Asean: Myanmar Needs Urgent Humanitarian Aid
The Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus supports the United Nations’ calls for urgent action to deliver humanitarian aid to displaced peoples in the country.
While expressing her
appreciation of progress in Myanmar, AIPMC president Eva Kusuma Sundari
urged the country’s government to quickly realize the recommendation in
the resolution.
“We call on Myanmar’s authorities to improve
human rights conditions within their country, especially for thousands
of Rohingya Muslims who are facing systematic violence in Rakhine
state,” she said on Sunday. “The government should guarantee protection
and basic rights of their own people, including the Rohingyas.”
The AIPMC is comprised of legislators from the 10 Asean member states.
According
to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there
are more than 400,000 internally displaced people in Myanmar. The UN
body said that some 115,000 have been forced to flee their homes in
Rakhine state on ethnic grounds since intercommunal violence broke out
in June.
Meanwhile, more than 235,000 have been run out of their
home towns in Karen state, while more than 75,000 have been displaced
by the ongoing war between the Burmese Army and the Kachin Independence
Army in the country’s far north.
“People should not be prosecuted because they come from different ethnic and religious groups,” said Eva.
AIPMC vice president Kraisak Choonhavan also spoke out against the prejudices on the Muslim Rohingya community.
“The
government’s denial of the very legitimacy of the Rohingya ethnic group
constitutes a major barrier to finding a long-term solution to the
intercommunal problems in Rakhine state and betrays an inherent
ethno-nationalist superiority complex of the predominantly
Buddhist-Burman government of Myanmar,” he told Mizzima.com, which
specializes on Burmese news. The Thai legislator added that the
immediate concern was the need to get urgent humanitarian assistance to
those displaced by the violence.
“But the greater fear is that
if the government, ethno-nationalist political parties as well as
elements in the Buddhist clergy continue to label these people as
‘Bengali’ interlopers with no rights, then this violence could spread so
much further, putting the safety, dignity and lives of hundreds of
thousands of people at risk,” he was quoted as saying.