Another 379 more Rohingyas reached Bhasan Char from the Chattogram’s Patenga Boat Club today under the supervision of the Bangladesh Navy.
Earlier, they reached Patenga from Cox’s Bazar’s Ukhia Balukhali camp and left for Bhasan Char with two naval ships around 10 am today after an overnight stay at a temporary transit camp of BAF Shaheen College.
“About 1 lakh Rohingyas are being kept in Bhasan Char,” said Rear Admiral Mozemmel Hoque, Chattogram region commander of Bangladesh Navy.
The Rohingyas reached Bhasan Char around 1:45 pm today. Before boarding the ship, they were given tokens and keys of the allotted shelter homes after various data entries, Hoque added.
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A senior Red Cross official warned that “serious problems” remain with a remote island off southern Bangladesh housing Rohingya refugees, as officials prepared to ship thousands more people there this week.
He said the government has provided infrastructure of 120 cluster villages on the 13,000-acres of char land at a cost of Tk 3,095 crore with its own fund to accommodate more than 1 lakh Rohingya people.
The first group of 1,642 Rohingyas reached Bhasan Char on December 4.
Myanmar is one of Bangladesh’s closest neighbors with historic connectivity going back centuries. The 271 km long Bangladesh-Myanmar border is very important for Bangladesh due to its strategic position, although at present the area is militarized due to its ongoing internal conflicts. Were this to be resolved, Bangladesh could develop routes via Myanmar to access China to the east, and other southeast Asian countries to the south.
On the other hands, Vietnam is very closed to Bangladesh and Myanmar geographically. Thailand is a neighboring state of Myanmar. Vietnam can be able to access in South Asia through Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand. There is a huge potential of Vietnamese products in the region. If Vietnam connects itself with Bangladesh-Myanmar-Thailand-India connectivity project and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar connectivity corridor, Vietnam would benefit. A huge potential is waiting for Vietnam.
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If the two projects can be implemented truly, Vietnam will be gainer in this regard. Bangladesh-Myanmar improved ties is very needed in this regard. Vietnam is a very friendly country to both Myanmar and Bangladesh
Vietnam can also use Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand as a transportation route to reach markets such as Nepal, Bhutan, and India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Both Bangladesh and Myanmar are members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), an organization consisting of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand that seeks to foster regional and economic cooperation. Vietnam can and should join BIMSTEC to utilize the benefits. Being a hub between South East Asian and South Asian country, Vietnam can use the routes to enter in the Bay of Bengal and Indian ocean easily through Myanmar and Bangladesh. Then it would be able to bolster its trade ties with South Asia, Central Asia and Middle East Asia.
Turkey Ambassador to Bangladesh Mustafa Osman Turan said on Nov. 13 that his country would continue its whole-hearted humanitarian support to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh until the peaceful repatriation of the persecuted people to their home country of Myanmar.
As part of a two-day visit, Turan visited Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s southern tourist-hub district of Cox’s Bazar, home to more than 1.2 million stateless Rohingya Muslims, most of whom fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in August 2017.
He arrived in Cox’s Bazar early Saturday to observe different aid services and training programs conducted by Turkish organizations, including the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA), Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), Diyanet Foundation, and Turkish Red Crescent.
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Turan said Turkey is always supportive to reduce the suffering of the Rohingya since the very beginning of the crisis.
“We, along with the UN and other concerned authorities, have been working for peaceful and dignified repatriation of the Rohingya,” he added.
The Rohingya also expressed their gratitude to the Turkish people and their government for their support that covers medical treatment, food supplies, recreation, vocational training, mental support and other areas.
“After each of the five-time prayers, we pray to almighty Allah for the wellbeing of Turkish President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan and Turkish people as they are helping us like a brother from the very beginning of our massive sufferings in 2017,” Maolana Abul Kalam Azad, the imam of a Rohingya camp-based mosque, told the Turkish envoy.
Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC), Shah Rezwan Hayat, and additional commissioner of the institute, Mohammad Shamsud Douza, also accompanied the envoy during the tour.
They expressed appreciation for the Turkish voice at global platforms for resolving the Rohingya crisis as well as continuous support for the forcibly displaced Myanmar’s nationals.
French leaders have assured Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that France is firmly with Bangladesh in finding a permanent solution to the protracted Rohingya issue, said Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.
“We’ll firmly remain beside you [Bangladesh] so that this crisis could end with a permanent solution,” the foreign minister quoted the French leaders as saying.
He said this while briefing reporters here about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent talks with various high-profile leaders of France, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex.
The foreign minister said the Rohingya issue came up prominently during the meetings with all the French leaders, especially the French president.
During the meetings, the French leaders were informed by the Bangladesh side that the country was trying to have a permanent solution to the crisis through various channels.
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“We’ve been trying bilaterally, trilaterally and multilaterally. Even we went to the International Criminal Court,” said Foreign Minister Momen.
He mentioned that the problem was created by Myanmar and the solution also lies with them.
After the recent military coup in Myanmar, he said, Bangladesh did not have any direct discussion with its military rulers.
“We have told them [French leaders] that the western world still continues their businesses with them [Myanmar]. They need to stop it in a bid to create pressure on them,” he said.
The French leaders, however, wanted to know whether this is possible to advance the dialogue for repatriation during the military government.
“We have told them that there were military governments in Myanmar in the 70s and the 90s when they had repatriated Rohingyas from Bangladesh,” he said.
The foreign minister said some 253,000 Rohingyas had entered Bangladesh in 1992 and 236,000 of them went back through dialogue and discussions. The same thing happened in the 1970s, Momen added.
Britain’s deputy UN ambassador has voiced concerns a military build-up in Myanmar north-west bears similarities to the Rohingya genocide of 2017.
James Kariuki told reporters before heading into a closed-doors meeting with the UN security council on Monday: “We are concerned that this rather mirrors the activity we saw four years ago ahead of the atrocities that were committed in Rakhine against the Rohingya [Muslim minority]”
The remarks came as UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said the humanitarian situation in Myanmar was deteriorating, with more than 3 million people in need of life-saving aid, adding that “without an end to violence and a peaceful resolution of Myanmar’s crisis, this number will only rise”.
The security council meeting coincides with the first anniversary of the re-election of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, which was then ousted by the military in a 1 February coup.
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Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the international court of justice over a 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya that forced more than 730,000 people to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh. Myanmar denies genocide and says its armed forces were legitimately targeting militants who attacked police posts.
About 223,000 Burmese remain internally displaced, including 165,000 in the country’s southeast – adding to those already displaced in Rakhine, Chin, Shan and Kachin states prior to the takeover, the UN emergency relief coordinator said.
Griffiths also said in a statement that the situation in the northwest of the Myanmar had become “extremely concerning” in recent weeks as fighting escalated between the Myanmar military and the Chinland Defence Force in Chin state and the Myanmar military and the People’s Defence Forces in Magway and Sagaing regions.
“More than 37,000 people, including women and children, have been newly displaced, and more than 160 homes have been burned, including churches and the offices of a humanitarian organisation,” Griffiths said.
The UN chief said attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including humanitarian workers and facilities are banned under international humanitarian law and “must stop immediately”.
Bloodstains still mark the spot where assassins gunned down Mohib Ullah, an activist who was a leading voice for the 850,000 Rohingya living in fear in Bangladeshi refugee camps.
In the weeks since the murder, a senior member of the now-shellshocked volunteer group that Ullah headed has received phone calls telling him he’ll be next. And he’s not alone.
“They”, he believes, are members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group fighting the Myanmar military but also thought to be behind a wave of killings and criminal activity in the camps.
Most of the Rohingya have been in the camps since 2017 when they fled a brutal military offensive in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the predominantly Muslim minority are reviled and seen as illegal immigrants.
Overflowing latrines fill narrow mud lanes with excrement in monsoon season, and fires can rip through the flimsy homes in minutes during the hot summers.
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“The scenario is different as soon as the sun sets,” Israfil, a Rohingya refugee who goes by one name, told AFP.
– ‘Brutal carnage’ –
The former schoolteacher shot to prominence in 2019 when he organised a protest of around 100,000 people in the camps to mark two years since their exodus.
But his fame appears to have gone down badly with ARSA.
“He became a thorn in ARSA’s side,” said Nur Khan Liton, a top rights activist in Bangladesh.
Three weeks after Ullah’s murder in late September, gunmen and machete-wielding attackers slaughtered seven people in an Islamic seminary that had allegedly refused to pay protection money to ARSA.
“ARSA has carried out the murders to establish its full control in the camps. After the latest carnage, everyone seems to be silenced,” he added, asking to remain anonymous.
After the attack on the seminary, the UN refugee agency urged the Bangladesh authorities “to take immediate measures to improve the security in the refugee camps”.
As of July 2021, only $366 million of the total required, around $1 billion, humanitarian assistance fund for the Rohingyas has been disbursed. The disbursement has declined to 34 percent, which used to be within the range between 72 to 75 percent of the total required funds in the first three years of the Rohingya influx since 2017.
This downward trend in foreign donations raises a question, “Has the world forgotten the plight of the Rohingyas?
”The year 2021 marks the fourth anniversary of the military-backed inhumane “clearance operation” followed by a massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas what UNHRC dubbed as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” While the rest of the world had turned blind eye to Rohingyas, Bangladesh generously extended temporary shelter to them. These stateless people have equal rights to lead a dignified life and build a stable future in Rakhine like everyone else which can be guaranteed only if the world communities express solidarity with them.
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The year 2021 marks the fourth anniversary of the military-backed inhumane “clearance operation” followed by a massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas what UNHRC dubbed as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” While the rest of the world had turned blind eye to Rohingyas, Bangladesh generously extended temporary shelter to them. These stateless people have equal rights to lead a dignified life and build a stable future in Rakhine like everyone else which can be guaranteed only if the world communities express solidarity with them.Stable funding commitment from long-standing donors is a prerequisite for food security, safe water, healthcare, and non-food items for 1.1 million Rohingyas .
The ultimate sustainable solution, safe and sustainable repatriation, seems a distant reality now, even after signing two repatriation agreements, due to Myanmar’s unwillingness to create conducive conditions. Until repatriation becomes possible, the world must stand by the world’s one of the largest refugee-hosting country Bangladesh to uphold the dignity of the ‘world’s most persecuted minority’ of our time.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the claim along with the images is misleading. While the first photo is of a Rohingya Muslim woman detained by the Border Security Force (BSF) at the India-Bangladesh border, the second is from a blaze at a Rohingya refugee camp at Kanchan Kunj in Delhi.
Photos of a woman crying with a child and men carrying burnt copies of the Quran are being circulated on social media with the claim that they are from a recent unrest in Tripura.
Recently, several reports of clashes between different communities were reported from the north-eastern state. Soon after, these images were shared widely.
One such post can be seen below.
With the help of a reverse search on Google, we found the first image carried by multiple media outlets on reports about the Rohingya crisis. The image has been used with credit to Reuters and is at least from 2019.
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After a further search, we found the same image carried by Reuters on January 22, 2019. According to the description provided by Reuters, the photo shows a Rohingya Muslim woman detained by BSF soldiers while crossing the border from Bangladesh at Raimura village on the outskirts of Tripura capital Agartala.
We found the same image of men carrying burnt copies of the Quran uploaded along with a set of other photos by independent journalist and founder of an NGO (Miles2Smile) working for victims of violence – Aasif Mujtaba on his Facebook and Instagram profile on June 13. According to Aasif’s post, the image is from a blaze that happened in June 2021 at a Rohingya settlement at Kanchan Kunj in Delhi.
When AFWA reached out to Aasif, he told us that the images were clicked by photojournalist Md Meharban who was present during relief operations after blaze at Kanchan Kunj. We then contacted Md Meharban who confirmed to us that the images were indeed clicked by him.
The family of one of the victims has started a case over Friday’s attack on a madrasa inside a Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar that left six people killed.
The father of slain Azizul Haque named 25 people in the case filed with the Ukhiya police station late on Saturday, said Superintendent (SP) Shihab Kaiser, chief of the Ukhiya-based unit of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn).
“Another 200 to 250 unidentified people have been accused of the fatal attack,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
Police said on Sunday that so far, 10 arrests have been made over the attack on Friday, weeks after the killing of prominent Rohingya leader Md Mohib Ullah.
Among those arrested, five were named in the case filed over the attack, SP Shihab told a media call.
“APBn had launched multiple raids to arrest the perpetrators. Five of the 10 arrested are suspected of taking part in the attack,” he said.
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A separate case was started by the police under the Arms Act against Mujibur Rahman, one of the assailants who was nabbed immediately after the attack, said the senior police officer.
On Friday, a gang armed with sharp weapons and guns attacked the madrasa before dawn at Block H-52 of Camp 18 at Ukhiya’s Balukhali.
Four people were killed immediately in the attack while others succumbed to their injuries at a local hospital.
Soon after the attack, one of the assailants, who was later identified as Jasim, was held in possession of a locally-made gun and a sharp weapon. Police have, so far, detained eight people over the attack.
Witnesses said several teachers and students of the residential madrasa fled to a nearby mosque after the attack was launched. The assailants raided the mosque and killed two people.
Rohingyas said that a terrorist group wanted to set up a training centre at the madrasa.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Thursday said that water transportation between Bhasanchar and the mainland will not operate after dusk on any day.
Consequently, travel from Bhasanchar to Noakhali or Hatiya will also be closed at that time of the evening.
The home minister made the announcement at a press conference after a meeting of the National Committee on Coordination, Management, and Law Enforcement of Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Citizens at the ministry conference room.
The Home Minister said the ministry has already had discussions with concerned authorities to ensure law and order and overall security within the Cox’s Bazar and Bhasanchar Rohingya camps.
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Washington: A US commission on religious freedom has said that it is “gravely troubled” over the recent wave of violence against the minority Hindu community in Bangladesh and urged the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to launch a crackdown on extremist elements that fan anti-Hindu sentiments.
Attacks on Hindu temples have intensified in Bangladesh since last Wednesday after an alleged blasphemous post surfaced on social media during the Durga Puja celebrations.
The minister added that arrangements are underway to increase the security detail in and around these camps.
In this regard, manpower and logistical support of law enforcement agencies, including from the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) and Coast Guard, will be provided to enhance security, the minister said.
The home minister said drives to stop drug smuggling in the areas adjacent to the Rohingya camps have been intensified.
Steps are also being taken to control the childbirth rate at the camps and steps to transfer 1 lakh Rohingyas to Bhasanchar will begin by December next, he added.
Lastly, regarding the murder of Rohingya leader Mohib Ullah, Asaduzzaman Khan said, “We’ve arrested almost all the killers. Soon their motives will be revealed to the media.”
