With Crisis Worsening, 370,000 Rohingya Muslims Escape to Bangladesh

Almost 370,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees are now known to have fled to Bangladesh from the ongoing violence in Myanmar since August according to Vivian Tan from the United Nations Refugee Agency. 

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The military crackdown has forced them from their homes, as hundreds of thousands are risking their lives to reach Bangladesh overland and across water.

“It seems they wanted us to leave the country,” Nurjahan, an elderly Rohingya woman who escaped her burning village 10 days ago and camped by the side of the road, told the Washington Post. 

With the exodus, each ferry ride to Bangladesh is estimated to cost US$122, an amount far beyond the means of the people who are escaping from the unrest. 

The relief efforts' food and temporary shelter kits are running low. While prices are soaring for the limited essentials including vegetables, bamboo, and plastic sheeting. 

"Clearly the estimates have been bypassed several times over," Leonard Doyle, spokesperson for the Institute of Migration, IOM,  said. "I’m reluctant to give a number but obviously people fear that it could go much higher."

The United Nation in a statement on Monday strongly condemned Myanmar's treatment of the fleeing minority in the Rakhine state, calling the situation a "textbook example" of ethnic cleansing. 

The international community has condemned the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and expressed concern over the worsening crisis. 

The violence was triggered on August 25 when a group of Rohingya militants, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, ARSA, attacked dozens of police outposts and an army camp, claiming 12 lives. 

On Monday, the top U.N. official Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein in an address to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva said the "brutal security operation" against the Rohingya was a "clearly disproportionate" response to the attacks by the insurgents.

Rohingya people have suffered systematic persecution over many decades by the Myanmar government, who consider them illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

The minority community has restricted rights and access to government services in the country.

Since the 1970s, nearly a million people belonging to the minority have fled persecution in the South Asian country.