(Worthy News) - Christians were harassed again at the end of January in the Rohingya refugee camps across the border from Myanmar, from which military persecution forced 700,000 Muslims and a smaller number of Christians to flee recently.
According to Human Rights Watch, 22 Rohingya Christian families were attacked by almost 60 machete-wielding Rohingya Muslim men on Jan. 27 in Kutupalong camp 2, a refugee settlement in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar area.
“No one can give me any clear information, but my relatives told me that my daughter has been forced to convert to Islam and marry,” Roshida, the wife of a Rohingya Christian pastor named Taher, said of their 14-year-old daughter.
Pastor Taher is assumed to be dead and 12 other Christians injured, in addition to damage to a Christian church and school, as a result of the attacks, for which 59 Muslim men have been blamed.
Christians in the camp told Human Rights Watch that camp officials "try to avoid" their concerns, and that police have told them if they want to be safe they ought to "go to the moon."
About 1,500 Christians live among the majority-Muslim Rohingya ethnic group that fled Myanmar when ethnic cleansing by the military forced them to flee.