JAKARTA - Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslim minorities, feared to be caught in the middle of fighting in western Myanmar, have no place to run away, the UN human rights chief said on Tuesday.
The Arakan army, which is fighting for autonomy for the Rakhine region in Myanmar, said on Sunday evening the residents of Maungdaw City, mostly inhabited by Rohingya residents, had to leave no later than 9 p.m. before the planned attack.
"I am very concerned about the situation in Maungdaw. The Arakan Army this weekend warned all remaining residents, including the Rohingya population, to evacuate," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"But the Rohingya residents have no choice. There is no place to run away," he said.
Rohingya residents have faced persecution in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar for decades. Nearly one million of them live in refugee camps in Bangladesh's border district, Cox's Bazar, after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Rakhine State on the west coast in 2017.
The attack of the Arakan Army on Maungdaw was the latest in months-long rebel attacks on Myanmar's junta, which took power in the February 2021 coup and found its position weakening in most parts of the country.
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About 70,000 Rohingya in Maungdaw were caught as fighting draws near, Aung Kyaw Moe, deputy human rights minister in the shadow National Unity Government, told Reuters on Monday.
"We don't have a destination, there is no safe zone, there is not enough food and basic necessities," said a Maungdaw resident who refused to be named for security reasons.
"If they force us to leave, we will have no place to migrate," he added.
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