Refugee crisis: Bangladesh to dispatch more Rohingya Muslims to remote island
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Exactly a year ago, all anti-government groups and parties had gathered at Shahinbaugh in the national capital to protest against what they claimed was the “discriminatory” Citizenship (Amendment) Act that empowered the government to evict alien intruders from neighboring countries.
None of these ‘secular, liberal, and democratic’ groups have said anything about what is now happening in Bangladesh itself. India has lakhs of illegal Bangladeshi refugees and Bangladesh refuses to own them up.
But Bangladesh itself is now facing a similar crisis.
Dhaka is ready to despatch a second batch of Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar to the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal shortly.
This despite calls by rights groups not to carry out further relocations, media reported on Sunday.
Around 1,000 Rohingya refugees, members of a Muslim minority who fled from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar to Muslim-dominated Bangladesh will be shifted to the nearly deserted island in the next few days. Early in December, Bangladesh had ‘relocated’ more than 1,600 Rohingya Muslims, officials said.
They will be moved to Chittagong first and then to Bhasan Char, depending on the high tide.
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, claimed that the relocation was “voluntary”.”They will not be sent against their will,” according to media reports.
But the United Nations exposed his claims.
The UN regretted that Dhaka has not allowed UN officials to carry out a technical and safety assessment of Bhasan Char, a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal. The Bangladesh government has not involved the UN in the transfer of refugees there.
Bangladesh claimed it is transferring only people who are “willing to go” and the move will ease chronic overcrowding in camps that are home to more than 10 lakh Rohingyas.
Refugees and humanitarian workers say some of the Rohingya were forced to shift to the island, which emerged from the sea only 20 years ago.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen had recently said that the UN should first assess and verify how conducive the environment in Myanmar’s Rakhine state was for repatriating the refugees, before carrying out an assessment of Bhasan Char.
Attempts at repatriation of Rohingyas back to Myanmar failed after refugees said they were too scared of further violence to return, media reports said.
