DHAKA – Several thousand Rohingya today staged “unruly” protests against living conditions on a cyclone-prone island off Bangladesh where they were moved from vast camps on the mainland, said police.
Since December, Bangladesh has shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char from the Cox’s Bazar region, where some 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions.
Most of them had fled a brutal military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 that United Nations investigators concluded was executed with “genocidal intent”.
Police said the protest involved up to 4,000 people and coincided with an inspection visit by officials from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“The Rohingya who are there became unruly the moment UNHCR representatives landed (on the island) by helicopter today,” said local police chief Alamgir Hossain.
“They broke the glass on warehouses by throwing rocks. They came at police... Their demand is they don’t want to live here.”
One Rohingya man said bricks were thrown and police prevented them from entering a building where UNHCR officials were present.
After the first transfer to the flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal on December 4, several Rohingya said they were beaten and intimidated into agreeing to be relocated.
The claims have been echoed by rights groups.
The Bangladesh government has rejected the allegations, saying the island is safe and its facilities far better than those in the Cox’s Bazar camps.
UN said it has not been involved in the process. – AFP, May 31, 2021
