Shahriar: More than 7,00,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh now

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam has said the tally of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape barbaric atrocities by the Myanmar government already exceeded 700,000 with 300,000 more refugees arriving in the last two weeks. He said this in a post on his Facebook account on Sunday. “The number of people fleeing Myanmar [to Bangladesh] has far surpassed 700,000. Of them, around 300,000 arrived in the last 15 days. The Hasina administration has been trying its utmost to provide humanitarian aid to the new influx,” Shahriar said. The Bangladesh government has long been working to repatriate the Rohingya refugees to their home country, but the efforts are not making any headway because of lack of interest from the Myanmar side, according to his Facebook post. “Our efforts have, however, been continuing and will be intensified,” the state minister added. On August 24, at least 89 people including a dozen security force members were killed as Rohingya insurgents reportedly besieged border posts in troubled Rakhine state, prompting the country’s army to launch a new crackdown on the Rohingyas and thus triggering a fresh exodus of refugees to Bangladesh. According to the UN, so far some 300,000 Rohingyas have infiltrated Bangladesh. Locals, however, said the number far surpassed the UN estimate, while thousands of other Rohingyas are stuck in “no man’s land” on the Bangladesh-Myanmar land.The article was first published on banglatribune.com