Number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence rises to nearly 400,000

The number of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar has risen to nearly 400,000.

Many now face shelter, food and water shortages in cramped refugee camps.

Around three hundred and eighty thousand Rohingya have fled Myanmar since violence erupted last month in Rakhine State.

Many of their homes and villages have been set alight by Myanmar security forces.

The UN Security Council has condemned the violence and there are now calls for Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same.

"I yield to no one in my admiration of what she stood for and the way she fought for democracy, but I think it's now vital for her to use that moral capital and that authority to make the point about the suffering of the people of Rakhine," UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson said.

Anayat Ullah is a Rohingya Muslim living in Auckland who is urging the New Zealand Government to increase its refugee intake.

"They're living a life that is absolutely devastating. They have no hope. They have no ambitions. They have nothing. They are living in an open prison."

His parents fled Myanmar in the 1970s and he was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

"They were compelled, they had no other way of living their life than escaping from Myanmar."

Mr Ullah has organised a protest in Aotea Square on Sunday calling for a stop to what many world leaders are calling genocide.

Newshub.