Cox’s Bazar: Rohingya, refugees have held demonstrations in Bangladesh to mark one year since Myanmar’s army launched a brutal crackdown of the mostly Muslim minority, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee across the border.
More than 15,000 gathered at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to demand justice for what they called “genocide” committed by Myanmar’s forces.
On August 25, 2017, Myanmar launched a military offensive – termed by the UN as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing – after a Rohingya armed group carried out attacks on border security forces.
The ensuing violent crackdown forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee Rakhine State for neighbouring Bangladesh, living in squalid conditions in overcrowded camps.
The refugees had to get special permission from the Bangladeshi authorities in order to stage these demonstrations.
“We saw men, women, young and old, demanding their rights, demanding justice, pleading to the international community to do more to help them, but also saying that they want to make sure that the perpetrators of this genocide – the Myanmar army – need to be held to account and brought to justice by the International Criminal Court.
