Turkey will never abandon Rohingya to their fate: Foreign minister

ANKARA

Turkey will never abandon Rohingya Muslims to their fate, the country’s foreign minister said late Wednesday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a tweet that he was honored to co-host an online international high-level event regarding the status of Rohingya in Bangladesh.

“We must continue to work for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of Rohingya” to their homeland, he said. "We will never leave Rohingya Muslims to their fate."

Since August 2017, nearly 24,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed, more than 34,000 thrown into fires, over 114,000 beaten and at least 18,000 Rohingya women and girls raped, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).

The Myanmar army’s brutal crackdown in Rakhine state forced more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, to flee to Bangladesh, pushing the persecuted community’s number in Bangladesh above 1.1 million, according to Amnesty International.