Taipei, Oct. 20 (CNA) The way Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi is handling the issue of the Rohingya people "worries us," BRAC founder Fazle Hasan Abed said in Taipei on Friday, amid the major refugee crisis created after an army crackdown on the Rohingya in August.

Abed, whose BRAC is now the world's largest nongovernmental organization, said his group is responding to the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh, where more than 500,000 Rohingya have crossed the border in search of a safe haven.

After delivering a keynote speech to Taiwanese NGO workers at a conference on Friday, Abed was asked by reporters about Aung San Suu Kyi's silence on the persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

He quoted the remarks of South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, who said in urging Myanmar's state counselor in September to intervene that if silence was the price she had to pay to have that office, it was a steep price to pay.

Abed said BRAC has set up 50 health care centers for Rohingya people in Bangladesh and is planning to build 50,000 toilets, 7,000 of which are already completed, adding that sanitation, clean water, shelters, and food are badly needed to prevent the spread of disease.

(By Shih Hsiu-chuan)
Enditem/ls