Carney heads to Southeast Asia summit as Rohingya refugee crisis grows worse

Detailed summary

Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to a major summit of southeast Asian leaders as the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis shows no sign of easing.

DUBLIN - Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to a major summit of southeast Asian leaders as the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis shows no sign of easing.

Randeep Sarai, Canada’s secretary of state for international development, said the federal government is not abandoning the nearly one million Rohingya people expelled from Myanmar into Bangladesh.

“They know that Canada is there for them,” said Sarai, who visited the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh last month. He said he met Rohingya children there who were born in the camp nearly a decade ago.

The Council on Foreign Relations says almost a decade ago, the government of Myanmar launched a military campaign that forced roughly 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country.

Rights groups suspect the government has committed genocide against the Rohingya, but officials deny the accusations.

Human rights groups say the country’s military killed and raped Rohingya civilians and burned down entire villages.

The crisis forced families to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they still languish in an overcrowded camp in the town of Cox’s Bazar.

In 2021, a military junta overthrew Myanmar’s civilian government and intensified ethnic violence, often through airstrikes. Amnesty International reported in October that 150 to 700 new Rohingya refugees had been arriving weekly in Bangladesh.

The International Court of Justice is set to rule later this month on whether Myanmar has committed an act of genocide.

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