Rohingya Muslims who fled a village where Myanmar has admitted its forces helped massacre 10 people said Thursday the victims were all civilians, not fighters as asserted by the army. The Myanmar army chief's office confirmed Wednesday that security forces took part in killing "Bengali terrorists" on September 2 in the village of Inn Din in Rakhine state, using a pejorative term for Rohingya. It was the first time Myanmar had admitted abuses during an army-led

Sofia Begum is a case study in the power of hope. Three months ago, armed vigilantes attacked the six-year-old’s village in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Sofia saw neighbors killed, an uncle wounded by gunfire, and her home razed.Miraculously, Sofia, her parents, and two younger brothers survived. After an arduous four-day journey that included evading militias and making a perilous river crossing, they reached safety in neighboring Bangladesh. “Now I want to be back in school,” Sofia tells me.

Pope Francis will lead an open-air mass Friday for around 100,000 Catholics in Bangladesh, which is grappling with a rise in Islamist extremism and a massive influx of Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar.The head of the Catholic Church will also meet refugees in Dhaka, a day after urging the world to take "decisive measures" to resolve a crisis that has forced more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh from neighbouring Myanmar.Francis arrived Thursday from Mya

In the shadow of one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, Pope Francis who is in Myanmar for a four-day visit, refrained from mentioning the word “Rohingya” throughout his speech at the capital, Naypyidaw.

Amidst the Papal visit to Myanmar, one issue still looms – the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the Rakhine State in Myanmar near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.Rohingya refugees who return to Myanmar following a Bangladesh-Myanmar repatriation agreement will initially have to live in temporary shelters or camps, Dhaka said Saturday."Primarily they will be kept at temporary shelters or arrangements for a limited time," Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H.

Pope Francis plunges into a diplomatic minefield next week with visits to under-fire Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh amid mounting outrage over the plight of persecuted Rohingya Muslims.Some 620,000 Rohingya, more than half their total number, have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August as a result of violence that the UN and the United States have described as ethnic cleansing.Most of the refugees, a third of them children, have ended up in squalid refugee camp

Myanmar has agreed to take back hundreds and thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees who’ve been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka said in a statement.Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the bilateral agreement in Myanmar on Thursday, just a day after U.S.

Myanmar's suffocating control of its Rohingya population amounts to "apartheid", Amnesty International said Tuesday in a probe into the root causes of a crisis that has sent 620,000 refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.Distressing scenes of dispossessed Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps have provoked outrage around the world, as people who have escaped Rakhine state since August recount tales of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar troops.Myanmar and Bangladesh have agreed in p

Widowed and alone 21-year-old Umme Kulthum had hoped for a fresh start in Bangladesh, but was forced into prostitution instead, falling victim to what aid groups and officials say is a growing trafficking scourge targeting refugees.Women and children make up the majority of the more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh, many escaping with only the clothes on their back and desperate to survive any way they can.Confined to congested tent c

Myanmar on Wednesday hit back at a UN Security Council statement critical of its handling of the Rohingya refugee crisis, saying it could "seriously harm" efforts to repatriate the Muslim minority from Bangladesh.On Monday the top UN body called on Myanmar to rein in military operations that have pushed more than 600,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh since late August, sparking a dire humanitarian crisis.