Bangladesh warns UN officials over Rohingya refugees

Rohantha De Silva

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen has warned United Nations officials that they must support Dhaka’s harsh treatment of Rohingya refugees or leave the country. Momen made the remarks in an interview early this month with Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public broadcaster.

The Awami League-led government wants to relocate Rohingya refugees, who fled Burma (Myanmar) in the past two years, to the cyclone-prone, silt island of Bhasan Char. UN officials in Dhaka disagree with Dhaka’s plans, citing the low-lying island’s unhealthy and unsafe conditions.

Thousands of refugees are currently housed in squalid makeshift camps at Cox’s Bazar, near Bangladesh’s border with Burma’s Rakhine state. The refugees fled to Bangladesh to escape violent attacks by the Burmese army. The camps are desperately short of clean water, sanitary facilities, proper health care and food.

The Rohingya refugees oppose their relocation to Bhasan Char, which emerged from the muddy waters of the Bay of Bengal less than 20 years ago and is situated at the mouth of the Meghna River.

The refugees legitimately fear that Bhasan Char, which is 30 kilometres from the mainland and accessible only by boat, will be a virtual prison. The Rohingya will be housed in tiny, breeze-block concrete rooms 2m x 2.5m, with small, steel-barred windows.

According to Momen, the government has drawn up plans to shift 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char initially and another 400,000, within a “year or two.” Bangladesh initially planned to send about 700,000 refugees to the island by the end of 2018. Momen told Deutsche Welle that if the “they are not willing [to go to Bhasan Char], we will force them.”

While the UN has not made an official statement on the government’s brutal plan, Deutsche Welle has reported that UN officials made off-the-record comments voicing their concerns. They warned that “refugees may be contained on the island for years and their freedom of movement severely restricted.” They added that “splitting operations between Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char is logistically difficult.” Local and international human rights organisations have already raised their opposition.

Since the mass exodus of Rohingyas in response to the Burmese military’s intensification of violent attacks in August 2017, the total number of refugees in Bangladesh is now more than one million. Prior to 2017, there were nearly 400,000 who had fled Burma. According to the latest figures, over 905,000 are living in extremely congested refugee camps and more than 231,000 are in other makeshift accommodation. Fifty-five percent of the refugees are children.

The Rohingyas are an oppressed Muslim minority many of whom have lived for generations in Burma’s north-western Rakhine state. They were stripped of their citizenship rights by the Burmese government in 1982 and suffered torture, sexual assault and had their homes and villages torched by the military “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” operations.