DHAKA: The secretary-general of the world’s largest bloc of Islamic countries said emotional visits with members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim community, chased from their homes in Myanmar by Buddhist mobs and arsonists, brought him to tears.

‘I’ve never had such a feeling,’ Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said late on Saturday, as he and other delegates from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) wrapped up a three-day tour to Myanmar that included talks with the president, government ministers, interfaith groups and United Nations agencies.

But he said it was the huge, emotional crowds living in trash-strewn camps outside the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe that made the biggest impression.

‘I was crying,’ Ihsanoglu said, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1642 HRS, NOV 17, 2013
RoR/JCK