But instead of going to New York this year she will make a television speech at home on Tuesday.

"She is trying to control the security situation, to have internal peace and stability and to prevent the spread of communal conflict," her spokesman said.

The General Assembly is due to meet on Wednesday to discuss what the UN describes as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

Relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar have collapsed after more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine over the past three weeks, creating what aid agencies say is an emerging humanitarian catastrophe in squalid border camps.

Bangladesh accuses Myanmar of flying drones and helicopters over its border, violating its air space, over the past week and warned more "provocative acts" could have "unwarranted consequences."

"Bangladesh expresses deep concern at the repetition of such acts of provocation and demands that Myanmar take immediate measures to ensure that such violation of sovereignty does not occur again," Bangladesh's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is travelling to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly where she would call for international pressure to ensure Myanmar takes everyone back after stopping its "ethnic cleansing', her press secretary, Ihsanul Karim said.

Ms Hasina has asked Myanmar to implement recommendations of a panel led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that include restoring basic rights such as citizenship to Rohingya, who have been living in Rakhine for generations.

Poor and overcrowded Bangladesh is moving to fence off its border with Myanmar and build 14,000 shelters, each with the capacity to hold six families, after existing camps reached capacity.

Aid agencies have struggled to provide food, shelter and health care.

Aid groups worry diseases like cholera will spread through the settlements.

Myanmar's military launched the crackdown after Muslim insurgents attacked police posts and a military base on August 25.

The terror group al-Qaeda has warned the violence against Muslims will not go unpunished and urged jihadists to set out to Myanmar to "resist this oppression."

Save the Children says the unprecedented arrival of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is putting huge stress on humanitarian agencies and more than 380,000 refugees who were already living in border camps.

"Many people are arriving hungry, exhausted and with no food or water, having left their homes in fear of their lives," said Mark Pierce, Save the Children's Country Director in Bangladesh.

"I'm particularly worried that the demand for food, shelter, water and basic hygiene support is not being met due to the sheer number of people in need," he said.

"If families can't meet their basic needs, the suffering will get even worse and lives could be lost."

Mr Pierce warns the number of displaced people at the border could rise beyond one million by the end of the year if the influx continues, including about 600,000 children.

"Local communities have been extremely accommodating, often welcoming the Rohingya into their homes and sharing precious food and water," he said.

"Aid agencies are doing all they can to help, however the humanitarian response needs to be rapidly scaled up, and that can only be done if the international community steps up funding."

More than 1,100 separated or unaccompanied Rohingya children have fled Rakhine, aid agencies say.

Some became orphans when their parents were killed in the violence.

"Beneath the hardship and suffering faced by the Rohingya who've arrived in Bangladesh, there is a child protection crisis on our doorstep," Mr Pierce said.

"We're seeing a number of children arriving alone and in desperate need of help," he said.

"This is a real concern as these children are in an especially vulnerable position, being at increased risk of exploitation and abuse, as well as things like child trafficking."</s>UKHIA: Heavy monsoon rain heaped new misery Sunday on hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya stuck in makeshift camps in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar, as authorities started a drive to force them to a new site.

With food and water shortages already making life tough, torrential rain brought back swamp-like conditions to many parts of the border town of Cox´s Bazar which have become a magnet for the Rohingya.

About 7.7 centimetres (three inches) of rain fell in 24 hours and more is predicted over the next two days, the Bangladesh Weather Department said.

Bangladesh authorities, who have already issued travel restrictions on the Rohingya, launched an operation late Saturday to get tens of thousands out of roadside camps and hillside shanties into a giant new camp.

The United Nations says 409,000 Rohingyas have now overwhelmed Cox´s Bazar since August 25 when the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar launched operations in Rakhine state.

As existing camps are already full with 300,000 Rohingya fleeing earlier violence, many of the Rohingya have been forced to live in the open air or under flimsy plastic sheets.

Police toured streets with loudspeakers ordering exhausted families to go to the Balukhali camp in Cox´s Bazar, which is being cleared to build new shelters.

"We are shifting them from the roadsides where many of them have been staying," Khaled Mahmud, a government spokesman for Cox´s Bazar district told AFP.

Mahmud said gradually all the new Rohingya would be taken to Balukhali to bring order to the chaotic aid operation.

On Saturday, Bangladesh police issued tough new orders banning the Rohingya from moving out of designated areas. The order even prevented them from taking shelter with friends and relatives.

Checkpoints have been set up at key transit points.

With thousands more Rohingya arriving each day, Bangladesh authorities fear the refugees could swamp other towns and cities across the country.

But the United Nations is already warning of intolerable conditions in the camps around Cox´s Bazar.

The rain "has doubled their misery", said Mohammed Kai-Kislu, police chief at Ukhia near Cox´s Bazar, the new home for many Rohingya.

Aid workers said thousands of Rohingya were drenched by the return of the monsoon after a respite of a few days.

Arfa Begum and seven of her family tried to hide under rubber trees near the Balukhali settlement where they arrived five days earlier.

"They evicted us from the rubber plantation," she said, referring to the police and border guards forcing the refugees out of makeshift shelters.

"It took hours to find a safe place. We were drenched," she told AFP.

Faced with a spreading mudbath, the Rohingya have started building bamboo carpets to get over flooded land.

A human rights expert in Cox´s Bazar urged the government to shut local schools for three days to allow the Rohingya to camp in them.

"It is another disaster unfolding. Thousands of Rohingya had no place to hide when the rain came," Nur Khan Liton, who headed Bangladeshi rights group Ain O Salish Kendra, told AFP.

He said moving the Rohingya from roadsides and open spaces should be halted as it was compounding their troubles.

Conditions deteriorated for the Rohingya in what could be a key week in the crisis.

Myanmar´s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi is to give a nationally televised speech on the Rohingya case on Tuesday.

The Nobel peace laureate, much criticised around the world for not condemning the violence against the Rohingya, must address the global outrage while not angering the military, which maintains huge power.

General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar´s globe-trotting army chief, called for a "united" stance in handling the crisis but gave no sign of concessions.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has arrived at the UN General Assembly in New York to press for greater help coping with the refugees and put more pressure on Myanmar over the case.

She is to address the UN assembly on Thursday.</s>This site uses cookies for analytics, personalized content and ads. By continuing to browse this site, you agree to this use.</s>COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh >> Bangladeshi authorities summoned Myanmar’s envoy to protest what they said were violations of their airspace as the number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in western Myanmar in the past three weeks reached more than 400,000.

Myanmar’s presidential spokesman on Saturday said there’s no evidence of any trespassing and that Dhaka should have reached out to discuss its concerns instead of issuing public statements.

The Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday that Myanmar drones and helicopters flew into Bangladeshi airspace on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. It said a protest note was handed to Myanmar’s envoy Friday evening. Bangladesh warned that the “provocative acts” could lead to consequences.

In Yangon, presidential spokesman Zaw Htay said that while Myanmar’s military denied crossing into Bangladesh’s airspace, the matter was being investigated. “We don’t know exactly if they released that statement for political reasons,” he said of Bangladesh’s protest.

He added that Myanmar was “transporting rations for displaced people for emergency assistance” to areas close to the border and that Bangladesh “needs to understand that as well.”

United Nations agencies say an estimated 409,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on police posts prompted Myanmar’s military to launch “clearance operations” in Rakhine state. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs.

The Myanmar government says hundreds have died, mostly Rohingya “terrorists,” and that 176 out of 471 Rohingya villages have been abandoned. Myanmar has insisted that Rohingya insurgents and fleeing villagers themselves are destroying their villages. It has offered no proof to back these charges.

The U.N. has described the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar as ethnic cleansing — a term that describes an organized effort to rid an area of an ethnic group by displacement, deportation or killing.

Ethnic Rohingya have faced persecution and discrimination in majority-Buddhist Myanmar for decades and are denied citizenship, even though many families have lived there for generations. The government says there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and say they are Bengalis who illegally migrated to Myanmar from Bangladesh.

Rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights watch have said that they have evidence that Myanmar troops were systematically targeting and setting Rohingya villages on fire over the last three weeks.

U.N. agencies fear continued violence in Myanmar may eventually drive up to 1 million Rohingya into Bangladesh.

As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh, relief camps are overflowing and food, medicine and drinking water have been in short supply.

Mohammed Shahriar Alam, Bangladesh’s junior foreign minister, said Saturday that India, Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, Iran and Malaysia have already sent relief and the goods are waiting in an airport in nearby Chittagong. He said more aid was also expected to come via ships soon.

“The United Nations and many other private organizations are working there to support hundreds of thousands who are in dire need of assistance,” said Khaled Mahmud, a top official in Cox’s Bazar. He acknowledged that aid distribution remained haphazard three weeks into the crisis.

“Our work must be very organized and systematic,” he said. “We are working on that.”</s>COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could die due to a lack of food, shelter and water available for the huge numbers of them fleeing violence in Myanmar, an aid agency warned on Sunday.

Nearly 410,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority fled from western Rakhine state to Bangladesh to escape a military offensive that the United Nations has branded a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

"Many people are arriving hungry, exhausted and with no food or water," Mark Pierce, Bangladesh country director for the Save the Children aid agency said in a statement.

"I´m particularly worried that the demand for food, shelter, water and basic hygiene support is not being met due to the sheer number of people in need. If families can´t meet their basic needs, the suffering will get even worse and lives could be lost."

Bangladesh has for decades faced influxes of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the Rohingya are regarded as illegal migrants.

Bangladesh was already home to 400,000 Rohingya before the latest crisis erupted on Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army camp, killing a dozen people.

Pierce said the humanitarian response needed to be rapidly scaled up.

"That can only be done if the international community steps up funding," he said.

Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the Myanmar security forces and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes responded to the Aug. 25 insurgent attacks with what they say is a campaign of violence and arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population.

Myanmar rejects those accusations, saying its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against the insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed responsibility for the August attacks and similar, smaller, raids in October.

The Myanmar government has declared the group a terrorist organisation and accused it of setting the fires and attacking civilians.

More than 430 people have been killed, most of them insurgents, and about 30,000 non-Muslim villagers have been displaced, Myanmar has said. Human Rights Watch said satellite imagery showed 62 Rohingya villages had been torched.

Myanmar government leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of criticism from abroad for not stopping the violence or condemning it more forcefully.

The military remains in full control of security policy and there is little sympathy for the Rohingya in a country where the end of military rule has unleashed old animosities and the military campaign in Rakhine State is widely supported.

Suu Kyi is due to make her first address to the nation on the crisis on Tuesday.

Her foreign supporters and Western governments that backed her campaign against military rule, and see her as the best hope for Myanmar's future, will be hoping to see her make a new commitment to protect the rights of the Muslim minority.

At home, her supporters could be disappointed if she is perceived to be caving in to foreign pressure and taking the side of a Muslim minority blamed for initiating the violence with the attacks on the security forces.

The Myanmar military has called for unity on the issue.

The political party founded by retired officers and trounced by Suu Kyi's party in the 2015 election, could be expected to take heart to see her support eroded by the crisis. (Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)</s>For three weeks Dil Mohammad and his family have been stranded on a thin sliver of land between Bangladesh and their native Myanmar with thousands of other Rohingya, after running for their lives when their village was torched.

More than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have now arrived in southern Bangladesh seeking sanctuary from violence that the United Nations says likely amounts to ethnic cleansing.

But unlike those arriving now, thousands of Rohingya who fled in the early days of the crisis that erupted last month were initially blocked from entering Bangladesh.

Too afraid to go back to Myanmar, they set up camp in a small area of no man’s land where they have been ever since, waiting for the world to force the country they consider home to take them back.

“We have no intention of going to Bangladesh. We want to go back to our native land,” Mohammad told AFP in the camp, waving an arm towards the lush green hills that separate the two countries.

“Myanmar is my home, my family has been there for generations.”

The 51-year-old rice farmer said 150 families from his village of Mae Di in Rakhine state were now living in the makeshift settlement after fleeing an attack by the Myanmar army and Rakhine Buddhists.

His adult son, who was shot as they fled, is being treated in Bangladesh.

But although the Rohingya are now being freely admitted to Bangladesh, Mohammad does not intend to join him.

He and the thousands of others living in the camp, which lies just a few hundred metres from a barbed wire fence that marks Myanmar territory, have regular food deliveries and access to clean water, medicines and even a rudimentary washing area.

Much of that is down to Lieutenant Colonel Manzurul Hasan Khan, who as the local commander of Border Guard Bangladesh is responsible for policing the frontier with Myanmar.

He was one of the first in Bangladesh to become aware of the unfolding crisis when guards at the hilltop border post of Tombru heard gunshots and mortar fire coming from Myanmar in August.

Khan’s first instinct was a military one — he tried to call his counterpart in Myanmar for a flag meeting, whereby military commanders meet on the border to try to resolve tensions.

Before he could get through, he saw that women and children were flooding over the hills of Myanmar into the valley below.

He and his officers rushed down to the area, where they corralled the panicked crowd into a meadow, sat them down in the shade to explain that they could not come in and tried to establish what was going on.

Later that day, the Rohingya women and children went back over the hill of their own accord, Khan said.

But the next morning the firing resumed and they returned, this time in greater numbers.

“At that point I knew it was a humanitarian crisis,” said Khan.

One woman gave birth in no man’s land; another held up her seven-day-old baby and begged for Khan’s help. So he decided to give it.

He allowed the sickest ones into Bangladesh and ensured those that stayed were given food and clean water.

In the days that followed, he would witness the devastating effects of the unfolding crisis in Myanmar at first hand as more and more people arrived, most from villages near the border.

One woman arrived with her leg blown off, apparently in a landmine explosion on the Myanmar side.

Aid groups and Bangladesh government officials say Myanmar has mined the border to deter fleeing members of the Rohingya community from returning.

Myanmar does not recognize the Muslim minority as its citizens, and they have endured decades of persecution.

The situation has deteriorated dramatically since Rohingya militants ambushed security forces in Myanmar last month, and Amnesty International says there have been “systematic” clearances of Muslim settlements.

When AFP visited the Rohingya in Tombru this week, Myanmar soldiers could be seen patrolling on the edge of no man’s land, near where another group of Rohingya had apparently settled.

Khan, who served in war zones in Africa and is no stranger to conflict, says the situation is the worst he has ever seen.

He is proud that his country is helping the Rohingya — and happy to have played his own role.

“These people may stay for a long time. Bangladesh is a poor country,” he said. “But we have offered the hand of help, and that makes me proud.”

Khan admits that the Rohingya will not be able to stay in no man’s land forever. He believes they will move into Bangladesh once the government completes its plan of building shelters for thousands of refugees.

But for many of the Rohingya here, that represents an unappealing future.

“I like it here,” said Mohammad Arif, 42.

“I can look across to the hills and feel the breeze from my country, and that makes me feel good.”</s>DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh has accused Myanmar of repeatedly violating its air space and warned that any more "provocative acts" could have "unwarranted consequences", raising the risk of a deterioration in relations already strained by the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar have crossed into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, fleeing a Myanmar government offensive against insurgents that the United Nations has branded a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Bangladesh said Myanmar drones and helicopters had violated its air space three times - on Sept. 10, 12 and 14 - and it had called in a top Myanmar embassy official in Dhaka to complain.

"Bangladesh expressed deep concern at the repetition of such acts of provocation and demanded that Myanmar takes immediate measures to ensure that such violation of sovereignty does not occur again," the ministry said in statement late on Friday.

"These provocative acts may lead to unwarranted consequences."

A Myanmar government spokesman said he did not have information about the incidents Bangladesh had complained about but Myanmar had denied an earlier accusation.

The spokesman, Zaw Htay, said Myanmar would check any information that Bangladesh provided.

"Our two countries are facing the refugee crisis. We need to collaborate with good understanding," he told Reuters.

Bangladesh has for decades faced influxes of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the Rohingya are regarded as illegal migrants.

Bangladesh was already home to 400,000 Rohingya before the latest crisis erupted on Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked about 30 police posts and an army camp, killing a dozen people.

The Myanmar security forces and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes responded with what rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say is a campaign of violence and arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population.

Bangladesh has said all refugees must go home. Myanmar has said it will take back those who can verify their citizenship but most Rohingya are stateless.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was leaving on Saturday for the U.N. General Assembly where she would call for pressure to ensure Myanmar takes everyone back after stopping its "ethnic cleansing', her press secretary, Ihsanul Karim, told Reuters.

The conflict has led to a humanitarian crisis on both sides of the border and raised questions about Myanmar's path under the leadership of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after nearly 50 years of strict military rule.

The generals still control national security policy but nevertheless, Suu Kyi has been widely criticized abroad for not stopping or condemning the violence.

There is little sympathy for the Rohingya in a country where the end of military rule has unleashed old animosities and the military campaign in Rakhine State is widely supported.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. Security Council have urged Myanmar to end the violence, which he said was best described as ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is not recognized as a separate crime under international law but allegations of it as part of wider, systematic human rights violations have been heard in international courts.

Myanmar rejects the accusations, saying its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against the insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which claimed responsibility for the Aug. 25 attacks and similar, though smaller, attacks in October.

The government has declared ARSA a terrorist organization and accused it of setting the fires and attacking civilians.

The ARSA says it is fighting for the rights of Rohingya and has denied links to foreign Islamists.

Myanmar's army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, said the violence - 93 clashes since Aug. 25 - was a bid by the insurgents to "build a stronghold", according to speech to officer trainees, posted on a military Facebook page.

More than 430 people have been killed, most of them insurgents, and about 30,000 non-Muslim villagers have been displaced, Myanmar has said. Human Rights Watch said satellite imagery showed 62 Rohingya villages had been torched.

The United States has called for the protection of civilians and a deputy assistant secretary of state, Patrick Murphy, is due in Myanmar next week.

China, which also vies for influence in Myanmar, joined a U.N. Security Council call for an end to the violence while its ambassador in Myanmar expressed his support for the government's action, Myanmar media reported. Separately, the Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Bangladesh to release two Myanmar journalists detained last week while covering the refugee crisis. A police official told Reuters the two were found to be working on tourist visas and police were investigating.</s>People walk between stalls at a market in Maungdaw town in northern Rakhine State November 11, 2014. REUTERS/Minzayar

MAUNGDAW, Myanmar (Reuters) - For years, tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslim boat people have fled this remote corner of western Myanmar for nearby countries. But another huge exodus has grabbed far fewer headlines.

Ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, bitter rivals of the Rohingya, are also leaving Rakhine State to seek jobs in Malaysia and Thailand. Small numbers of Rakhine are even following the same smuggling routes plied by the Rohingya and, like them, falling victim to human traffickers.

The exodus reflects a wider economic malaise. Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has launched many reforms since taking power in 2011, but hasn’t created enough jobs.

“Go to Rakhine villages and you find only children and old people,” said Tun Maung, a prominent businessman in the Rakhine capital Sittwe. “The young people have already gone.”

The exodus of both Rohingya and Rakhine accelerated in 2012, after a year of violence between the two communities left hundreds dead and 140,000 homeless - mostly Rohingya.

Many displaced Rohingya now live in squalid camps along the Rakhine coast with easy access to ramshackle human-smuggling ships.

About 100,000 Rohingya boat people have left since the 2012 violence, said the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group.

The mass departure of Rakhine has been less noticeable because they usually travel by road and air, carrying passports unavailable to the mostly stateless Rohingya.

But Rakhine have also left in greater numbers since 2012, say Myanmar officials, after the unrest crippled a local economy neglected during nearly half a century of military dictatorship.

Millions of Burmese seek work abroad. About two million live in neighboring Thailand alone, said the International Labour Organisation. Many are unlikely to return until Myanmar’s economy improves.

The Rakhine exodus could worsen those economic woes and communal tensions.

In much of Rakhine state, home to 3.2 million people, the Rohingya are a persecuted minority outnumbered two to one by the Rakhine.

But in the Maungdaw area, on the state’s northern border with Bangladesh, those figures are reversed. Out of 510,000 people, only 30,000 are Rakhine or non-Muslims, township chief Kyi San told Reuters during a rare visit to Maungdaw by a foreign reporter.

As young people abandon their villages for jobs abroad, the Rakhine who remain feel besieged and vulnerable.

Hla Tun Oo, 30, has just returned to Maw Ya Waddy village after seven years working at a factory in Malaysia. In June 2012, while he was gone, the Rakhine village was burned to the ground by a Rohingya mob.

Maw Ya Waddy was rebuilt with the help of the Myanmar government and international aid agencies. It was also militarized.

Soldiers watch the fields from a hilltop. More soldiers are encamped at a Buddhist monastery between Maw Ya Waddy and the populous Rohingya villages along the coast.

Rakhine villages nearby have a permanent police presence, and all are linked by new, military-built roads which allow Rakhine to avoid Rohingya communities. An 11pm to 4am curfew remains in force.

“I was born here and love my land. I want to protect it,” said Hla Tun Oo, explaining why he returned.

But about 100 villagers, including Hla Tun Oo’s two brothers, work in Malaysia or elsewhere, leaving Maw Ya Waddy with only 20 or so men of working age.

Relations with Muslim neighbors remain strained. Rakhine farmers no longer hire them as laborers, as they did before 2012. “We don’t trust them anymore,” said village chief Maung Maung Thein.

Yet the Rakhine have much in common with the Rohingya.

Pyu Tote, 30, a Rakhine with no passport, paid a broker about $600 to smuggle him into Malaysia. Rohingya, who rarely have travel documents, also rely on brokers.

Pyu Tote was driven to southern Myanmar. He crossed into Thailand by boat, then trekked through hilly jungles into Malaysia, a route also plied by thousands of Rohingya.

Thirty people trekked with him. “Most were Rakhine,” said Pyu Tote, who worked at a Malaysian factory for a year.

Like Rohingya, the Rakhine are also vulnerable to exploitation. In August the International Organization for Migration arranged the return of 14 Rakhine men who were trafficked onto Thai fishing boats in Indonesian waters earlier this year.

The men were lured by the promise of well-paid jobs in Thailand.

Many Rakhine families depend on remittances from overseas. Hla Tun Oo sent home about $200 a month, and had saved another $20,000 after seven years in Malaysia.

But the departure of so many young Rakhine isn’t helping a local economy reeling from the 2012 bloodshed.

Rakhine State suffers from chronic poverty. Malnutrition is rife and its infrastructure is shoddy or non-existent, with factories few and far between.

After 2012, the price of vegetables and seafood, largely supplied by Rohingya, soared. So did the cost of labor. Sittwe businesses aren’t allowed to hire Rohingya, who were driven from the city and are now confined in distant camps ringed by police checkpoints.

“Violence and segregation have hit the economy hard,” said Richard Horsey, an independent Myanmar analyst. “Muslims are stuck in camps, unable to work, and the instability has made it harder to attract vital foreign investment.”

Economic growth would encourage Rakhine job-seekers to stay put. Or so hopes Tun Maung, the Sittwe businessman, who runs two restaurants and a hotel.

He has advertised for staff for six months. “Nobody has applied,” he said.</s>Pressure grew on Myanmar Monday as a rights group urged world leaders to impose sanctions on its military, which is accused of driving out more than 410,000 Rohingya Muslims in an orchestrated "ethnic cleansing" campaign.

The call from Human Rights Watch came as the UN General Assembly prepared to convene in New York, with the crisis in Myanmar one of the most pressing topics.

It also came on the eve of a highly-anticipated national address by Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi -- her first on the Rakhine crisis.

The exodus of Rohingya refugees from mainly Buddhist Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh has sparked a humanitarian emergency. Aid groups are struggling to provide relief to a daily stream of new arrivals, more than half of whom are children.

Myanmar has suggested it will not take back all who had fled across the border, accusing those refugees of having links to the Rohingya militants whose raids on police posts in August triggered the army backlash.

Any clear moves to block the refugees' return will likely anger Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, who will press the General Assembly to raise global pressure Myanmar to take back all the Rohingya massing in shanty towns and camps near the border.

Human Rights Watch also called for the "safe and voluntary return" of the displaced as it urge governments around the globe to punish Myanmar's army with sanctions for the "ongoing atrocities" against the Rohingya.

"The United Nations Security Council and concerned countries should impose targeted sanctions and an arms embargo on the Burmese military to end its ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims," the group said in a statement.

Myanmar's military was hit with Western sanctions during its 50-year rule of the country. But most have been lifted in recent years as the generals have allowed a partial transition to democracy.

"Burma's senior military commanders are more likely to heed the calls of the international community if they are suffering real economic consequences," said John Sifton, HRW's Asia advocacy director.

Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi has shocked the international community with her near-silence on the plight of the Rohingya and her failure to condemn the actions of the army, with whom she has a delicate power-sharing arrangement.

Speaking to the BBC over the weekend, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called Suu Kyi's upcoming address a "last chance" to stop the unfolding humanitarian calamity.

But analysts say it will be difficult for her to tamp both global outrage and combustible religious tensions at home, where there is broad support among the mainly Buddhist populace for the army's crackdown.

"I'm worried that there is almost no possibility given the political climate in Myanmar for balancing the expectations of most of the country and the expectations of the international community," Richard Horsey, an independent analyst based in Myanmar, told AFP.

The sharp divide was on display Monday as protests broke out in Dhaka -- where 20,000 Islamist hardliners marched in solidarity with the Rohingya -- and in Yangon, where a much smaller group of 300 gathered to blast global interference in the conflict.

The ultra-nationalists in Yangon braved a downpour as they waved Myanmar flags and banners describing the UN and global NGOs as "supporting organisations for the terrorists".

While the world has watched the refugee crisis unfold with horror, there is little sympathy for the Rohingya inside Myanmar.

Many Buddhists revile the Muslim minority and have long denied the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi's government has so far defended the military campaign as a legitimate crackdown on the Rohingya militants, who first emerged as a fighting force last October.

On Sunday Myanmar's Information Committee accused those who fled to Bangladesh -- more than a third of the Rohingya population -- of working in cahoots with the Rohingya militants, a rag-tag group of fighters armed with mostly rudimentary weapons.

"Those who fled the villages made their way to the other country for fear of being arrested as they got involved in the violent attacks," the statement said.

"Legal protection will be given to the villages whose residents did not flee," it added.

The violence has gutted large swaths of northern Rakhine in just over three weeks, with fires visible almost daily across the border from the Bangladesh camps.

Some 30,000 ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus have also been displaced by unrest in northern Rakhine, where foreign aid has been severely curtailed.

On Monday, Doctors Without Borders repeated calls for "unfettered access" to the conflict zone, saying hundreds of thousands of people are thought to be languishing "without any meaningful form of humanitarian assistance".</s>YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — For generations, Rohingya Muslims have called Myanmar home. Now, in what appears to be a systematic purge, the minority ethnic group is, quite literally, being wiped off the map.

After a series of attacks by Muslim militants last month, security forces and allied mobs retaliated by burning down thousands of Rohingya homes in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

More than 500,000 people — roughly half their population — have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in the past year, most of them in the last three weeks.

And they are still leaving, piling into wooden boats that take them to sprawling, monsoon-drenched refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their plight has been decried as ethnic cleansing by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. And despite assurances Tuesday by Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, few believe they will ever be welcomed back.

“This is the worst crisis in Rohingya history,” said Chris Lewa, founder of the Arakan Project, which works to improve conditions for the ethnic minority, citing the monumental size and speed of the exodus. “Security forces have been burning villages one by one, in a very systematic way. And it’s still ongoing.”

Using a network of monitors, Lewa and her agency are meticulously documenting tracts of villages that have been partially or completely burned down in three townships in northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya once lived. It’s a painstaking task because there are hundreds of them, and information is almost impossible to verify because the army has blocked access to the area. Satellite imagery released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday shows massive swaths of scorched landscape and the near total destruction of 214 villages.

The Arakan Project has found that almost every tract of villages in Maungdaw township suffered some burning, and that all of Maungdaw has been almost completely abandoned by Rohingya.

Of the 21 Rohingya villages in Rathedaung, to the north, only five were not targeted. Three camps for Rohingya who were displaced in communal riots five years ago also were torched.

Buthidaung, to the east, so far has been largely spared. It is the only township where security operations appear limited to areas where the attacks by Rohingya militants, which triggered the ongoing crackdown, occurred.

The Rohingya have had a long and troubled history in Myanmar, where many in the country’s 60 million people look on them with disdain.

Though members of the ethnic minority first arrived generations ago, Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education.

The U.N. has labeled the Rohingya one of the world’s most persecuted religious minorities.

Still, if it weren’t for their safety, many would rather live in Myanmar than be forced to another country that doesn’t want them.

“Now we can’t even buy plastic to make a shelter,” said 32-year-old Kefayet Ullah of the camp in Bangladesh where he and his family are struggling to get from one day to the next.

In Rakhine, they had land for farming and a small shop. Now they have nothing.

“Our heart is crying for our home,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Even the father of my grandfather was born in Myanmar.”

This is not the first time the Rohingya have fled en masse.

Hundreds of thousands left in 1978 and again in the early 1990s, fleeing military and government oppression, though policies were later put in place that allowed many to return. Communal violence in 2012, as the country was transitioning from a half-century of dictatorship to democracy, sent another 100,000 fleeing by boat. Some 120,000 remain trapped in camps under apartheid-like conditions outside Rakhine’s capital, Sittwe.

But no exodus has been as massive and swift as the one taking place now.

The military crackdown came in retaliation for a series of coordinated attacks by Rohingya militants led by Attaullah Abu Ammar Jununi, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia.

Last October, the militants struck police posts, killing several officers and triggering a brutal military response that sent 87,000 Rohingya fleeing. Then on Aug. 25, a day after a state-appointed commission of inquiry headed by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan released a report about the earlier bloodshed, the militants struck again.

They attacked more than 30 police and army posts, causing casualties.

It was the excuse security forces wanted. They hit back and hard. Together with Buddhist mobs, they burned down villages, killed, looted and raped.

That sent a staggering 412,000 fleeing as of late Monday, according to U.N. estimates.

“The military crackdown resembles a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said earlier this month in Geneva, calling it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

It could be months before the extent of the devastation is clear because the army has blocked access to the affected areas. Yanghee Lee, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, said at least 1,000 civilians were killed. The government claims more than 400 died, the vast majority Rohingya militants. They put the number of civilians killed at 30.

Whether it’s the end game for the Rohingya in Myanmar remains to be seen, said Richard Horsey, a political analyst in Yangon. It depends in part on whether arrangements will be made by Bangladesh and Myanmar for their eventual return and the extent of the destruction.

“We are still waiting for a full picture of how many villages are depopulated versus how many were destroyed,” he said.

Associated Press writer Muneeza Naqvi contributed to this report from Bangladesh.
A few hundred pro-government protesters gather in Myanmar's commercial capital Yangon, condemning Rohingya militants as well as perceived foreign interference in the Rakhine conflict.