea port of PyaukPyu in Rakhine State have had huge benefits for the local population, who now have 24 hour electricity supply for the first time. Chinese access to the Bay of Bengal is essential for the development of the country’s Western and inland provinces. The Rohingya crisis is part of US psychological war to break up the Union of Myanmar and hamper China’s growing economic and military power in Eurasia.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia began his speech by reminding the delegates that the cause of the violence was the ARSA terrorist attacks. He also pointed out that there were Muslims, Buddhist and Hindus fleeing the violence and not just Muslims as Western media outlets claim.

“In recent days we’ve received an illustration of the fact that ARSA were responsible for the massacre of civilians. What was also found were cashes of improvised explosive devices. There is information that the extremists forced members of the Hindu community in border villages to leave their homes and to migrate to neighbouring Bangladesh with the Muslims. Furthermore, there is information that terrorists burned entire villages and that evidence confiscated from the fighters.

Photographs were confiscated from the terrorists which were in all likelihood meant to be used as reports to the leadership of ARSA or its foreign sponsors. This information is confirmed by the earlier statement of Naypyidaw when they said that the initiators of the outbreak in Rakhine State had the objective of maximally increasing the scale of the humanitarian disaster and transfering the responsibility for it to the government.”

Russia called for negotiation between Myanmar and Bangladesh on the basis of the 1993 Memorandum of Understanding signed by both countries. Moscow also called on the Western powers to end their aggressive attitude toward the Burmese government.

“We call upon the parties involved and the outside players to show restraint and to be objective in the assessment of the events. We need to be very careful when we uses use terms as genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

Nebenzia finished his speech by exposing the lies of the Western delegates who claimed Naypyidaw was refusing to cooperate with the UN:

“We welcome the fact that Naypyidaw is not refusing an interaction with the UN. The National Security Advisor, who was at New York at a high-level meeting last week invited the Secretary General and his USG Mr Feltman to visit the country in order to help in the process of national reconciliation.”

Russia warned of the danger of Islamist terrorism spreading throughout South East Asia. According to Syrian journalist Afraa Dagher, the ‘Rohingya Free Army’ is being formed in Syria for redeployment to Myanmar.

The fools who have been ranting and raving about the ‘genocide of the rohingya’ have unwittingly prepared the terrain for the genocide of an entire nation which refuses to submit to the New World Order

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON MYANMAR GO TO: 21st Century Wire MYANMAR Files

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Bangladesh opens talks with neighbouring Myanmar on Monday with the aim of securing the return home of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar, most of whom have arrived since late August.

DHAKA: Bangladesh opens talks with neighbouring Myanmar on Monday with the aim of securing the return home of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar, most of whom have arrived since late August.

The United Nations has called the exodus of 507,000 Rohingya since Aug. 25 the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency, and says Buddhist-majority Myanmar is engaging in ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Myanmar rejects that. Its forces launched an offensive in the north of Rakhine state in response to coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on Aug 25.

Myanmar blames the insurgents for attacks on civilians and for setting most of the fires that have reduced more than half of more than 400 Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine to ashes. The insurgents deny that.

Myanmar says more than 500 people have been killed in the latest violence, most of them insurgents.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called for an end to the violence and for safe zones to be set up in Myanmar to enable refugees to return.

She has also called for a U.N. fact-finding mission to go to Myanmar and for Myanmar to implement recommendations on solving problems in Rakhine drawn up by a team led by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Bangladesh will focus on those five proposals in talks in Dhaka on Monday with Myanmar government official Kyaw Tint Swe, in particular the sustainable return of the refugees, a Bangladeshi foreign ministry official said.

"We don't think this crisis is going to be resolved in just one meeting," said the Bangladeshi official who declined to be identified as he is not authorised to speak to media on the record.

The crisis over Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya is the biggest problem national leader Aung San Suu Kyi has had to face since forming a government last year after winning a landmark election in late 2015.

Suu Kyi, in an address to the nation last month, said Myanmar was ready to start a verification process under a 1993 agreement with Bangladesh and "refugees from this country will be accepted without any problem".

There were already about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the most recent exodus.

The Nobel peace laureate has been accused by Western critics of not speaking out strongly enough on behalf of the long-persecuted minority and of defending the army’s actions.

The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and classified as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots there that go back centuries, with communities marginalized and occasionally subjected to communal violence.

Suu Kyi has no power over security policy under a military-drafted constitution and the public in Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has surged over recent years, largely supports the offensive against the insurgents.

The United States, in its strongest criticism of Myanmar over the crisis, called last week on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar's military. But it stopped short of threatening to reimpose U.S. sanctions, which were suspended under the Obama administration.

A protest against Western pressure and foreign media coverage of the crisis is planned in the biggest city of Yangon on Monday.

Myanmar has refused to grant access to the U.N. fact-finding mission but Suu Kyi appointed Annan last year to lead an advisory commission and propose solutions.

The commission presented its recommendations on Aug. 24, a day before the insurgent attacks sparked the latest crisis, among them a review of a law that links citizenship and ethnicity and leaves most Rohingya stateless.

The panel also recommended that the government hold perpetrators of serious human rights violations accountable, ensure the right to freedom of movement for all residents of Rakhine and investment in infrastructure such as roads electricity, water and internet access to lift the state out of poverty.

Suu Kyi, in her address to the nation last month, said she was committed to the recommendations. </s> UNITED NATIONS/YANGON (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Myanmar over violence against Rohingya Muslims until the military puts sufficient accountability measures in place.

It was the first time the United States called for punishment of military leaders behind the repression, but stopped short of threatening to reimpose U.S. sanctions which were suspended under the Obama administration.

“We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be – a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council, the first time Washington has echoed the U.N.’s accusation that the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine State was ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar rejects the accusations and has denounced rights abuses.

“The Burmese military must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing,” Haley said.

“And any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place,” Haley said.

Myanmar national security adviser Thaung Tun said at the United Nations on Thursday there was no ethnic cleansing or genocide happening in Myanmar. He told the Security Council that Myanmar had invited U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit. A U.N. official said Guterres would consider visiting Myanmar under the right conditions.

China and Russia both expressed support for the Myanmar government. Myanmar said earlier this month it was negotiating with China and Russia, which have veto powers in the Security Council, to protect it from any possible action by the council.

The Trump administration has mostly hewed to former President Barack Obama’s approach of forging warmer relations with Myanmar, partly aimed at countering China’s influence in the resource-rich Southeast Asian country.

Meanwhile, international aid groups in Myanmar have urged the government to allow free access to Rakhine, where an army offensive has sent more than 500,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh, but hundreds of thousands remain cut off from food, shelter and medical care.

Refugees are still leaving Myanmar, more than a month after Rohingya Muslim insurgents attacked security posts near the border, triggering fierce Myanmar military retaliation.

Aid groups said on Thursday the total number of refugees in Bangladesh was now 502,000.

The Myanmar government has stopped international aid groups and U.N. agencies from carrying out most of their work in the north of Rakhine state, citing insecurity since the Aug. 25 insurgent attacks.

Aid groups said in a joint statement they were: “increasingly concerned about severe restrictions on humanitarian access and impediments to the delivery of critically needed humanitarian assistance throughout Rakhine State.”

“We urge the government and authorities of Myanmar to ensure that all people in need in Rakhine State have full, free and unimpeded access to life-saving humanitarian assistance.”

The government has put the Myanmar Red Cross in charge of aid to the state, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross. But the groups said they feared insufficient aid was getting through.

Relations between the government and aid agencies had been difficult for months, with some officials accusing the groups of helping the insurgents.

Aid groups dismissed the accusations, which they said had inflamed anger toward them among Buddhists in the communally divided state, and called for an end to “misinformation and unfounded accusations”.

Rights groups have accused the army of trying to push Rohingya Muslims out of Myanmar, and of committing crimes against humanity. They have called for sanctions, in particular an arms embargo.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that the violence against Rohingya Muslims in the northern part of Rakhine could spread to central Rakhine, where 250,000 more people were at risk of displacement.

Guterres told the U.N. Security Council during its first public meeting on Myanmar in eight years, that the violence had spiraled into the “world’s fastest developing refugee emergency, a humanitarian and human rights nightmare.”

A group of Republican and Democratic senators urged the Trump administration on Thursday to use the “full weight” of its influence to help resolve the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

A letter seen by Reuters and signed by four Republican and 17 Democratic members of the 100-seat Senate also calls on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green to provide more humanitarian aid.

The British Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, Mark Field, described the situation as “an unacceptable tragedy” after visiting Myanmar and meeting leaders including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has faced scathing criticism and calls for her Nobel prize to be withdrawn.

Police in Bangladesh said they recovered the bodies of 14 refugees, including nine children, who drowned when their boat capsized off the coast in bad weather. A Reuters photographer said he saw several babies among the victims.

The U.N. International Organization for Migration later put the toll at 15.

Police officer Afrajul Hoque Tutu said three boats had capsized in heavy seas.

Myanmar was getting ready to “verify” refugees who want to return, the government minister charged with putting into effect recommendations to solve problems in Rakhine said.

Myanmar would conduct a “national verification process” at two points on its border with Bangladesh under terms agreed during a repatriation effort in 1993, state media quoted Win Myat Aye, the minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement, as saying.

Myanmar authorities do not recognize Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group, instead regarding them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

“The government hates us,” said refugee Zafar Alam, 55, sheltering from rain near a refugee settlement in Bangladesh, referring to the Myanmar government.

“I don’t think I’d be safe there. There’s no justice.”
Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is "closely following the situation" in Rakhine State and offers aid for the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh.