Rohingya Muslim minority streaming out of Myanmar to escape deadly attacks - Los Angeles Times
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Rohingya Muslim minority streaming out of Myanmar to escape deadly attacks

A Rohingya family fleeing Myanmar crosses a creek of the Naf river to reach the border with Bangladesh.
(Bernat Armangue / Associated Press)
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As far as the eye can see, they trudge through treacherously deep mud, across rice paddy fields and past rain-swollen creeks into Bangladesh.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, fleeing the latest round of violence to engulf their homes in Myanmar, have been walking for days or handing over their meager savings to Burmese and Bangladeshi smugglers to escape what they describe as certain death.

The Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state has faced systematic persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority for decades. The military junta that ruled the nation for decades stripped them of their citizenship. The democratically elected government under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi has looked the other way as they have since been pushed into squalid camps in their own home towns and villages.

For a people who have already lived through unimaginable horrors, including mass rapes and brutal killings decried by the United Nations, it seems as if the misery will never end.

A Rohingya child is carried on a sling while his family walk through rice fields after crossing the border into Bangladesh.

A Rohingya family crosses a fence while fleeing to Bangladesh. Tens of thousands of members of the Muslim minority have entered Bangladesh in the last week escaping deadly violence in northwestern Myanmar.

An injured elderly woman and her relatives are rushed to a hospital on an auto rickshaw after they encountered a landmine while trying to cross into Bangladesh.

Rohingya children rest at a refugee camp near the Bangladeshi town of Teknaf.

Rohingya refugees shelter under tarps at a refugee camp near Teknaf, Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims carry an elderly woman as they enter Bangladesh.

Displaced Rohingya refugees from Rakhine state in Myanmar rest near Ukhia, at the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, as they flee violence.

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state shelter under tarps at a camp in Bangladesh.

Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar walk through rice fields after crossing into Bangladesh.

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