[ad_1]
Bangladesh has begun to move Rohingya families from camps near the Myanmar border to a settlement on a remote island, despite concerns about their safety and the refugees’ lack of consent.
The families could be seen loading white sacks of belongings onto buses that arrived overnight on Wednesday to take them to the port city of Chittagong for transfer by boat to Bhasan Char. About 1,000 people have already been transferred, regional police chief Anwar Hossain told AFP.
Bangladesh said it planned to relocate 2,500 families, but rights groups say refugees have been included without their consent. They called on Bangladesh to halt the relocation to allow an independent inspection of the island.
Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International activist in South Asia, said: “It is critical that the Bangladeshi authorities allow the UN, human rights groups and humanitarian agencies to conduct independent assessments of Bhashan Char’s habitability before taking action to relocate people there. No relocation plan, to Bhashan Char or elsewhere, can be carried out without the full and informed consent of the people involved. ”
Refugees in Kutupalong say that people are concerned, that they remain close to their homes since the relocations began, and that the authorities have banned all transportation inside the camps.
Since April, around 300 Rohingya have lived in Bhasan Char, sent there after being picked up from the sea. Accusations have been made against the guards of sexual assault, and videos have emerged of women screaming to be allowed to return to the mainland after Bangladesh led a delegation of camp leaders, known as majhis, to visit the island in September.
Formed from a sediment build-up in the Bay of Bengal just 20 years ago, Bhasan Char’s exposure to extreme weather conditions and distance from the continent in emergencies has caused concern since Bangladesh first raised the idea in 2015. .
The Rohingya themselves had staunchly resisted being moved, but since 700,000 more refugees arrived three years ago fleeing Myanmar’s ethnic cleansings, many have grown weary of conditions in the crowded settlements.
Mohammad Hanif, 40, a Majhi from the Kutupalong camp, the largest refugee camp in the world, said: “We went to the island and I am quite satisfied with the arrangements there. They have better houses, mosques and madrasas, markets. And the government promised that the help and support of the UN and other agencies will not be lacking. “
Hanif said his wife and children were concerned about the move, but were convinced after he told them about the facilities available.
He said that they were told that the same NGOs operating in the mainland’s fields would also help in Bhasan Char. However, the UN has yet to agree to work on the island, and in a statement on Wednesday UNHCR said it had not been involved in the relocations and called on Bangladesh to allow an urgent assessment of the island.
Bangladesh has insisted that the new housing in Bhasan Char is superior to the bamboo shelters in Cox’s Bazar and that it has built flood defenses.
“They told us that there will also be members of the Bangladeshi authorities on the island. So whatever the odds we face on the island, Bangladeshis will also face them … so I think the island must have facilities to survive in adverse weather conditions, ”Hanif said. “The authorities told us that the government of Bangladesh has done a lot for us and gave us shelter and food, they hope we will follow their plan. Because it is for our own good ”.
Human Rights Watch and the Bangkok-based advocacy group Fortify Rights said they had spoken with refugees who had been in hiding since they were told their names were on the relocation lists. They also warned about majhis making false promises and threats to force consent.
Mohammad Anis, 33, said that he had decided not to go because he did not want to stay in Bangladesh for long. “I don’t want to go to the island. And no one I know from my block wants to go either, ”said Anis, a majhi in Kutupalong. “We do not believe that they can force so many people to relocate against their will under the surveillance of the international community. Our demand is rational and it is that he take us back to Myanmar, we do not want to be refugees all our lives.
There are more than a million Rohingya refugees living in the Cox’s Bazar region, who arrived after repeated waves of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State since the early 1990s.
