Burmese embrace Saudi support

Abdullah Marouf, secretary general of the Burmese community and head of the Jeddah-based Global Rohingya Center (GRC), said Sunday that Burmese value Saudi people and their government’s unlimited support.
Marouf said he appreciated the recent initiative to grant his community’s 250,000 members fee-free residency permits per a government plan to correct the status of Burmese living in the Kingdom. The government’s move would assist the community in terms of health care, education and employment.
“The world came to know the Rohingya and the calamity of the Burmese people only less than a year ago,” Marouf said. “Saudi Arabia is the only country that recognized the suffering of the Burmese people long ago. It had supported and showed solidarity toward the Burmese people since 1968 when King Abdul Aziz received the first group of Burmese immigrants. First permanent-residency permit was issued for Burmese community in 1980 during the rule of King Saud.”
Marouf was speaking after the launch of the GRC at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) offices in Jeddah.
The launch was attended by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, director of Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Makkah Province Branch, Ambassador Muhammad Ahmad Tayyeb and representatives of Arakan Rohingya Union (ARU)
“Official bodies in the Kingdom are coordinating and setting arrangements to deliver relief to Burmese refugees in camps in Bangladesh and Thailand and other places around the world,” Marouf said, adding the number of refugees in Arakan State of Rohingya reached more than 250,000 after the Myanmar government and their miltary burned more than 87
villages.
He added: “These people, including 13,000 children who lost their parents, are living on the costal line of Akyab, the state’s capital that is now known as Sittwe.
Now the rain season will increase their misery and leave them with nothing.”