As Bangladesh continues to single-handedly bear the burden of the Rohingya crisis, a top US official at the United Nations has warned the world to ensure the host nation doesn’t become bitter and angry towards the refugees.
Seeking more support for Bangladesh, Kelly E Currie, the US representative on the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, has said the host community is burdened with a large population and the world must make sure that they get all the assistance.
“We don’t want to see that they become bitter and angry towards the Rohingya refugees and make the situation worse,” said Ms Currie, who visited Bangladesh and Burma with a delegation of Security Council members in April this year.
She said the United States is the single largest donor to the Rohingya crisis and has given more than 203 million US dollars since August 2017 including more than 80 million USD in humanitarian assistance to Bangladesh.
On August 25, 2017 the violence in Burma’s Rakhine State led to the mass exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh.
Human Rights bodies have reported that thousands of fleeing Rohingya men and boys were brutally murdered, women and girls were raped and sexually abused, and babies were killed before their family’s eyes.
The US and the UN have called it “ethnic cleansing” while many human rights experts have said there is evidence of genocide.
While acknowledging the importance of identifying this kind of violence, Ms Currie said it doesn’t do much to help Rohingya men, women and children who are suffering.
“It’s what we do, not what we say matters the most,” she said. Ms Currie was speaking at Washington DC’s influential think-tank, the Heritage Foundation.
She said the United States is also working to hold those responsible for these crimes accountable. The US has re-imposed visa ban on Burmese officials and downgraded military to military engagement with Burma.
She said the Burmese officials seem to be in a state of denial about the seriousness of the situation.
“The space between what the Burmese government believes it needs to be doing and how the rest of the international community views the situation remains quite vast,” said Ms Currie.
“We have to keep an eye on Burma. We can’t stop, we can’t look away,” she added.
The State Department has launched a comprehensive review and documentation project to investigate the mass atrocity. Investigators have conducted interviews with more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees that have yielded more than 15,000 pages of documentation.
The report is expected to be made public soon.